Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   9/01/2015

   Immigrants undermine Labor Day cheer

With the approach of the Labor Day bookend of summer, this series of columns on the economy, employment and immigration (written in early July to avoid Internet dead zones while traveling) will include more specifics on 1) immigration’s impact on wages, 2) the boon to Democrats through illegal immigration, and 3) the diminished state of economic freedom in America.

A statistical gem (or lump of coal, if you will) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics “foreign born worker” data ended last week’s column. “We find the following stunner: since the start of the Second Great Depression, the US has added 2.3 million ‘foreign-born’ workers, offset by just 727,000 ‘native-borns.’ This means that the ‘recovery’ has almost entirely benefited foreign-born workers, to the tune of 3 to 1 relative to native-born Americans!” (Tyler Durden)

Durden posted a chart that illustrates the above reality; it shows the cumulative losses and gains in foreign- vs. native-born employment since 2007. Another stunning fact is that foreign-born job losses were recouped by early 2011, while native Americans’ job losses took until early 2014 to recover. Folks, it is indisputable that any sane immigration policy must give a high priority to restricting immigration during economic downturns so as to maximize the jobs available to our native citizens. No one can seriously or believably refute that.

While we can’t relieve President Bush of responsibility for excessive immigration, legal and illegal, during his term, at least that immigration occurred in a relatively strong economy with higher labor participation by Americans, and growing wages and salaries. The general lack of enthusiasm for Obamanomics may relate to the massive influx of illegal immigrants since 2008.

However, the BLS statistical standards don’t separate illegal from legal workers. Included, as foreign-born persons, are legally admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants. The verifiable fact that job gains go overwhelmingly to foreign-borns, combined with plummeting productivity, soft to marginal GDP growth and minimal wage hikes, in Durden’s analysis, leads to a strong conclusion:

“The likelihood is that illegal workers, who are perfectly willing to work hard, and whose wage bargaining power is absolutely nil…leads to depressed wages for native-born workers in comparable jobs, resulting in wage growth which over the past 8 years has been nearly non-existent.” An accompanying chart sums it up—the year-over-year wage growth, as the 2008 recession approached under Bush, remained between 3.0 and 3.5 percent. By 2009, under Obama, it fell below 2 percent until late 2012, when it settled in slightly above 2 percent.

Put another way, 6 years after the 2000/2001 recession/terrorist attacks, wage growth under Bush was almost twice the rate that it was 6 years after 2008/2009 recession under Obama.  What has also, in Obama’s economy, contributed to low wage growth, flat productivity and flat GDP, has been the emergence—mostly due to Obamacare’s employer mandates—of an oversized part-time jobs segment of the economy.

Other troubling findings from the Center for Immigration Studies’ analysis: 1) Immigrants have made gains across the labor market, including lower-skilled jobs such as maintenance, construction, and food service; middle-skilled jobs like office support and health care support; and higher-skilled jobs, including management, computers, and health care practitioners. 2) The supply of potential workers is enormous: 8.7 million native college graduates are not working, as are 17 million with some college, and 25.3 million with no more than a high school education. 3) A total of 58 million working-age natives are not employed. There is no, repeat no, labor shortage justifying more immigration.

 There ought to be a rude awakening occurring among young Americans who, “particularly the less educated, have not found jobs over the last 14 years. The population of natives, aged 16 to 29, grew 16.2 percent from 2000 to 2014, but the number working actually declined by 2.6 percent…Proportionately it is younger native workers who have fared much worse over the last 14 years.”

The “doing jobs Americans won’t do” theme also doesn’t hold up. Out of 472 civilian occupations defined by the Department of Commerce, only 6 are majority immigrant (legal and illegal) and only account for 1 percent of the total workforce. Occupations often thought to be dominated by immigrants—maids, housekeepers, butchers and meat processors, grounds maintenance workers, and construction laborers and janitors—are all majority U.S. born (from 51 to 73 percent).

I hope Republicans will see through candidates that verbally kowtow to the pro-immigrant activists. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for instance, is not intimidated, as he calmly insisted to a hysterical illegal worker, that America’s laws apply to everyone and immigration laws, particularly, do not exempt anyone.

Democrats, to a man or woman, won’t reject the illegal immigration activists because, as I have correctly asserted, these groups are on path to be lifelong Democrats; many of them come from pro-authoritarian, anti-private gun ownership cultures and are easily persuaded to accept government hand-outs (I mean benefits). Democrats already benefit from illegal aliens in Congress—I’ll explain how next week.