There is always a great deal of clamor from opponents of immigration reform, but never as much as in times of economic recession. The complaints are focused on simplistic requests to control our borders and to protect the U.S. job market from foreigners allegedly taking away jobs from U.S. workers.
Unfortunately, most people's statements are made out of ignorance, as they are unaware of the actual depth of the problems, which include the reality of how much our economy depends on immigrant labor and the complexities of the immigration laws that currently exist.
For example, anti-immigrant proponents criticize the practice of hiring illegal aliens, contending that they should hire only lawful workers or make sure that foregn workers follow the law and get green cards. However, they are unaware of the difficulty that U.S. employers have in finding lawful U.S. workers for their manual labor and that depriving those U.S. businesses of immigrant workers, ultimately, can cause many businesses to collapse, creating a domino effect of damage on the economy.
That’s not just an opinion, but a proven fact, as was evidenced in Riverside, N.J., where a crackdown on illegal immigrants diminished the town’s population by 1/3 and left local businesses struggling to survive. (See: http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/17/smbusiness/illegal_immigration_dividing.fsb/index.htm)
Furthermore, anti-immigrant proponents are outraged by employers, who hire illegal aliens to mow lawns, build bridges, or tend to their agricultural needs. However, they falsely assume that there is a viable vehicle in the current immigration legal system for those employers to petition and obtain the lawful right to work for such employees. The truth is that there aren’t realistic workable options.
Finally, anti-immigrant proponents frequently complain that someone they know, who is an engineer, for example, “can’t get a green card, yet all of the people sneaking across the border get green cards easily.”
That statement couldn’t be more inaccurate. The process of obtaining lawful status for non-professional workers without university degrees is a very cumbersome, if not almost impossible process. Current immigration laws favor giving lawful status only to immigrants, who possess a university education.
The true irony in that practice is that it actually is harmful to the objective of protecting the U.S. job market.
By focusing on giving lawful status to only foreigners with university educations, it is essentially encouraging U.S. employers to give away the professional, higher paying positions to foreign employees. It saturates our job market with highly ambitious and well-educated foreign employees to compete with U.S. professionals.
As such, it makes more sense to expand the current immigration regulations to provide a more viable system for U.S. businesses to hire hard working immigrants to fill unskilled or non-degree requiring positions, such as in construction, landscaping, or housekeeping.
The only current means for obtaining lawful status for non-professional foreign workers is called an H-2B visa. It is a temporary visa, which allows the foreign worker to work in the United States for only 10 months out of the year. It also has to be renewed annually.
There are 4 serious deficiencies with that system:
- The expectation is that the H-2B worker will return to his or her country after completion of the 10 month visa.
- The employers have to petition for the worker each year, which costs them thousands of dollars in advertising and associated costs with no guarantee of actually getting an H-2B visa number for the prospective employee.
- The H-2B visa holder can only obtain the visa for a maximum of three consecutive years.
- Due to the fact that there are only 65K H-2B visas given out each year, the visas are almost always unavailable each year until the following fiscal year of October 1.
So, for example, if the employer’s temporary season is from February through November, he cannot file a petition prior to April 1 for an October 1 start date. After investing thousands of dollars in pursuing the H-2B for his foreign worker, he could discover that the petition he filed on April 1 for an October 1st start date was not one of the 65K selected for a visa that year.
Or, even if his H-2B petition is allotted a visa, his immigrant worker will only be issued the right to work for the two remaining months of the employer’s temporary season, October 1 through November.
Therefore, due to the logistical impediments in the current immigration system for unskilled or non-professional workers, it is almost impossible for employers to legally petition for and/or hire foreign workers, who do not possess university degrees. The H-2B system is not a workable, practical, or reasonable option for U.S. employers seeking to fill non-professional positions.
The resulting situation is that many employers are left with the inability to fill their many non-professional positions, which has put many businesses in jeopardy. Therefore, a critical solution for viable immigration reform is to increase or eliminate the annual limit of H-2B numbers and revoke the provision prohibiting H-2B holders from immigrant intent.
The allegations of the American public that these workers take away jobs from U.S. lawful workers is simply unfounded because both the H-2B nonimmigrant and the associated 3rd preference immigrant petitions already require completing a stringent test of the job market and payment of the prevailing wage, which is usually higher than what some employers actually pay U.S. workers.
Therefore, test of the job market required to obtain an H-2B visa is proof that the H-2B worker is not, in fact, taking a job away from a U.S. worker.
There are problems intrinsic in the H-2B visa system, which pose major issues to our economy and U.S. businesses. Reform, which accommodates the need for immigrant workers, is critical to prevent the failure of many U.S. businesses, which rely on skilled and unskilled immigrant workers to fill the many positions for which there are not enough U.S. lawful workers to fill. The truth of the matter is that if we were able to suddenly take every foreigner working unlawfully in the United States today out of the job market, the economy of most U.S. metropolitan cities would collapse.
Comments
This article denigrates those who it says "speak from ignorance" yet it uses flawed data and assumption to try to prove its point. The Fortune Small Business article cited starts off saying that Brazilian Illegal Immigrants who come from a Portuguese speaking country cause the following: "Some business owners resented the thousands of Spanish-speaking newcomers, 80% of whom were in the county illegally ..." A careful reading of the article reveals that rather than supplying hard data, it is full of anecdotes about how Illegal Immigrants leaving means that they no longer shop Illegal Immigrant catering businesses. But it says nothing about how Americans who are taking their place in the workforce are bolstering other businesses. Demographic shifts always change shopping patterns. Some businesses win and some loose. That is the nature of markets. To present one side of the story without the other is pure propaganda. And this article picks up that one side of the story and runs with it.
Also, maybe this author should have mentioned that we used to have a much larger H2A program. But the Democrat controlled Congress, in their infinite wisdom decided that they should not allow the expanded H2A Program to be renewed, which greatly curtailed the number of H2A Visas available each year. Effectively they are holding hostage legal channels to get Seasonal Workers in order to try to force "comprehensive reform".
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Unemployment Report of December 4, 2009:
Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations = 12.1% Unemployment
Construction and extraction occupations = 20.2% Unemployment
Production occupations = 14.0% Unemployment
Transportation, material moving occupations = 11.7% Unemployment
Service occupations = 9.7% Unemployment
Total US Unemployed Citizens and Legal Residents = 15,375,000
The figures above exclude 6,011,000 Persons who want a job but are not included for various reasons
Total Number of Americans Looking for Work = 21,386,000
Pew Study estimate of working Illegal Immigrants = 7,500,000
The majority work in agriculture, office and house cleaning, construction, and food preparation. Only in Agriculture where H2A is most used does the number of working Illegal Immigrants exceed the number of unemployed Americans.
Management, professional, and related occupations = 4.6% Unemployment
Illegal Immigration hurts US workers.
They took our jobs!!!!!!
So what should we do with all the people in their 20s who apply for food stamps? Give them the food stamps and then import foreign workers to pick the food? What about extending COBRA subsidies and unemployment benefits forever and ever? Who cares, it's only Chinese money our grandkids will have to pay back.
Saying "there are no Americans who will do it" disguises some economic basics. In a totally Free Market, if you can't attract workers, you raise wages until you have enough employees. You then raise the prices of your product to continue to make a profit. Letting foreigners in to the employment market is an artificial intervention in the so-called Free Market, freeing employers from having to raise wages to fill their positions. Does landscaping need to be as cheap as possible? Crappy tract-homes built with Chinese drywall? Milk? Tomatoes? Where do you draw the line?
And what about the imported workers? Deny them health care? In ancient Rome, they had a name for them: slaves.
As a result of the recession the illegals who do mostly the difficult works in all the industries combined lost jobs much greater than anybody else. This is the reason illegal crossings went down in a number without parallel in the past.Unemployment in the US was not caused by the undocumented immigrants nor those who remain unemployed today can find jobs by deporting all the illegals. The few jobs left that the illegals still get to hold are extremely hard and risky ones not worth the time of those used working with health insurance.
Secondly, companies belonging the manufacturing industry that employs 20-30% of total workforce has gone over the years because they moved to China and other Asian countries where the pay is low-an important element to keep their competitiveness worldwide. Agriculture will die soon also because it remains manpower-oriented but workers are increasingly becoming difficult to come by.While workers have the right for jobs,businesses have the right to prof
Your article has addressed many salient issues and you have made some excellent points. Though, the comments that followed criticized your content, the data that was offered to attack your argument was irrelevant to the points you made in your article. The data that was copied and pasted was provided on the assumption on the fact that there is only ONE cause and ONE effect for unemployment. Please keep the articles coming! I find your fresh perspective incandescently brilliant.
ImmigrationLawyer - Even when unemployment was at the lowest point of this decade in 2007 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the following:
Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Unemployment Rate = 8.5%
Construction and extraction occupations Unemployment Rate = 7.6%
Production occupations Unemployment Rate = 5.7%
Transportation, material moving occupations Unemployment Rate = 6.0%
Service occupations Unemployment Rate = 5.9%
Meanwhile Management, professional, and related occupations Unemployment Rate = 2.1%
During 2007 we only reached full employment in the Management, professional, and related occupations. Occupations that attract Illegal Immigrant workers suffered unemployment rates that never left recession levels for the entire decade thanks to Illegal Immigration. In 2007 we had seven million Illegal Immigrants working while twelve million Americans were looking for work and not finding it. And people earning below poverty line wages rose to above 12%.
In fact real the problem is some Businesses are not willing to offer wages that attract Legal Workers.
"A 1995 study by the Cato Institute revealed that the value of the total benefit package received by a typical welfare recipient averaged more than $17,000, ranging from a high of over $36,000 in Hawaii to a low of $11,500 in Mississippi. In 9 states welfare pays more than the average first-year salary for a teacher. In 29 states welfare pays more than the average starting salary for a secretary. In 47 states welfare pays more than a janitor makes. Indeed, in the 6 most generous states, benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer." - CATO Institute Handbook For Congress.
"Single mothers do not turn to welfare because they are pathologically dependent on handouts or unusually reluctant to work. They do so because they cannot get jobs that pay better than welfare." Christopher Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass, p. 204.
ImmigrationLawyer - Notice how the Author shifts from talking about "Immigrants" to talking about "Illegal Aliens"? If you are truly a Lawyer you would notice this. The Author deftly weaves Legal Immigration with which most Americans agree and support because we know the benefit with Illegal Immigration which has proven to have a tremendous cost to lower income Americans. She blurs the lines between the two to the point where you think one justifies the other.
Harvard Economist George Borjas stated, "In dragging down wages, immigration currently shifts about $160 billion per year from workers to employers." The Rich get richer and the Poor get poorer. Dr. Borjas was referring to Illegal Immigration when he made this statement. Everyone knows the wage disparity between high and low income Americans was growing right up to the Recession. But because of the spin in articles like this only the half of Americans by it effected realize that Illegal Immigration is a big cause.
Thank you for this article.
Once people realize that these Immigrants were here for many years and infact are a Vital part of our Strong Economy, not because of their cheap labor, however because of their un-believably Hard and Devoted Labor!
All States or Areas that Deported or Starved them away are now in Economic Disater. Phoenix Az. is a prime example!
This The worst Recession in U.S. History Started at the Exact same time as the Deportations!
To those shouting "NO AMNESTY", I hope your maker allows you some.
America was built on far better Values!
T: Liberty
why you people talking about this. I think if they want to come to America then let them be
When I was layed off from Halliburton in Houston in 2003. I was terminated on my 55th birthday. I was told directly by the VP of HR, that it is Halliburton's company policy to Lay-off Americans rather than H1B visa holders. She said it is far cheaper and less time consuming to dismiss American workers than to Send H1B visa holder back home.
So now the illegals brigade is attacking the legals. It just shows how dirty they really are
Most legal immigrants come under our "family reunification" policy which is why MEXICO is the one country sending the most LEGAL immigrants as well as the most illegal aliens, 15-20% of our legal immigration for the past two decades. Family visas make up most of the 1 million or so green cards issued each year. Many of these "family" are also uneducated and unskilled workers, much like their sponsors. (The financial sponsorship requirement has been deliberately been set low to enable people barely above the official poverty line to sponsor relatives.) So, there really IS a very generous way for unskilled and uneducated people to come to the U.S.
To David Nichols - I am just wondering; how many Illegal Immigrants have you hired in your contracting business? Before you preach about values please convince us that you are setting a good, law abiding example.
It's obvious that Ms. Chavez has no real knowledge of these issues, and is blinded by ethnocentrism.
She says that "Current immigration laws favor giving lawful status only to immigrants, who possess a university education." What she conveniently ignores is that while this is true, it is only for employment-based immigration.
There is NO educational qualification for family-based immigration, which takes a large share of legal immigrant visas each year.
As far of some of Ms. Chavez's other false and misleading statements, look at the jobs that opened up for Americans after the belated but successful workplace enforcement actions by the Bush administration (including for African-Americans, the group that is often overlooked in this debate by the pro-amnesty crowd).
Her claim that cities would collapse without illegal alien labor is absurd. If illegals were removed, taxpayers and jobless citizens would benefit greatly.
Ethnocentrism? What an assumption, she appears Caucasian. I own a tree farm business and we rely on H2B workers on a regular basis. A misconception that exists between your banter is that employing H2B workers is cheaper than hiring Americans. We spend thousands of dollars in filing fees and legal fees. Furthermore, The Department of Labor requires the employer to pay the "prevailing wage," which is a higher wage than the average wage paid for such a position. So, the question is why would we (the forestry industry) seek outside the U.S. unemployment pool for hard working employees? The answer to such an important question, which was addressed in this article is that there in lies a theory that though, there are plenty of unemployed Americans, there are also plenty of them that are UNWILLING to work in such positions and working conditions.
Jack - Your comment about the hiring problems in Agriculture is verified by US Gov. Statistics. You may have noticed in one of my posts that I stated "Only in Agriculture where H2A is most used does the number of working Illegal Immigrants exceed the number of unemployed Americans." The shortage of H2A Visas is intentional. A few years back the number of available H2A Visas was much greater than it is today. The program had been greatly enlarged but the enlargement was temporary. Congress had the chance to extend the enlarged program but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid allowed it to expire, thus significantly reducing the number of available H2A visas. This was a move calculated to squeeze people like you and force you to favor amnesty for all Illegal Aliens. Agriculture is the one area where we still export more than we import and Pelosi and Reid are happy to flush it down the toilet just to get more voters for themselves.
I too work in the forestry business and it is incredibly difficult to use American labor. Just lately I have been paying simultaneously too much and not enough. (about $14 / hour net, paying under Federal Service Contract Act wages planting trees)
Not enough in that I have never been able to fill up my crew to match all 11 sets of tools I have. But too much in that the young guys who can get this really hard work done tend to quit after a couple months, because they have plenty of money in the bank and they move on to look for greener (i.e. easier) pastures.
Personally I find it completely insane that we give Food Stamps to about anyone who asks, then we import foreign workers to pick the food people buy with the stamps. All of this done with borrowed money our kids and grandkids will have to pay back. The Future will not look kindly on us.
Your article was good, although not technically correct in the exact way the H2B program currently operates. A H-2B visa holder can not remain in the U.S. continuously for more than 3 years (by tranferring from one H-2B certified employer to another before his or her visa ends.) They must exit the U.S. a requisite number of months related to the length of their stay. If they are present for 36 continuous months they must exit for 6 months before being eligible for another H-2B visa.
An employer with a busy season of Feb-Nov, currently, may have to forego asking for certification for H-2B on the start of his/ her busy season, since the cap is usually reached. But could ask for a start date of April 1 extending until the end of their busy season.
Your analysis is very good on the adverse impact not having an employer friendly H2B program is on the overall economy. The employer must agree to pay the average wage for that type job in that location for all workers.
Its very sad that you promote this. What American companies love about h2b visas is that they can basically pay these immigrant workers pennies on the dollar, because most Americans want fair and equal pay and won't settle for less. I think that h2b visa's open the flood gates for slave labor. Thanks Bush for enacting this before leaving office. Wal-Mart gets away with this type of behavior here and over seas- why not let the rest of American employers. What is our unemployment rate? How many jobs need to be created to catch up? This is nonsense.
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