Posted on 04/29/2006 5:06:53 AM PDT by A. Pole
Ever since President Bush unveiled his first guest worker plan, employer claims of labor shortages have dominated the economic side of the national immigration debate. Moreover, as Bush and his allies keep repeating, legal and illegal immigrants alike are mainly doing "the jobs Americans won't do" – physically demanding labor in low-paying but essential industries.
However, the most important statistics available show conclusively that, far from easing shortages, illegal immigrants are adding to labor gluts in America.
Specifically, when adjusted for inflation, wages in sectors that are highly dependent on illegals have either been stagnant or have actually fallen.
When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can't be choosers. What U.S. Labor Department data reveal is that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy's illegal immigrant-heavy sectors.
Take restaurants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants comprise 17 percent of the nation's food preparation workers, 20 percent of its cooks and 23 percent of its dishwashers.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though, inflation-adjusted wages for the broad Food Services and Drinking Establishments category fell 1.65 percent between 2000 and 2005.
Ten percent of the nation's hotel workers are illegal immigrants, the Pew Center estimates. But the BLS data show that their inflation-adjusted wages fell nearly 1 percent from 2000-2005.
In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up some 12 percent of the work force. But from 1993 —when median home prices began surging at a record pace — through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02 percent. And from 2000 to 2005 — the height of the boom — inflation-adjusted construction wages actually fell by 1.59 percent.
These wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make clear that these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who can accept poverty-level pay.
If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring that American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout American history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need.
Bump
Or, you could say the reverse. Lower wages are the reason our border will never be secure.
Rome burns or worse while elected officials are "debating".
What's to debate?
Is the fact that these socialists are allowed to march across this land in defiance of the laws of the land as militants along with leaders from another country to support them and threatening this entire SOVEREIGN country and all we hold sacred, disresepcting our national Anthem, our troops and America and these terroists are allowed to do that with no one denouncing them and arresting everyone of their sorry butts!!
Wake up people, who else marched across a country and took over the country, think back in History!!
This has been transparently obvious to a blind man on a fast horse for years. The whole economic argument for tolerating illegals is bogus as hell and Bush disgraces himself by propagating it.
Securing our borders against terrorists and drug traffickers has nothing to do with wages.
The numbers do not add up. A one percent decline in wages does not mean poverty level. The presence of 10% illegal immigrants probably does indicate a labor shortage, and if they work for less, because they are worth less, it may bring down the industry average without affecting what more qualified Americans are making.
That's such a great idea!
"Decent" appears to be such a reasonable and unambiguous word; like "immigrant".
I got my Karl Marx around here somewhere...
Yes it does;without the huge pool of illegal workers wages will go up.Without the huge supply of drugs to sell fewer people will spend their lives in a stupor.
(The Free Market will not be denied, no matter what laws are passed.)
Everyone is equal; all cultures are equal. Everybody has the same needs, thus everyone should earn the same.
Education, sacrifice, ability, years of effort, attitude all don't matter.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
What could be simpler?
Decent wages and social solidarity is a Christian concept. Marx hoped for class conflict and revolution.
Corruption in Mexico has held back their economy. That is why a rich country like Mexico doesn't have businesses which support all their people.
Hong Kong didn't have resources, but under British rule they had a rule of law. Under that rule of law, they went from being a war torn city after WWII to one of the wealthiest cities in Asia.
If you want your nation to be wealthy, first allow your people to keep the wealth they earn.
Stop the industries that are hiring the illegals and, you will stop their migrating to America.
I on a personal level know proof positive the illegals are hurting the American labor force. They are under cutting American labor by working for cheaper wages and America companies keep hiring them.
Corp. greed is the bottom line. To boost their profit, they are the ones causing this influx of Mexicans. The corps. are just like a lot of people I know, they just can't own enough.
I have seen first hand how the illegals live, 5 families to one house, I hope our government doesn't
want the American labor force to live like Rats, but greed allows them to not care.
Give the American labor force a decent wage, and it will give you a good day of labor. Americans will work, I could care less what the know it all tries telling us.
STOP the bleeding! Build the wall.
True. There will always be smugglers and black markets. But the level, intensity and severity of enforcement can have a great impact on both the supply and the price of contraband, whether it be drugs, alcohol or illegal labor.
I'm of the view that we could live with a small degree of illegal labor. Nobody was complaining when the migrant illegals were confining themselves to agriculture. It was when they spilled into the construction and hospitality sectors and their numbers multiplied by tenfold that people started to get upset. I think we could step up enforcement to the point where we stamped out the vast majority of the problem. The marginal cost of catching the last couple hundred thousand illegals probably would not be worth the expenditure but the cost of enforcing the law against the first ten million or so would be within reason. It would not require actual deportations. Just raise the cost and risk to employers of participating in black market labor.
Now if you could buy gas at $1 a gallon what would you do?
You would buy the gas at $1 a gallon, but you damn American companies essentially doing the same thing with labor costs.
Isn't that a bit hypocritical on your part.
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