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May 1, 2006
A Day Without Immigrants....
Several of my neighbors and co-workers will be taking today off to bring attention to the impact of immigrants on the U.S. Economy. This CNNMoney.com story caught my attention. There is a lot of good information in it, but what grates on my nerves is the number of times the experts blame immigrants for taking jobs away from low-skilled, US born workers.
"The U.S. has benefited from illegal immigrants, most economists say, though some low-skilled workers have been hurt."
"The economist (Andrew Sum) -the director of labor market studies at Northeastern University in Boston - argues that the large supply of immigrants has displaced low-skilled U.S.-born workers, particularly the young and the poor, from jobs."
"They're really displacing young workers at a very high rate."
"The only thing I've argued is that we've ignored that illegal immigration has put a lot of young adults into economic jeopardy."
"But even most of those who think it's good for the economy do see an impact on lower-skilled U.S.-born workers."
I propose a counter protest, since there are so many immigrant laborers out today, why don't all these unemployed, low-skilled, US born workers show up at the job sites and offer to take the immigrants jobs at their rate of pay.
What? No takers?
Why?
Oh, I forgot, Americans are snobs, we can't afford to work for those wages. We aren't willing to live 6 to a one bedroom apartment, sometimes without electricity or phone service. We aren't willing to eat food we cooked ourselves consisting mainly of beans and rice instead of McDonalds, Subway or Taco Bell. We aren't willing to live without the necessities of life, like cable tv, cell phones, high-speed internet access, Playstations and X-boxes. We don't worry about having money to pay for things, isn't that why God created car payments and credit cards?
I was party to an interesting conversation last Friday at work, a co-worker was telling us about a chicken processing plant he'd toured (where half of the labor force consists of Hispanics), he mentioned an uncredited statistic comparing the productivity of "white" workers to "Mexican" workers. He said the best any "white" person could do was hang 40 chickens a minute, while the "Mexican" workers could hang 78 chickens a minute. So not only are immigrant workers willing to work for less than we are, they're also willing to do more work for less than we are. We'd rather sit home and watch soap operas or play video games.
Apparently, this potenital problem has not escaped the eyes of some of the economists in the same article.
"Some economists say that if immigrant workers weren't present, rather than native-born workers getting better wages to do the same jobs, many jobs done by immigrants might not get done at all."
"The average wage of the low-income American would be higher. But some of those jobs wouldn't get done at all and output would be lower," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's."
For a more informed viewpoint on immigration issues, I recommend this blog.
Posted by Anna at May 1, 2006 11:20 AM