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February 03, 2008 The Elephant In the Immigration RoomBy Lee Cary
The ignored elephant in the immigration debate is the negative impact of illegal immigration on job opportunities for unskilled, uneducated, native-born U.S. workers -- particularly young African-Americans, but also native-born Hispanics. In their Hollywood debate, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton refused to admit immigration "hits poor and minorities hardest" as the cliché goes.
While some proponents of a liberal immigration policy admit to anecdotal evidence of the elephant's existence, they typically discount a causal relationship between employed illegal immigrants and unemployed citizens. Granted, it's hard to document employers hiring illegal immigrants over legal applicants; after all, it's against the law. But it's not necessary to film it happening to know that it is. Statistics tell the story. First, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, from December 2006 - December 2007 unemployment among Hispanics (legal workers assumed since why would illegals participate in a census?) rose from 5.0 to 6.3%. The number for unemployed African-Americans increased from 7.9 to 9.0%. Second, the U.S. government may be vastly underestimating the number of illegal laborers in the work force. In January 2005, Bear Sterns Asset Management, Inc. released a report entitled "The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface," that states,
Third, native born Hispanics are not faring as well in the job market as foreign-born Latinos. A report from the Pew Hispanic Center entitled "Latino Labor Report 2006: Strong Gains in Employment," dated September 27, 2006, statistically separates foreign-born Latinos and native-born Hispanics.
The wide array of statistics available from government and private sector sources leads to this conclusion: Unemployment disproportionately hits unskilled, uneducated blacks and native-born Hispanics. Why? It is simple, business economics: (1) In the unskilled labor market, legal workers offer no greater productivity than comparable illegal ones; (2) legal hiring requires employers to conform to U.S. law; and (3) citizen new hires often expect benefits. In short, more illegal workers cost employers less. The flood of undocumented workers into the U.S. labor market is a grand national social-engineering project undertaken with the tacit approval of both major political parties. It's happening without counting the short- or long-term costs to the U.S. labor market and general economy. The luminaries inside the Beltway seem oblivious to the collateral damage that our open southern border exacts on young black and Hispanic high school dropouts. For example, in March 2007, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Charles Schumer (D.-NY), held hearings on "Addressing the Problem of African-American Male Unemployment." Both Senators Clinton and Obama submitted written statements in their absence. In Schumer's opening remarks he said,
What is most perplexing is the absence of any reference to a major contributing factor to the "Problem of African-American Male Unemployment." None of the 23 references to "workers" in the official transcript refers to illegal workers. The word "immigration" appears in neither Clinton's nor Obama's written statement. Nor, according to the transcript, was the word spoken during the hearings. The elephant was invisible. Had Frederick Douglass been able to testify, he might have repeated what he said before the A. A. S. Society in New York, May 1853, during the great wave of immigration before the Civil War:
The elephant has been in the room for years, growing larger. Steven Camarota, author of "Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005," released by the Center for Immigration Studies, writes:
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