Business wants immigration reform. Why? Because they can't find enough workers

CNN ^

[TigerClaws]

As the nation deals with an immigration crisis at its borders, businesses are stepping up their calls for reform.

The Obama administration is desperately trying to deal with the influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children crossing into the United States.

The crisis may deflect Congress' attention away from doing anything meaningful over the nation's immigration laws, said Thomas Donohue, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, which represents the largest U.S. businesses. But the group still renewed its push for immigration reform.

[khelus]

[i]All H1B was ever about was driving wages down to ‘equalize’ us globally.

There is no job in America that someone won’t do. It’s all a matter of paying them. H1B scuttles market/employment/wage values by introducing artificially (to the American economy) low wage illegals to benefit profit. The free market is no longer free when the rules get changed like that. It is now the ‘manipulated’ market.

Econ 101.[/i]

Many posters here neglect to consider that the labor market is manipulated at all levels of employment by a wide variety of 'guest worker visas' and illegals. Yes H-1B's overstay and morph into illegal status.

As a bonus most guest workers / illegals come from socialist countries and are quite comfortable with big government subsidizing their income and vote leftist.

Many guest workers come in under special tax arrangements and pay no or next to no taxes on their wages. Their educations were generally free, often on the US tax payers dime.

Many illegals have no moral problem with using multiple aliases and outright fraud when partaking of our safety net.

[C. Edmund Wright]

IMHO, both arguments are valid, and are not mutually exclusive

Interesting comment, and probably technically true. I will tell you though, the low pay issue is not what most think it is. It's cultural - our spoiled entry level work force will not perform, they will not show up day after day reliably, and they easily get bored with rote jobs - but these are jobs that need to go on day after week after month after year.

There is also way too little emphasis put on the welfare state's place in this, and too much on the low pay issue - and a total lack of acknowledgement that the low pay issue benefits all consumers as well as businesses. If you can bring home 50% of a full time job salary laying about, many will. Until we let folks go hungry a little, lose their obama phones, their flat screens, there ability to hang out at Starbucks 20 hours a week - they are not going to do the really boring repetitive jobs.

The way to solve this? Secure border. Cut guv benefits to illegals totally, and cut benefit longevity to native born. Do that, and watch this thing unravel on it's on in maybe 2-3 years.

[C. Edmund Wright]

There are a large number of American computer programmers out of work...and most of them were let go because companies preferred lower paid lesser trained foreigners

This brings up an interesting dichotomy - that no one ever talks about. I think pay is a big driver in the tech fields, just like you said. I think pay is a much smaller factor in the unskilled labor fields. I think those who say "Americans won't do the work" are both right and wrong….right to some degree on labor, wrong to some degree on the tech. Two totally different faces of the same problem.

[Stentor]

There are plenty of workers, they just want to pay less.

While it is a matter of policy to inflate away the value of wages.

[GailA]

They can’t find enough CHEAP slave labor is more like it.

We have plenty of well educated men and women out of work who are US Citizens. Recent War Veterans should have first dibs.

[khelus]

“Look there are two different immigrants. One that crosses the southern boarder. That type is not valuable to many business. Certainly not public companies that would pay a price to use them.”

Tell that to Tyson!

‘But business care mostly about computer programmers. And there are almost no American programmers.’

I don't know about that. It seems to me that I have heard of a great deal of programmers that have trained their own replacements from China and India.

As for the STEM. There are millions of private and Parochial school trained students who are more than proficient in Science, Technology and Math when they leave High School. I knew many that finish college and went to work for a big company only to end up being shuffled out the door in a decade to make way for a cheaper, younger model who doesn't seem to demand time for kids and home life.

H1B1 is legalized slavery. Businesses basically hold the Visa holder hostage. The Chinese ones are all here to pilfer knowledge to take back to the land of Mao and use that knowledge against us in the future. If they don't come back their family get hurt

Bravo !

Use of illegals and guest workers is nothing more than the use of neo-slavery to destroy the American middle class.

A series of myths, half-truths, and conditions existing in the past have been used to justify this neo-slavery, including, but not limited to:

The myths of 'good' immigrants and jobs Americans can't and won't do.

The fact that there always have been some who abuse disability and UE and other portions of the safety net.

The fact that once upon a time if you want to work you could find a job.

[Jabba the Nutt]

There are no shortages of American workers. If business says they can't find workers, they're actually saying "we can't find workers at the price we want to pay". Tough nuggies.

In a free market, you have to pay the price set by the market. Now, Big Crony Business wants to import millions of illegals, apparently 11 to 40 million aren't enough, so that they can pay lower wages. Wages have not increased in 20 years, so are they really getting killed by high labor costs?

Now, Big Crony Business benefits from lower wages, while the costs of high illegal immigration is paid for by taxpayers in high taxes, in destroyed schools, in overwhelmed healthcare systems, in higher crime, violence and deaths from drunk driving. Not to mention the destruction of American anglo-saxon culture.

Now, Big Crony Business and their ilk at the US Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal are elitists, who think they're smarter than the rest of us. They're not, they're self-destructive morons. While Big Crony Business is participating in the destruction of the middle class, where do they think political support for the free enterprise (profit system) will come from? The enlarged underclass? The downsized middle class? The newly disabled and retired on social security? Latino culture's going to replace the American Culture as a basis? Really?

They are destroying the base of their own existence. That's what I mean by being morons. A strong, vibrant, broad middle class is the superstructure for the business culture in this country. They are destroying that. And we're all racists, ignorant bigots for opposing this great future.

[kabar]

I assume the point you were making is that "citizens" aren't working because they find welfare and UE benefits so attractive that there is no incentive to work. Hence illegal aliens take those jobs Americans won't do.

The fact is that immigrants, legal and illegal, use welfare programs to a greater degree than the native born. The illegal aliens are prohibited from using welfare except thru their US born children who receive such things as food stamps and Medicaid. Legal immigrants (citizens and non-citizens) are entitled to welfare and UE benefits.

There are no jobs Americans won't do. There is no shortage of labor. If that were the case, wages would be going up, not down. Immigrants, legal and illegal, are taking jobs from Americans and depressing wages.

This analysis tests the often-made argument that immigrants do only jobs Americans don't want. If the argument is correct, there should be occupations comprised entirely or almost entirely of immigrants (legal and illegal). But Census Bureau data collected from 2009 to 2011, which allows for detailed analysis of all 472 separate occupations, shows that there were only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations. Thus, there really are no jobs that Americans won't do. Further, we estimated the share of occupations that are comprised of illegal immigrants, and found that there are no occupations in which the majority of workers are illegally in the country.

Among the findings:

Of the 472 civilian occupations, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 46 percent of workers even in these occupations.

Natives tend to have high unemployment in high-immigrant occupations, averaging 14 percent during the 2009-2011 period, compared to 8 percent in the rest of the labor market. There were a total of 2.6 million unemployed native-born Americans in high-immigrant occupations.

Some may think that native-born workers in high-immigrant occupations are mostly older, with few young natives willing to do such work. But 34 percent of natives in these occupations are age 30 or younger, compared to 27 percent of natives in the rest of labor force.

It is worth remembering that not all high-immigrant occupations are lower skilled. For example, 36 percent of software engineers are immigrants as are 27 percent of physicians.

Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is remarkable given that native-born Americans accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age population. Though there has been some recovery from the Great Recession, there were still fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.

All of the net increase in employment went to immigrants in the last 14 years partly because, even before the Great Recession, immigrants were gaining a disproportionate share of jobs relative to their share of population growth. In addition, natives' losses were somewhat greater during the recession and immigrants have recovered more quickly from it.

First, the long-term decline in the employment for natives across age and education levels is a clear indication that there is no general labor shortage, which is a primary justification for the large increases in immigration (skilled and unskilled) in the Schumer-Rubio bill and similar House proposals.

Second, the decline in work among the native-born over the last 14 years of high immigration is consistent with research showing that immigration reduces employment for natives.

Third, the trends since 2000 challenge the argument that immigration on balance increases job opportunities for natives. Over 17 million immigrants arrived in the country in the last 14 years, yet native employment has deteriorated significantly.

First we were told by the corporate and political classes that there were jobs Americans won't do, hence the need for large numbers of unskilled immigrant labor. Now we are told that there are jobs Americans can't do hence the need for large numbers of skilled labor (STEM workers). This is all crap. The data show a far different story. It is all about the bottom line plus having an exploitable pool of docile, immigrant labor who are more easily controlled.

[kabar]

The way to solve this? Secure border. Cut guv benefits to illegals totally, and cut benefit longevity to native born. Do that, and watch this thing unravel on it's on in maybe 2-3 years.

Illegals get most of their benefits thru their US born children who are citizens at birth. Their benefits can't be cut. And the IRS admits to providing over $4 billion a year to illegal aliens in the form of EITC.

You seem to think that there is a huge pool of jobs waiting to be filled. There is a shortage of jobs, not workers. Since 1990 we brought in 29 million legal, permanent immigrants. In addition, we import 640,000 guest workers annually. Do you think this might have an impact on the labor market?

There are currently 61.1 million American men in their prime working years, age 25–54. A staggering 1 in 8 such men are not in the labor force at all, meaning they are neither working nor looking for work. This is an all-time high dating back to when records were first kept in 1955. An additional 2.9 million men are in the labor force but not employed (i.e., they would work if they could find a job). A total of 10.2 million individuals in this cohort, therefore, are not holding jobs in the U.S. economy today. There are also nearly 3 million more men in this age group not working today than there were before the recession began," the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee claim.

"Although defenders of the current economy attribute shrinking labor force participation to the increasing pace of retirement of the Baby Boomer generation, these new statistics above confirm a trend that Barron’s recently diagnosed: 'The ratio of those over 55 in the workforce actually ticked up'—in other words, older Americans are being forced to return to work in a poor economy to make ends meet while many younger Americans simply aren’t working at all. In short, there is an unprecedented supply of working-age Americans who do not hold jobs."

[C. Edmund Wright]

Once again, you are bringing in a lot of data and not applying it correctly to my point. Yes, I was saying, am saying, and will always say, that there are many Americans who should be filling these jobs who are not voluntarily - and the reason is gummint benefits. That is fact, human nature, obvious, and beyond any intelligent contradiction.

But it is also SEPARATE issue from all your charts and graphs. If you can’t see that you are conflating two dynamics that are not mutually exclusive, then you have a real logic shortage. Yes, I agree, immigrants are more likely to be on gummint assistance than native borns. But also YES, native borns are more likely to be on government assistance if they can get by instead of working. BOTH are true.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Once again, you are full of charts and graphs….that don’t have a damned thing to do with my point. Yes, I know, cutting welfare bennies is tough, and won’t solve every single bit of the problem. So what. It would be a huge step in the right direction.

You are emotionally destroying yourself over this - and if you would understand a little more about the real issue, you would be less angry.

[kabar]

Once again, you are bringing in a lot of data and not applying it correctly to my point. Yes, I was saying, am saying, and will always say, that there are many Americans who should be filling these jobs who are not voluntarily - and the reason is gummint benefits. That is fact, human nature, obvious, and beyond any intelligent contradiction.

Are you applying that same logic to immigrants who use "gummint" benefits to a greater extent than the native born? Why are immigrants getting all the jobs since 2000? Remember a while back when McDonald's announced it was hiring in the inner cities and the lines stretched around the block? Americans aren't working because there are no jobs. We don't have a shortage of labor. Wages are declining and have in real terms since 1969.

You don't bring in huge numbers of foreign labor every year regardless of need without impacting the labor market. It is pure sophistry to say otherwise or posit that Americans aren't working because they find welfare benefits so attractive. We are destroying an entire generation of American workers.

But it is also SEPARATE issue from all your charts and graphs. If you can’t see that you are conflating two dynamics that are not mutually exclusive, then you have a real logic shortage. Yes, I agree, immigrants are more likely to be on gummint assistance than native borns. But also YES, native borns are more likely to be on government assistance if they can get by instead of working. BOTH are true.

You are essentially saying there are plenty of jobs out there, just no takers. That is patently false. Labor participation rates have hit new lows. Most of the job increases under Obama have been part-time. The Americans who have been hit the hardest by immigration are the 40% who have a high school education or less. 20% of legal immigrants lack even a high school diploma and 51 % of the illegals have no high school degree. They are competing against Americans for scarce jobs.

[kabar]

I suggest you digest the data in the charts and maybe you might see how they are relevant to your point, which is unsubstantiated.

And it is laughable to talk about cutting welfare benefits with Obama in the WH and the Dems controlling the Senate. We just implemented Obamacare, one of the biggest welfare programs in our history. We have 60,000 "children" flooding our borders and more on the way. Obama is requesting more money to take care of them and he will get it. Our schools, hospitals, and incarceration facilities are being stressed by immigrants. And immigrants and their US born children drive 80% of our population growth.

There are 10.4 million students from immigrant households in public schools, accounting for one in five public school students. Of these students, 78 percent speak a language other than English at home. Overall, one in four public school students now speaks a language other than English at home.

In 2010, 23 percent of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) lived in poverty, compared to 13.5 percent of natives and their children. Immigrants and their children accounted for one-fourth of all persons in poverty. The children of immigrants account for one-third of all children in poverty.

You are emotionally destroying yourself over this - and if you would understand a little more about the real issue, you would be less angry.

Our country is being destroyed by immigration. What makes me "angry" are fools who think they know something about the "real issue," but know nothing.

[C. Edmund Wright]

you have not the logical analysis ability to follow my posts. I am sorry for over estimating your lintellect. You still don’t have a friggin effen dadburn CLUE what point I am making, and you have no clue where you and I actually AGREE. Basically, you have no clue - and I am somewhat dumber for trying to enlighten you.

I don’t suffer fools….I’m done.

[kabar]

LOL. When all else fails, make it personal. You have revealed yourself with posts not only to me but to others. Your condescending and ill-informed opinions on American workers is why the GOP is headed to the dumper.

Post #82 -- will tell you though, the low pay issue is not what most think it is. It's cultural - our spoiled entry level work force will not perform, they will not show up day after day reliably, and they easily get bored with rote jobs - but these are jobs that need to go on day after week after month after year.

There is also way too little emphasis put on the welfare state's place in this, and too much on the low pay issue - and a total lack of acknowledgement that the low pay issue benefits all consumers as well as businesses. If you can bring home 50% of a full time job salary laying about, many will. Until we let folks go hungry a little, lose their obama phones, their flat screens, there ability to hang out at Starbucks 20 hours a week - they are not going to do the really boring repetitive jobs.

Post #83 -- I think pay is a big driver in the tech fields, just like you said. I think pay is a much smaller factor in the unskilled labor fields. I think those who say "Americans won't do the work" are both right and wrong….right to some degree on labor, wrong to some degree on the tech. Two totally different faces of the same problem.

The arrogant, corporate class cares more about the bottom line than it does about the future of the country and the welfare of our own citizens. You are part of the problem, not the solution.

Jeff Sessions gets it. His Becoming the Party of Work-- How the GOP can help struggling Americans, and itself, should be required reading for every Republican.

When Americans went to the polls in 2012, the following was true: Work-force participation had sunk to its lowest level in 35 years, wages had fallen below 1999 levels, and 47 million Americans were on food stamps. Yet Mitt Romney, the challenger to the incumbent president, lost lower- and middle-income voters by an astonishing margin. Among voters earning $30,000 to $50,000, he trailed by 15 points, and among voters earning under $30,000 he trailed by 28 points.

And what did the GOP’s brilliant consultant class conclude from this resounding defeat? They declared that the GOP must embrace amnesty. The Republican National Committee dutifully issued a report calling for a “comprehensive immigration reform” that would inevitably increase the flow of low-skilled immigration, reducing the wages and living standards of the very voters whose trust the GOP had lost.

Over the past four decades, as factories were shuttered and blue-collar jobs were outsourced or automated, net immigration quadrupled. Yet the corporate-consultant class has pronounced that an insufficient level of immigration is the problem. A more colossal misreading of the political moment has rarely occurred.

Perhaps the most important political development now unfolding in the U.S. is the public’s growing loss of faith in our political and financial elites of both parties. To open the ears of disaffected voters, the GOP must break publicly from the elite immigration consensus of Wall Street and Davos. Republicans have a clear path to building a conservative majority if they free themselves from the corporate consultants and demonstrate to the American public that the GOP is the only party aligned with the core interests, concerns, and beliefs of everyday hardworking citizens.

“Most business leaders have long favored more open immigration. Different businesses want different kinds of people,” a prominent GOP fundraiser declared on TV. “A restaurant may want waiters and cooks; a hospital wants nurses and doctors; a university wants physicists; a business like Exelon needs more engineers.” Asked by the interviewer about hiring U.S. workers for open jobs, he replied that many of those now unemployed are “unable to compete for them.”

Is that the message of a winning party? It might win a majority of votes at a dinner party in a gated community in Bel Air, but it is an act of profound delusion to think that plan can form the basis of a nationwide Republican resurgence.

The GOP cannot win a bidding war with Democrats, carried from election cycle to election cycle in perpetuity, about who is willing to embrace the most generous amnesty and the most expansive immigration policy. Moreover, polling shows that by a margin of two to one Americans wish to see immigration curbed, and that by a margin of three to one those earning under $30,000 — the very group the GOP is hemorrhaging — favor a reduction over an increase.

Is it not time for the GOP to make a clean public break from the special-interest immigration lobby and let Democrats own — solely, completely, and exclusively — the unwise and unpopular policies they are pushing on these groups’ behalf? Isn’t it time we made President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and each of their rank-and-file members defend their near-unanimous embrace of an immigration plan that is so contrary to the wishes and interests of the American people?

The last 40 years have been a period of uninterrupted large-scale immigration into the U.S., coinciding with increased joblessness, falling wages, failing schools, and a growing welfare state. Would not the sensible, conservative thing to do be to slow down for a bit, allow wages to rise and assimilation to occur, and help the millions struggling here today — immigrant and native-born alike — transition from dependency to self-sufficiency? Indeed, the heart of the GOP’s pro-worker, pro-middle-class agenda should be a bold reforming of our welfare system. The current welfare structure is unfair both to the taxpayers who fund it and to the struggling Americans it has failed to rescue from poverty.

Currently, the federal government administers roughly 80 means-tested poverty-assistance and welfare programs, on which it spends $750 billion a year — that’s a larger cost than defense, Medicare, or Social Security. It is a sprawling, growing bureaucracy with almost no meaningful oversight or guiding vision. Federal agencies seek higher enrollment to swell their budgets (the USDA, for instance, trains food-stamp recruiters on how to “overcome the word ‘No’”), while states have an incentive to overlook fraud so they can get a larger slice of the tax dollars flowing from Washington.

If these myriad programs were combined into a single manageable credit, with clear job-training and work requirements, not only would it cut down drastically on fraud but it would help struggling Americans rise out of poverty and into good-paying jobs — uplifting the worker while reducing costs for the taxpayer.

What if, instead of applying for guest workers, companies applied to hire workers receiving job training at a local welfare office? Able-bodied adults, in turn, would be required to accept employment or lose benefits. In other words: instead of a guest-worker program, a welfare-to-work program.

Would that not be in the national interest? Would that not improve the quality of life in struggling families, schools, and communities?

Understand the connection between immigration, jobs, and welfare?

[C. Edmund Wright]

i’m glad you’ve wasted an hour of your time on three, four threads I’ve not wasted my time with.

[Praxeologue]

One of your charts shows 71% of illegal immigrants using some form of welfare. What form does that take? I didn't think that they were entitled to welfare/food stamps/Section 8 housing, etc.

You also mentioned that illegals gain access to welfare through their citizen children. How does that work? You mentioned the EITC, but they don't file. Let's say they have a four-year-old citizen child.

Finally, based upon your information, the two problems appear to be (a) ILLEGAL immigration, and (b) the absence of job growth in the economy. Your data only touches on the unemployment cost of illegal immigration. It does not include the economic costs of government services to them, or the social and criminal costs.

[kabar]

You are a waste of time. We have had this discussion before. You are part of the Jeb Bush wing of the GOP. I worked with the Dave Brat campaign on the immigration issue. We got rid of that a$$hole Cantor who you sound a lot like. The Chamber of Commerce, Zuckerberg, Gates, Buffet, Adelson and the rest of the corporate elites want amnesty and open borders. They are destroying this country.

Our immigration policies are importing poverty, which increases the size of the welfare state and greater dependency on government. And immigrants vote more than two to one Democrat.

In 1970 one in 21 was foreign-born; today it is one in 8, the highest in 90 years; and within a decade it will be one in 7, the highest in our history. We have quadrupled the number of immigrants from 9.7 in 1970 to 45 million today. Even someone with a pea-sized brain can comprehend that this massive immigration has had a huge impact on the country.

[dragnet2]

That’s not the problem. The problem is greedy AH employers who want dirt cheap illegal labor...

They want low wage people who think company benefits are 10 minute breaks and are content with 8 bucks an hour.

Get it?

[kabar]

One of your charts shows 71% of illegal immigrants using some form of welfare. What form does that take? I didn't think that they were entitled to welfare/food stamps/Section 8 housing, etc.

First, here is a link to the entire study.

Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash and housing programs.

You also mentioned that illegals gain access to welfare through their citizen children. How does that work?

They receive these benefits primarily via their American born children who are US citizens at birth thru birthright citizenship. An estimated 300,000 children are born annually to illegal alien parents--about one in ten children born annually in the US. They are called "anchor babies" because it makes it more difficult to deport their illegal alien parents. The children are entitled to Medicaid and food stamps. In the case of food stamps, the illegal parents are issued cards in their names for the child.

You mentioned the EITC, but they don't file. Let's say they have a four-year-old citizen child.

Yes they do file usually using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). The IRS would issue ITINs to two classes of people not qualified to receive Social Security Numbers: 1) aliens living outside the United States who nonetheless had a U.S. tax liability and 2) aliens living inside the United States who were not authorized to work here but who nonetheless owed U.S. taxes.

Here is an article, IRS Gave $14 Billion in Refundable Tax Credits to Illegals, that goes into some detail on how it works and the money involved. The IRS IG has acknowledged that this is happening, but nothing has been done about it. There have been a number of investigative reports from the MSM substantiating it as well. There are some videos with interviews with the illegal aliens who are claiming credit for their children in Mexico.

Child Tax Credits for Illegal Immigrants

Finally, based upon your information, the two problems appear to be (a) ILLEGAL immigration, and (b) the absence of job growth in the economy. Your data only touches on the unemployment cost of illegal immigration. It does not include the economic costs of government services to them, or the social and criminal costs.

Here is 2010 (rev 2/2011) study from FAIR that estimates the cost at $113 billion a year just for eduction, healthcare, and incarceration.