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05/05/07 - A Reader Wonders If Legalization Will Cost Millions Of Citizens Their Jobs

Re: A Reader Wonders If Legalization Will Cost  Millions Of Citizens Their Jobs

From: Deena Flinchum [e-mail her]

In my humble opinion, the Circuit City firings were nothing more than a dry run for even more firings if the amnesty comes through. Since most workers hold their jobs "at will" of their employers, employers can fire them for any reason, such as they make too much money a la Circuit City, or no reason at all.

What this does, of course, is to allow "outsourcing" of the type of jobs that have to be done locally. [VDARE.com note: What economists call "non-tradable domestic services."] A truck driver can't deliver goods from California to Nebraska while driving in Mexico. However, a trucking company can fire its well-paid US drivers and replace them with cheap foreign labor from Mexico. The replaced US worker is just as out of luck as if his job had been shipped to Mexico.

Got a union contract? Sweet, but there is absolutely nothing to keep a rival company, able to deliver for less because it hires only cheap foreign labor, from popping up and driving your company out of business. That is, after all, how the slaughterhouse industry went from being some of the best paid unionized work that a person with a high school diploma or less could get to being the low paid, high turnover, dangerous work that it is today. The big well-paying unionized meat-packing companies got out of the business because they couldn't compete. Same for a lot of custodial work. I realize that SEIU and some other unions think that they can organized these newly legalized immigrants and all will be well, but there is nothing to stop companies from hiring even newer immigrants to undercut their wages.

Circuit City said that it might rehire its fired workers, but only at lower wages—and, as it happens, only after a few months during which they could spend down savings and grow desperate enough to accept lower wages.

Look for more of this if the amnesty comes through. Much more.