American Workers Hurt by Failure to Curb Illegal Immigration

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.borderfirereport.net/michael-cutler/american-workers-hurt-by-failure-to-curb-illegal-immigration.html

Mike Cutler

An article in New Jersey’s Star Ledger addresses a major issue where illegal aliens are concerned: the practice of hiring illegal aliens willing to do the work Americans should be doing but are unable to do because the illegal alien workforce is willing to accept substandard wages, no benefits, and often dangerous conditions that in and of themselves are illegal.

The Carpenter's Union is suing the D. R. Horton Construction Company for hiring illegals and subsequently laying off union workers. The allegations are all too familiar: the illegal aliens are working for substandard wages and for no benefits. My heart goes out to the laid-off employees. I support the tactic of their union in suing the Horton Company of Fort Worth, Texas. This is a strategy that I hope will be used throughout the United States to combat unscrupulous employers.

My dad was a construction worker and a plumber. During the Second World War he was deemed to be "4-F" due to flat feet and a double hernia and was rejected by the military, although he made a number of attempts to enlist. Driven by his profound patriotism for America, he decided that his best opportunity to support our nation's war efforts would come by working in the naval shipyards, repairing the various warships that had suffered damage in the war. He worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and traveled to other such shipyards around the country during the Second World War.

Dad passed away from lung cancer while I was a college student, but I recall many evenings seeing him come home, upset because he had been laid off from work. I witnessed the look of concern etched in both his and my mother's eyes. As a construction worker, he was only paid for the hours he worked and being laid off meant that he would receive no paycheck. My memories of those moments make me understand something that those elitist politicians can’t: the way that Blue Collar Americans, the backbone of this nation, are getting clobbered by the hiring practices of unprincipled employers who know that they have virtually nothing to fear where the hiring of illegal aliens is concerned. When President Bush declares that "illegal aliens do the work Americans aren't doing," he conveniently leaves out the other half of that statement – that they cannot afford to take those jobs any longer because the wages have been slashed.

How many workers today are coming home with that same look of despair because they have lost their jobs to illegal aliens?

How many homeowners are paying hefty fees for jobs that are substandard at best? Day laborers do not have the skill or experience of tradesmen. It is not even a contest where quality of work is concerned. The greedy employers get to pocket lots of extra money, their customers get substandard work, and American workers are losing their jobs and their ability to provide for their families.

FULL story at link.

[DJ13]

1. I know theres a large portion of the party that wants to help illegals but...

....I still say this is NOT their country, they have no right to move here and take jobs, and we're fooling ourselves if we think that we arent paying a large price as a country by allowing illegal immigrants to move here.

Im all for legal immigration, but this isnt about legal immigration, its about taking care of our own countrymen (and women) first.

[Mountainman]

3. Got any real facts? Statistics?

[DJ13]

5. I've lived in California my whole life

Your turn.

[Mountainman]

7. I live in CA also. I wish I had some real evidence other than anecdotal to make me understand.

I believe that most people who have these stories are xenophobic and that's the reason for them.

I worked for the largest labor contractor in the San Joaquin valley as controller. I never saw an anglo apply for a job picking fruit and vegetables. The wages were above minimum.

Still I have never seen a report by a reputable organization or a reputable news organization with real facts about this. Why is that? I am well read.

[griffi94]

8. while it's not really a statistic, here's a real fact

about 6 years ago when i was still working as a cabinet maker i got call from a guy i had worked with previously. he told me a friend of his was running a cabinet shop here in central texas and they were really under the gun on a job that they had to finish by the start of the school year(the project was redoing several labs and some conference rooms in a local high school) i went and interviewed, and the shop foreman told me they were behind because they were lacking qualified skilled cabinet makers. they had plenty of people to sweep up and load and unload material, and even assemble the cabinets. they didn't however have anybody who could read blueprints or make up their own cut tickets, or even understand what they were cutting out if somebody else made their cut tickets for them.
i toured the shop and saw that nobody on the floor except the foreman could speak english.
at the end of the interview the foreman offered me a job, and asked how much pay i wanted. i told him i had been getting $15.00 an hour at a start up, and they let me take side work that was too small for them to mess with. the guy started shaking his head and told me that the highest pay he could offer was $9.00 an hour, and then he told me "That's $2.00 more an hour than Burger King pays." i had to explain to him that i wasn't currently working at burger king and that cabinet making was a whole different set of skills than what the workers from burger king had. he also told me he could get 2 mexican immigrants for what i wanted, and again i pointed out that he wasn't lacking in unskilled labor. anyway by the end of the interview he was all but begging me to take the job, but he wouldn't move on the pay, so i had to turn it down.
anyway...that's not a statistic, but it is a real fact.

[Mountainman]

10. I believe you. Were the people working for $9/hr illegals?

Normally unskilled labor competes with unskilled labor. What you are saying I think is that unskilled labor forced the price of skilled labor down.

Or could it be that the guy was looking for skilled labor at a cheap price?


I think that if all illegals were gone the wages would still be $9/hr. With unions gone that can happen.

Hispanics have formed unions and got living wages in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Other unions are forming again. That has the opposite effect of forcing down wages. What gains they have made accrues to all workers.

It could be that illegals are blamed for something that they have no control over. Low wages are part of the Conservative mantra. If all workers united wages would go up. We have been pitted against people by the corporations.

[griffi94]

11. it was my understanding

that the skilled or unskilled had little bearing on the wages. the managers of the shop had figured out how many people they had to have to complete the project (by people, i mean warm bodies)and they determined what they would pay for labor. the foreman was getting $12.00 an hour, and nobody else started higher than $9.00. i should have clarified in my first post, that $9.00 was the maximum starting pay, plent of the guys on the floor were making $6.50. you were eligible to get raises every 4-6 months in .25 cent increments.
the labor was all illegal which kind of surprised me as it was a govt. contract for a public works project and that tends to pay prevailing wage. (for all know the company was claiming prevailing wage and paying unskilled wages instead) also this had the effect of making the highest paid job there top out at about $14.00 an hour.

that wasn't my only experience with the unskilled labor economics. i worked in several shops where the attitude was that even if the cheap labor was unskilled they were trainable enough to eventually fill semi skilled positions as fabricators, lamminators etc. management figured they might take a beating in the short term, but in the long term the savings in payroll and benefits more than made up for that. at the same time it drove the whole wage base down along with the industry standard for quality which also played well for management, at least long term, because it did away with the need for draftsmen, skilled machine operators, and other craftsmen.

if this were necessary to compete i would tend to believe the company line that everybody has to suck it up, but i never saw the prices for the finished goods go down, or even stay stagnant for longer than 6 months, and i never saw anybody in management take a cut in pay or hours.

[griffi94]

12. i don't blame the illegals

for driving down the wages so much as i blame management. i've been labor and management, and you can turn a profit while paying a living wage altho the profit is lots smaller.
as far as organizing and going union, i agree with you that plenty of hispanic labor did that and got a much better payout for their labor, but it's hard to organize when you're in a state that sits on the border because a walkout isn't a threat. there are always people willing to work for $6.00-$9.00 an hour for what should be skilled and semi skilled positions. this is especially true if they've been making 10 dollars a week american in mexico. still the wave of cheap labor has to be curbed before organizing will work. even in a right to work state the wages would go up. the sad thing was i saw really talented skilled people get phased out or just have their pay cut down to the bone. most of the guys i worked with have done the same thing as me and gone on to something else. there's just no money in it anymore.
but that's a hard pill to take after completing trade school or drafting school, or even apprenticing as a helper for a few years. to all of a sudden not be able to make a living wage. it's not all cheap labors fault, but that contributes.

[pegleg]

4. This is a huge problem in certain areas of the country.

Not all of the jobs being taken are low wage jobs. Road building,construction,factory jobs are a few that come to mind that really stand out. It is only being done to surpress wages which would be even higher if legal employees were hired.

[eilen]

13. Apparently hiring illegals makes them low wage jobs

[Triana]

14. 100% agreed (n/t)

[Mountainman]

2. Enough said: Mr. Cutler has appeared ......... Fox News and the Lou Dobbs

Mr. Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including the O’Reilly Radio Factor, O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone, Fox News and the Lou Dobbs Tonight Program on CNN to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws and has participated in various public debates and panel discussions on issues involving the enforcement and administration of immigration laws

http://counterterrorismblog.org/experts/michael-cutler/bio/

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Why are you posting this on DU? That web site is renown for being extremely

anti-immigration and I consider it an invalid source.

[kestrel91316]

9. Oh, dear, Steve. You've really stepped in it now......

:popcorn:

[Omaha Steve]

15. In my defense.....

This post seems to have accomplished its goal more than I could have ever hoped. I was thinking it would get some reading traffic. It did so much more than that. Some very good posts that are well thought out. This really makes my day. In other words, our growing forum passed the test! My thanks to all. BTW, I have made several posts about (the other side of the story) immigration that barely got any notice. I've even posted a couple stories in Spanish.

Omaha Steve

[willy133]

16. Thanks for the post

I am also from Omaha, NE.

[Omaha Steve]

17. We moved to Bellevue in Nov. of 06

We had both spent 50 years in Omaha. We love where we are at. We both work in Omaha.