A North Carolina Contractor Says Illegal Alien Workforce Necessary; We Reply

October 15, 2008

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10/14/08 - A California Reader Says Japan Still Doesn't Want Immigration

From: Robert Heltman (e-mail him)

Re: Edwin S. Rubenstein's Blog: August Job Collapse---And American Job Displacement Resumes

As of the end of September 2008 there were 9,500,000 unemployed American workers.

Why aren't these people, at least sizable numbers of them, showing up for the jobs that opened up because of the ICE raids?  

In the US agriculture sector, estimates are that of the 1.6 million workers, 80 percent are foreign-born with 70 percent of those illegally in the country. Yet, major public and private partnership efforts from the mid-1990's to date to recruit domestic workers into Ag jobs, have failed.  

That same situation exists for jobs like changing hotel beds and cleaning motel bathrooms, bussing tables in restaurants, changing bedpans in eldercare facilities, and putting hot tar on roofs.

Native US workers are simply not interested especially since WW II and the GI Bill as parents taught their children to go to college and get a good job using their brains instead of their hands.

Ed Rubenstein replies: I hear this frequently from contractors: They can't find good native help. There was a time, of course, when U.S-born workers with an exemplary ethic filled those jobs. Then came the illegal alien tsunami. Now American workers are squeezed between low wages and high unemployment benefits, often (rationally) choosing the latter. Reversing the influx of illegals would be a good first step. 

Joe Guzzardi adds: American workers have indeed looked for the post-raid jobs. And in many states, recruiting placement agencies have found employees and put them through E-verify to replace the illegal immigrants.

Without question, as Ed points out, if there were fewer illegal aliens in the country, there would be many fewer on the job site.

In California, a lot of Hispanic Ag workers are actually citizens who have been amnestied under one program or another. Others are anchor babies grown up.

And as I wrote repeatedly when I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, no labor shortage exists. But every time a new alien crosses the border, their jobs—regardless of their immigration status—are at risk.