Note: I am NOT anti-immigrant or anti-immigration. In fact I am a recent immigrant to Canada. The reason I am posting this is to evidence the supply-demand claims re jobs & wages that I have been making for around 5 years on Futurework. Numbers matter in all living systems. The human economy IS a subsystem of a living system.
Steve
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NY Times: Immigration drives down wages
As reported by the New York Times, ("Median Income Drops Are Tied to
Immigrants" 12/22/01), new Census data backs up what we immigration
reductionists have long argued: Immigration is not good for middle- and
low-income Americans. The article noted annual income losses of
$5,000-$9,000 per household over the last decade in high-immigration
locales.
The article didn't mention, however, that while mass immigration is a
kick in the teeth for Americans on the lower rungs of the economic
ladder, it is a great boon to higher-income Ame
ricans, who are more able
to enjoy the benefits of a large, low-wage servant class.
Many Americans, of course, recognize the inherent injustice of a public
policy that is stacked against our most vulnerable citizens.
Unfortunately, many Americans also seem to have swallowed the lie that
immigrants take the "jobs Americans don't want."
The real truth is that immigrants do the jobs that Americans don't want
for those WAGES.
This is easily seen by the fact that the "jobs Americans don't want" are
the very jobs Americans have always done during the long immigration
time-outs in our nation's history (the most recent being the 40-year
period between 1925 and 1965).
Meat-packing, for example, is a dirty, dangerous, and low-status job
that no one WANTS to do. Yet, a few decades back, those jobs were
protected by union memberships and provided a middle-class income for
American workers and their families. Then a period of union busting was
followed by the meat-packing industry's
importation of illegal aliens
williing to work at sub-American wages.
If other industries follow the poor example of the meat packing
industry, the list of "jobs Americans don't want" will continue to grow.
We need a complete ten-year time-out from mass immigration in order to
reestablish social justice in the United States and reassess our
nation's priorities -- economic, social, and environmental. American
immigration policy must be devised for the good of all Americans, and
not just those who profit by the cheap labor of foreigners.
________________
Median Income Drops Are Tied to Immigrants (NY Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/22/nyregion/22CENS.html
"We should strengthen our immigration laws to prevent the importation of
foreign wages and working conditions…And we should end the unskilled
immigration that competes with young Americans just entering the
job
market."
US Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA),
Chairman of the Senate Immigration and Claims Subcommittee. (1996)
