llegal Immigration and
Black Workers
Illegal immigrant workers tend to concentrate
in labor markets that have high concentrations of legal immigrants and citizens
(native born and naturalized who are from similar ethnic and racial
backgrounds). It is more difficult for authorities to identify them under these
circumstances and they can rely on networks of friends and family members as
well as other employers and community assistance organizations composed of
members of their same backgrounds to find employment. As a consequence, there
is a tendency for illegal immigrants to cluster in metropolitan areas
(especially central cities) or in rural areas that already have concentrations
of persons from similar backgrounds.
Black workers also tend to be concentrated in
metropolitan areas – especially in central cities. The only rural labor markets
where black Americans are of significant number are in the Southeastern states
– a legacy of the slavery heritage of yesteryear.
Thus, it is not everywhere that there is likely
to be significant competition between low skilled black workers and illegal
immigrant workers but there are ample circumstances where there is – such as
the large metropolitan labor markets of Los Angles, New York, San Francisco,
Chicago, Miami and Washington-Baltimore. Moreover, some of the fastest growing
immigrant concentrations are now taking place in the urban and rural labor
markets of the states of the Southeast-- such as Georgia, North Carolina and
Virginia which never before were significant immigrant receiving states in
previous eras of mass immigration. Indeed, about 26 percent of the nation’s
foreign-born population are now found in the states of the South – the highest
percentage ever for this region. There is mounting evidence that many of these
new immigrants in this region are illegal immigrants.
Because most illegal immigrants overwhelmingly
seek work in the low skilled labor market and because the black American labor
force is so disproportionately concentrated in this same low wage sector, there
is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in
this sector of the labor market. Given the inordinately high unemployment rates
for low skilled black workers (the highest for all racial and ethnic groups for
whom data is collected), it is obvious that the major looser in this
competition are low skilled black workers. This is not surprising, since if
employers have an opportunity to hire illegal immigrant workers, they will
always give them preference over legal workers of any race or ethnic
background. This is because illegal immigrant workers view low skilled jobs in
the American economy as being highly preferable to the job opportunities in
their homelands that they have left. A job that pays the federal minimum wage
of $7.15 an hour (some states and localities have even higher minimum wages) is
often several times higher than the daily wage they could earn in their
homelands, if they could get a job at all. Even the worst working conditions in
the United States are typically better than what many have experienced before
they came to this country. Illegal immigrants, therefore, are often grateful to
receive these low wages and they will do whatever it takes to get these jobs
(even if it means living in crowded and substandard living conditions and
working under harsh and dangerous conditions). It is also easier for some
employers to exploit illegal immigrant workers by paying them less than the
minimum wage and not paying them overtime wages because they are fearful of
revealing their vulnerable status if they were to complain. Citizen workers
know that paying the minimum wages means that the employer values your work at
the lowest level that he/she can legally pay. Furthermore, citizen workers
expect labor and safety laws to be enforced because they believe they have
legal rights to job protections. It is not that citizen workers will not do the
work that illegal immigrants are willing to do. Rather, it is that citizens
often will not do the work for the same pay and under the same working
conditions as will illegal immigrants – nor should they.
It is not that employers are evil in their
willingness to give preference to illegal immigrants. It is that they are
pragmatic in their decision making. Illegal immigrants are available because
the federal government has chosen to do little to monitor the work sites of the
nation. Seldom are any penalties placed on employers who violate the ban
against hiring illegal immigrants working even though it has existed since1986.
Moreover, because of this self-imposed impotence by the federal government,
employers who try to follow the law are penalized because they must compete
with employers who violate the law and benefit by paying lower wages and
providing cheaper working conditions that are more profitable to these employer
but hazardous to the illegal workers. The status quo, therefore, is a
perversity of justice. Law breakers are rewarded while law abiders are
punished.
Economists long ago have realized that there
is no way to prove or to measure the job displacement of citizens by illegal
immigrants. This is because when immigrants (including the large illegal
immigrant component) move into a local labor market, citizens tend to move out.
Mass immigration has affected the internal migration patterns of citizen
workers. As they leave the area or as they dropout of the labor market because
they cannot find jobs, immigrants move in to claim the jobs But there is no way
to measure the loss since many of the victims are no longer in the local labor
market.
As for wage suppression, all studies show that
the large infusion of immigrants has depressed the wages of low skilled
workers. It is the illegal immigrant component of the immigration flow that has
most certainly caused the most damage but there is no way to isolate their
singular harm. But even these studies most likely underestimate the true
adverse impact because there is a floor on legal wages set by minimum wage laws
that do not allow the market to set the actual wage level. What is known is
that wages in the low wage labor market have tended to stagnate for some time.
It is not just that the availability of massive numbers of illegal immigrants
depress wages, it is the fact that their shear numbers keep wages from rising
over time and that is the real harm experienced by citizen workers in the low
skilled labor market.
What is apparent is that the unemployment
rates in the low skilled labor market are the highest in the entire national
labor force. This means that the low skilled labor market is in a surplus
condition. Willing workers are available at existing wage rates. By definition,
therefore, illegal immigrants who are overwhelmingly present in that same labor
market sector adversely affect the economic opportunities of legal citizen
workers because the illegal workers are preferred workers. No group pays a
higher penalty for this unfair competition than do low skilled black Americans
given their inordinately high unemployment levels
The willingness of policy makers to tolerate the
presence of illegal immigrants in the nation’s labor force exposes a seamy side
of the nation’s collective consciousness. Illegal immigrants – who themselves
are often exploited even though they may not think so —are allowed to cause
harm in the form of unemployment and depressed wages to the most vulnerable
workers in the American work force. The continued reluctance by our national
government to get illegal immigrants out of the labor force-- and to keep them
out--by enforcing the existing sanctions at the work site against employers of
illegal immigrants is itself a massive violation of the civil rights of all low
skilled workers in the United States and of low skilled black American workers
in particular. Illegal immigrants have no right to work in the United States.
In fact, they have no right to even be in the country. Enforcing our nation’s
labor laws – including the protection of the legal labor force from the
presence of illegal immigrant workers – is the civil rights issue of this
generation of American workers.
It is time, therefore, to make our immigration
laws credible. The way to do this is to adhere to the findings of the U.S.
Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by the late Barbara Jordan who boldly
stated what should be the goal of public policy: “The credibility of
immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick: people who should get
in, do get in; people who should not get in, are kept out; and people who are
judged deportable, are required to leave.”
No one would benefit more
by the adherence to that standard than would low skilled black American workers
and their families
