A constant theme of Ed Rubenstein has been that the payroll and unemployment data directly demonstrate that immigrants are displacing and undercutting native-born Americans. In January, the Investment Bank Bear Stearns published a paper on this topic. And now The Christian Science Monitor has published Why the new jobs go to immigrants –by David R. Francis March 10 2005. This is probably the first notice of the issue in the major establishment media.
"…the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February."
"But…The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001."
"Why the apparent contradiction?...one factor that gets little attention is immigration."
"In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs."
"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University"
Francis goes on to note a similar phenomenon is occurring in Western Europe, and that
"the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees… the people they…displace often have little political clout… What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say."
How long will we have to wait for a similarly elegant and accurate discussion in the Wall Street Journal?
Hat Tip, Modern Tribalist
Last month we noted that the thoughtful operator of The Epic of Gilgamesh blog occasionally diverts from chronicling life on an Appalachian Mountain to writing biting critiques of the impact of immigration on ordinary Americans. Yesterday he felt ironical:
"Try This!"
"Try driving around as a Gringo in Mexico with no liability insurance......and have an accident."
"Enter Mexico illegally. Never mind immigration quotas, visas, international law, or any of that nonsense."
"Once there, demand that the local government provide free medical care for you and your entire family."
Demand bilingual nurses and doctors.
"Demand free bilingual local government forms, bulletins, etc…. Speak only English at home and in public and insist that your children do likewise."
"Demand classes on American culture in the Mexican school system."
"Good luck! You'll be demanding for the rest of time or soon dead. Because it will never happen. It will not happen in Mexico or any other country in the world..."
"Except right here..."
"Land of the naive."
Two responses he got to the item we noted concerning the pirating of the Georgia State scholarship program by illegal immigrants were articulate, moving, and deserve attention. A Texan student wrote:
"I'm a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, and have had the unfortunate experience of watching my tuition costs go up every semester and my classes overload with incompetent students who rarely speak english. To make matters worse, scholarship/grant resources are drying up and now even subsidized loans are almost impossible to get."
"Of course, I could just bite the bullet, live like a pauper and
work my way through school right?"
"Wrong."
"I spent last week in a line with 300 students filling
out applications for a minimum wage warehouse job. Those
are now as precious as gold here since the local economy
here in Denton is now unable to provide the student body
with enough jobs because the local employers prefer to
employ illegal immigrants who will work for ultra-low
wages, take any abuse, and never leave their jobs under
any circumstances…"
A correspondent from Virginia Tech's home, Blacksburg, VA supplied:
""While having lunch out one day, I asked a young waitress what her major was etc. Learning that it was some form of bioengineering, I …told her that she was lucky that it wasn't computer science (I …have followed its demise via immigration for some time now). Her response was immediate: "Oh, yes! So many students who just got degrees in CS can't get jobs in the field. Word gets back to the students in the lower grades so they switch their majors…"."
"The "Computer Industry" keeps saying that it can't get enough tech workers so it needs more & more H1B's etc. Of course, it only wants to import cheap labor from mainly China & India while our college educated young people work at Radio Shack because they can't find jobs in the field.… Students can't pay back 5-figure loans by working at Radio Shack....."."
Norm Matloff rules! When the victims of this disaster are as alert as these young people, change is coming.
