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Business Cheers Bush's Plan to Hire Immigrants More Easily, but Labor Is Wary
NY Times ^ | Jan. 12, 2004 | STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Posted on 01/12/2004 8:36:57 PM PST by FairOpinion

Every year Frank Romano has trouble hiring enough workers to fill the vacancies at his nursing home chain in Massachusetts, from $60,000-a-year nurses to $8-an-hour kitchen and laundry workers.

Not only are there not enough American-trained nurses available, said Mr. Romano, who hires 300 new workers a year, but hardly any Americans are willing to take the lowly, sweaty jobs in a nursing home's kitchen or laundry.

Mr. Romano has long savored one solution for such hiring woes: the federal government should make it easier to bring in workers from abroad.

Not surprisingly, he joined executives in many industries, including hotels, restaurants, hospitals, construction and agriculture, to applaud President Bush's new proposals to revamp immigration policy and to make it easier to hire foreign workers.

"Americans just don't want to take a lower-paying, entry-level job," said Mr. Romano, founder and owner of the Essex Group, a chain of 15 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, based in Rowley, Mass. "They will not apply for it. Last year, I had to spend close to $300,000 on help-wanted ads because it was such a struggle to find people to do the jobs we need done."

Mr. Bush's proposals would give renewable three-year visas to illegal immigrants already working in the United States as well as to foreign applicants who are newly hired for jobs here. But many unions and immigrant advocacy groups have denounced the plan, saying it would create a permanent, exploitable second-tier of workers who would never have the opportunity for permanent residency and full citizenship.

Mr. Bush's plan is an outline, and Congress is expected to add specifics when it takes up new immigration legislation. Under the plan, businesses would have to show that no Americans want the jobs available before they bring in temporary workers from abroad. Business wants that test to be minimal, with many embracing a White House proposal that businesses be allowed to hire foreigners if no Americans respond to job postings on Web sites.

But organized labor and some Congressional Democrats want businesses to satisfy strict criteria before hiring from abroad. One fear, for example, is that a business that now pays American construction laborers $11 an hour will say that it henceforth needs laborers at $6 an hour, knowing that hardly any Americans would take arduous jobs paying so little.

As a result, some labor unions say they want a wage floor incorporated into the immigration reforms.

"If you don't have these protections, you're going to have a race to the bottom," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a liberal group that seeks to ease immigration rules. "You'll have $12-an-hour hotel workers undermined by the $7-an-hour temporary workers from overseas."

Like many other executives, Mr. Romano said he was not backing Mr. Bush's proposals in the hope of hiring immigrants at rock bottom levels, like the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage.

"We pay anywhere from $8 to $11 for entry-level jobs, and we provide health insurance, too," Mr. Romano said.

But labor and immigrant groups say many employers will pay the minimum wage with minimal benefits. They say Mr. Bush's proposal will leave immigrants in a weak position because their visas will be tied to their employer. If they get fired, perhaps for complaining that their employer is not paying them at least minimum wage or time-and-a-half for overtime, they could face deportation.

"As presented so far, it appears the Bush proposal protects the often abusive behavior of employers who hire undocumented workers, but leaves the workers themselves vulnerable and beholden to those employers for the right to stay here," said Terence O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers' International Union of North America.

In presenting his proposals on Wednesday, Mr. Bush said his plan would take illegal immigrant workers out of the shadows and would, by giving them temporary visas, make them less vulnerable and better able to assert their rights. His proposal, business executives say, is not geared so much for small businesses that have a handful of illegal immigrant workers and often pay very low wages, but for larger businesses like hotels and nursing homes that need dozens or hundreds of new workers each year.

Xavier Teixido, who runs Harry's Savoy Grill and Harry's Seafood Grill in Wilmington, Del., applauded the president's proposal, saying that existing guest-worker programs hardly helped him. Those programs are more for farmers or high-tech companies and often require a lengthy application process.

Last October, Mr. Teixido opened his seafood grill and had trouble hiring the 50 workers he needed. "We're in an industry that is creating a lot of jobs, creating them faster than we have the ability to fill them," he said.

Finding enough workers is so hard that his two restaurants have a full-time recruiter and human resources director. That director, Nicole Micolucci, said Mr. Bush's proposal would help. "There is need for a larger applicant pool, and I think expanding the applicant pool for all industries would benefit everyone," Ms. Micolucci said.

For unions and some immigrant groups, there is a fear that Mr. Bush's plan would depress wages.

"He's talking about creating a class of workers, potentially a permanent class of workers, who are more vulnerable and less protected than the rest of the work force," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization. "That's bad for them, and it's clearly bad for the rest of the U.S. work force. It will undercut the wages and working conditions for the permanent work force."

The Bush administration as well as many economists and business executives say the difficulties in finding enough workers for various industries is hurting the economy.

"Right now, we are facing a labor shortage which has the effect of depressing economic growth and job growth," said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce. "When the economy grows more, that will have a beneficial effect on American workers."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aliens; immigrants; immigration
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"hardly any Americans are willing to take the lowly, sweaty jobs in a nursing home's kitchen or laundry.

"Americans just don't want to take a lower-paying, entry-level job,"

==

If people want real reform they should stop welfare to all but the truly sick, old or disabled. As long as young, strong healthy adults get welfare, they won't take menial jobs, and that is why businesses have to hire immigrants (legal or illegal) from Mexico -- those people are not afraid of work.

1 posted on 01/12/2004 8:36:58 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion
As long as young, strong healthy adults get welfare, they won't take menial jobs, and that is why businesses have to hire immigrants (legal or illegal) from Mexico -- those people are not afraid of work.

News flash! They're not just taking jobs Americans don't want. They've taken over the construction industry completely which has either put many hard working Americans out of work or depressed the wages to the point where they can no longer support their families.

2 posted on 01/12/2004 8:43:02 PM PST by South40 (My vote helped defeat cruz bustamante; did yours?)
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To: FairOpinion
Oh come on! Every nation has it's lay abouts. Most Americans do NOT fall into that catagory. With wages so low, a US family of three is below the poverty line! Our wages have been going down since the 70's! And that correlates to the start of massive invasion from south of the border!
3 posted on 01/12/2004 8:43:42 PM PST by ETERNAL WARMING
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To: FairOpinion

Immigration Issue Centers : Labor & Economics

How Guestworker Programs Harm American Workers


Proposals for "guestworker" programs that would allow millions of foreign citizens to work in the U.S. guarantee that U.S. taxpayers will get the short end of the stick:

Guestworkers displace American workers and lower American workers’ wages and working conditions in certain job sectors.
Guestworker programs are a drain on the tax system.
Guestworkers rarely go home.
Any guestworker program that involves “earned legalization” is an amnesty, a reward for law-breaking that is vociferously opposed by the American public.
Whenever the government has empanelled experts to examine the idea of expanding existing guestworkers programs—such as the Commission on Agriculture Workers (1992), the Commission on Immigration Reform (1995), and the joint U.S.-Mexico Bi-National Study on Migration (1997)—they have recommended against them, citing negative impacts to wages and working conditions in the affected industries.

IT’S BEEN TRIED—AND IT FAILED
The U.S. has had large-scale guestworker programs before. Prompted by war-time manpower shortages and continued out of convenience, the Mexican Contract Labor Program in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s—better known as the Bracero program—brought millions of Mexicans to work in American agriculture.

This large-scale guestworker program resulted in increasing dependence on foreign labor, encouraged illegal immigration, and so severely deteriorated wages and working conditions for domestic farmworkers that it was branded a national shame and discontinued.1

Many Mexicans who worked in that program stayed on illegally when the program ended. The result has been the institutionalized lowering of wages and working conditions in seasonal crop agriculture, as well as a dependence on cheap labor rather than investment in mechanization.

HARM TO AMERICAN WORKERS
A guestworker program would perpetuate the lowering of real wages in sectors where there are today large numbers of illegal aliens. Additional foreign workers would push down wages and working conditions still further.

Indeed, guestworkers are already displacing American workers and lowering their wages and working conditions, as has been amply shown by their effects on agriculture and the information technology (IT) industry. In agriculture, migrant workers have displaced native workers in the peach industry,2 the cucumber industry, and the apple industry,3 among others. (In the melon industry, migrant workers not only pushed out unionized native crews but also caused the abandonment of labor-saving mechanized packing houses.4) In the IT field, study after study finds that guestworkers are paid between 15 to 33 percent less than natives, an effect that depresses wages for American workers in the industry.5

With a new guestworker program open to all industries—not just agriculture and IT—millions of native workers will find their jobs, their wages, and their working conditions threatened by competition from foreign workers.

MASSIVE HIDDEN COSTS
In the proposed guestworker programs, who would pay for the health care of the participants and their dependents—and how? Emergency health care for illegal aliens along the southwestern border is already costing area hospitals $200 million a year, with perhaps another $100 million in extended care costs.6 Will employers foot the bill when the illegal aliens become “guestworkers” and the bill for the millions of other applicants?

What about Social Security payments? Will employers have to pay them even though the guestworkers won’t be eligible to receive benefits? Or will the program give millions of foreign citizens access to our already overburdened Social Security system? Or will employers just not have to pay Social Security at all, giving every employer in the country an enormous financial incentive to hire foreign guestworkers instead of native workers?

If guestworkers are permitted to bring their families, will employers pay for the schooling of the guestworkers’ children, or will that cost be borne by taxpayers?

REWARDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Some of the proposals currently under discussion would make illegal aliens eligible to participate in the program and allow “earned legalization,” i.e., allow “temporary” guestworkers to become permanent immigrants. By definition, any program by which illegal aliens can become legal immigrants is an amnesty—and overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of Americans.

While advocates of guestworker/amnesty programs claim that such a program would “get control of” illegal immigration, past guestworker programs have not had such an effect.7 Furthermore, our current population of illegal aliens (eight to eleven million) is far larger than any guestworker program is likely to be. None of the proposals address the enormity of the problem, the American people’s opposition to amnestying those who have broken our immigration laws, nor the additional 500,000 illegal aliens who enter the country every year.

Perhaps most importantly, history shows that any program that amnesties illegal aliens will encourage, not prevent, further illegal immigration, by sending the message that the U.S. doesn’t take its immigration laws seriously and that, if only people can get into the country illegally, eventually they will be rewarded with legal status.

(Note: Proponents are likely viewing the guestworker/amnesty plan as a Mexico-specific deal, designed to appease our southern neighbor. But the demand for “fairness” from immigration advocates will undoubtedly result in the program being opened to all nationalities, giving them more motivation to immigrate illegally, and thereby increasing, not decreasing overall immigration.)

GUESTS WHO DON’T GO HOME
“The purpose of a guestworker program is to add workers to the labor force but not permanent residents to the population. The legacy of guestworker programs is universal-around the world, it is clear that there is nothing more permanent than temporary workers. Guestworker programs tend to produce immediate economic benefits to migrants and their families and to the employers who hire them, but they everywhere leave a legacy of distortion and dependence [in the labor market].” 8

—immigrant labor expert Philip Martin
History shows that “guestworkers” rarely go home. Why would we expect the participants in a new guestworker scheme to leave at the end of their participation in the program? If they can become legal aliens, they will stay, and if they can’t, they are still likely to remain. After all, many of them will have already lived here as illegal aliens before participating in the program. What enforcement mechanisms will ensure that they don’t simply remain as illegal aliens after their legal participation in the guestworker program is over? No “partial withholding of wages” will convince them to go home when they can continue to earn more money by staying in the U.S. illegally.

And as long as there are new illegal aliens or ones who remain after the end of their participation in the guestworker program, then there will continue to be a large supply of labor available at a cheaper price than U.S. labor or guestworker labor. What use will a guestworker program serve then?

INVITATION FOR FRAUD
In the last open amnesty, a much larger number of illegal aliens applied for—and received—amnesty than had been anticipated, partly due to massive fraud. An estimated 73 percent of the applications for legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) were fraudulent, as were 40 percent of the applications for the associated special agricultural workers program.9 Millions of aliens are likely to “qualify” for a guestworker program by using false documentation of their eligibility, and eligibility will just as hard to disprove as it was in the IRCA amnesty.

AN OVERWHELMING BURDEN ON AN ALREADY OVERWHELMED SYSTEM
No one has yet explained how the millions of applicants would be given security checks or whether that’s even remotely feasible, given an already overburdened immigration enforcement system. The existing immigration service, according to a Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, is crippled by computer systems ineffective to the point of being useless, a severe shortage of detention space, inadequate systems for tracking aliens, no effective program for removing removable aliens even when they can be identified, application backlogs in the millions, and heavy over-reliance on contractors for the most basic functions.10 When the immigration system can’t adequately perform its most essential mission, adding in the responsibility for security checks, tracking, and removal when necessary for millions of participants in a guestworker program will guarantee disaster.

The likely eligibility requirements for any guestworker/amnesty program—length of stay in the U.S. for current illegal aliens, and a clean criminal record and verifiable identity for all applicants—would be a verification nightmare. Immigration officials would have to deal with hundreds of thousands of more applicants a year, to say nothing of how we would verify eligibility for any of the eight million potential applicants already here illegally, particularly with many of them armed with false identity documents.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Even the Urban Institute, traditionally supportive of mass immigration in its various forms, has cast serious doubts on the idea of a guestworker program, arguing that for any program to function as it should, three conditions would have to be met:11 Illegal immigration would have to be nearly eliminated, employers of guestworkers would have to endure additional taxes and levies that would minimize foreign workers’ competitive advantage over natives, and economic incentives would have to drive guestworkers to return to their home countries. It’s highly unlikely that any of these conditions will be met, let alone all of them.

However, if Congress passes a guestworker program, the following additional provisions are essential in order to minimize harmful effects:

provisions to ensure that no guestworkers are hired for jobs Americans are available to fill;
employer-paid health insurance;
employer-paid Social Security taxes for guestworkers even though the workers will not be eligible to receive Social Security benefits (because excluding them from this tax would provide an incentive for employers to hire guestworkers over native workers);
a ban on bringing in dependents, who would provide a further drain on taxpayers; and
a ban on access to taxpayer-funded social services of any kind, other than bona fide emergency medical care

4 posted on 01/12/2004 8:45:19 PM PST by chicagolady (Jesus, Be my Magnificent Obsession)
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To: FairOpinion
$8-an-hour kitchen and laundry

Yeah Frank, with rents at $12-1500 in Boston, I expect you do have a problem getting help to work for $8. You might part with some of that $5000 you get per person per month and you won't have a shortage of help!
5 posted on 01/12/2004 8:45:24 PM PST by ETERNAL WARMING
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To: South40
"They're not just taking jobs Americans don't want. They've taken over the construction industry completely "

===

These things are the result of mandatory minimum wage laws.

If we stopped welfare, stopped minimum wage laws and stopped over regulating businesses, and allowed the market to determine the wages, things would eventually become balanced. But people born in the US, brought up on the liberal slogans, think they are "entitled" to things, instead of recognizing that they have to "earn" what they get. That is why employers hire illegal Mexicans, they are tired of the US primadonnas.
6 posted on 01/12/2004 8:46:42 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: ETERNAL WARMING
"Every nation has it's lay abouts."

==

That's fine with me -- but let their families support them, instead of asking the taxpayers to provide them with a cushy lifestyle.
7 posted on 01/12/2004 8:47:36 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion
Mexican immigrants, be they legal or ILLEGAL have nothing to so with welfare being in the state it is. They have everything to do with putting countless hard working American construction workers out of work and depressing the wages of those who still do.
8 posted on 01/12/2004 8:49:36 PM PST by South40 (My vote helped defeat cruz bustamante; did yours?)
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To: FairOpinion
If people want real reform they should stop welfare to all but the truly sick, old or disabled. As long as young, strong healthy adults get welfare, they won't take menial jobs, and that is why businesses have to hire immigrants (legal or illegal) from Mexico -- those people are not afraid of work.

Today on FNC .. David Asman said that before before LJB the number of poor was on a decline and that after his presidency , the number of poor increased because of welfare

IMO ... many people got lazy collecting off of the government instead of working

9 posted on 01/12/2004 8:51:22 PM PST by Mo1 (Join the dollar a day crowd now!)
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To: FairOpinion
So, you mind paying for citizens, but don't mind paying BILLIONS per year for 'cheap labor?' I don't like welfare either, but it's a drop in the bucket to what the Mexican illegals are costing us here in the West.
10 posted on 01/12/2004 8:53:26 PM PST by ETERNAL WARMING
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To: FairOpinion
""He's talking about creating a class of workers, potentially a permanent class of workers, who are more vulnerable and less protected than the rest of the work force," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization."

This same crap was said about the Irish over a 100 years ago !

11 posted on 01/12/2004 8:53:41 PM PST by america-rules (It's US or THEM so what part don't you understand ?)
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To: Mo1
"IMO ... many people got lazy collecting off of the government instead of working"

==

That's what I think too -- let's get to the root cause of the problem.

I have seen it, when you hire a "white guy" to clean your yard vs. a Mexican. The Mexican works twice as hard, and really gets things done, while the white guy is looking for the easy way to do it, and to explain to you, how the work is more than what was originally agreed to and you should pay him more.

Obviously this is not true of everyone of either "type", but I have seen enough to know that it is true a large fraction of cases.

As I said, if the US citizens would stop being coddled and acquire a work ethic, realizing that they are not entitled to anything they don't earn with hard work, there would be no need for hiring illegal immigrants. But unfortunately, generations have grown up focusing on their "rights", but not their "responsibilities".

As I said, if someone falls on hard times, I would provide welfare for 3-6 months, depending on the situation, then stop, that's it. If they want to eat, let them stand on the street by Home Depot, as the Mexicans do, and work for a day, to eat.
12 posted on 01/12/2004 8:57:44 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: ETERNAL WARMING
Yeah Frank, with rents at $12-1500 in Boston, I expect you do have a problem getting help to work for $8. You might part with some of that $5000 you get per person per month and you won't have a shortage of help!

-----------------------

Today, you'll lose your butt woeking for $8 in a city such as Boston.

13 posted on 01/12/2004 8:59:52 PM PST by RLK
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To: ETERNAL WARMING
"I don't like welfare either, but it's a drop in the bucket to what the Mexican illegals are costing us here in the West."

==

How are people who WORK for a living costing us taxpayers, please enlighten us.

The people who are costing us are those who use government services, such as welfare. I don't like subsidizing laxy people, citizen or not. How is US citizenship entitles people to live off the hard work of others?
14 posted on 01/12/2004 8:59:56 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion
The news (fnc I believe)just had a blurb that every Mexican president has carried the policy that the mexicans actually own the southeaster united states and it has been their long term policy to reclaim the territory by sheer force of population.

Any guest worker program should be specifically tied to a OFFICIAL and unequivocal repudication of this program. Something straigh from Fox's mouth.

Why is it the absolutly dirt poor nations believe the United States owes them something? It should be really pointed out how mexico uses MILITARY forces to blockade their southern border against illegal aliens into Mexico. Fox supports a double standard it seems.

How about requiring these employers specifically seek employees from the welfare system? Make that a specific requirement of the new "guest" worker system.

Additionally, make the guest worker status, a non-convertable status. Much like a person here with an I-94W under the visa waiver program is ineligible to convert from a B1/B2 status to something else.
15 posted on 01/12/2004 9:00:33 PM PST by longtermmemmory (Vote!)
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To: FairOpinion
Immigrants from Mexico actually have a higher rate of welfare program useage than native born American citizens.
16 posted on 01/12/2004 9:05:43 PM PST by FITZ
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To: longtermmemmory
You haev some sensible suggestions. I agree with all, but the requirement on employers to solicit workers from welfare rolls.

When you are in business you want to hire someone who actually works, not someone, who is going to just pretend to. Most people on welfare are not on welfare, because they can't find jobs, they are on welfare, because they don't want to work.

I submit, that the sprauling welfare programs are a far bigger problem for the country than the illegals.
17 posted on 01/12/2004 9:06:07 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion
That's what I think too -- let's get to the root cause of the problem

I've been saying that for some time now .. and I get accused of all kinds of things

We can close the borders tomorrow and it still does not solve the root problem

We have too many free give aways in this country that many on both sides of the border use and abuse.

I agree with you if someone falls on hard times, I'm all for helping them out .. that is what I thought welfare was suppose to be ... Not a way of life.

Like many other gov. programs .. the reason to start them were with good intension's .. but they have been abused for too long

Another example is the EPA .. there is nothing wrong with protecting the environment .. there is something wrong when one uses it to hold people hostage

18 posted on 01/12/2004 9:06:34 PM PST by Mo1 (Join the dollar a day crowd now!)
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To: FITZ
"Immigrants from Mexico actually have a higher rate of welfare program useage than native born American citizens."

==

Do you have any stats to back this up?

I don't believe in welfare for anyone. PERIOD. WIth the exception of the sick, disabled and elderly, or temporary welfare for those who fall on hard time, until they get back on their feet, but of the order of a few months.

Do you realize there are generations of people, who spend their entire life on welfare, than they produce children starting at age 14-16, who also spend all of their lives on welfare, following in the footsteps of their parents?

I take a working Mexican illegal alien any day, over those leeches, citizens or not.
19 posted on 01/12/2004 9:09:12 PM PST by FairOpinion
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To: FairOpinion
let them stand on the street by Home Depot, as the Mexicans do, and work for a day, to eat.

You ought to visit one of the county hospitals or welfare offices in the SW where many immigrants are --- you'll see all kinds who aren't here to work. The Medicaid rolls are filled with immigrants. In many cities of the SW, you won't find many blacks or whites or hispanic-Americans on welfare --- it seems almost exclusively for the immigrants of Mexico and their children.

20 posted on 01/12/2004 9:11:01 PM PST by FITZ
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