Hard times alter debate over illegals
Raleigh News and Observer
Business owners once said they needed illegal workers because there weren’t enough Americans willing to do dirty and lowly jobs. Now, unemployment is nearing 10 percent, and citizens are lining up for jobs they once would have rejected. Yet, some say, many employers still want illegal immigrants.
James Lee, a 47-yearold Raleigh, N.C., electrician who hasn’t found work since Thanksgiving, said American workers can’t compete against immigrants who are willing to work for low pay and under unreasonable conditions. And now that jobs are scarce — nearly a quarter of construction workers nationwide are unemployed — he is one of a growing chorus who say illegal immigrants are leaving citizen workers with fewer options.
Some argue that the equation is not so simple. Many business owners say the vast supply of dependable labor that immigrants provided was responsible for much of the growth in industries such as construction and landscaping. Without immigrant labor, they say, their companies couldn’t have created so many jobs. Now, in a time of shrinking profits, some say those productive and loyal workers could mean the difference between survival and failure.
Bill Downey, a Durham, N.C., construction-company owner, said immigrants have been willing to work harder and more reliably than native workers — and those are workers that employers will keep as they try to remain solvent in a tight market.
“When it comes down to the bottom line, more people are going to be interested in good workers than whether they’re legal,” Downey said. “I’ve got a good worker, and I’m going to send him away? I don’t see that happening.”
Doug Woodward, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina, said native workers have less at stake than immigrants, and because of that can’t match immigrants’ productivity.
“The Latino work force, they’re hungry and eager to work as many hours as they can get,” Woodward said. “They’ll start on the worst tasks and work themselves up.. There’s such an incentive to hire them because it’s the difference between being profitable and not being profitable.”
Vernon Briggs, a labor-economics professor at Cornell University, said the picture for U.S. workers will only get worse if employers continue to have their pick of a vast supply of immigrants. Strict enforcement of immigration laws is the only salvation.