Illegal Immigration

Another Way to Outsource Jobs?

opinion by Domenico Maceri

Reacting to one of my articles on immigration, one reader stated that companies hire "illegals" because they are not "willing to pay fair wages." As a result, the reader went on, the American worker "gets the shaft from the depressed wages."

My older brother, a legal immigrant, a laborer, and a union member, would totally agree. He sees first hand in New Jersey how companies, both big and particularly small ones, refuse to hire union workers. They cost much more.

By hiring undocumented workers companies save money and can "compete."

For my brother, who is close to retirement after more than thirty years as a laborer, having to compete with illegal employees means a struggle on a yearly basis to find enough work. It's not just the earnings which are a concern. It's also a question of maintaining his health benefits, which require that he work a certain number of days per year.

Losing health insurance at his age is a serious concern. No one, particularly a laborer, can afford to pay medical bills without health insurance.

There is no doubt that undocumented workers affect the livelihood of people like my brother. Although they do work which US citizens would not take because it pays minimum wages or slightly better and provides no health insurance, in the case of construction, union members would take the jobs, as long as they are paid their standard wages.

A basic law of supply and demand says that if there were fewer workers, wages would rise or at the very least there'd be more available work for people like my brother.

Yet, while wages for people at the very bottom of the economic scale are certainly pushed down by the presence of undocumented workers, benefits for society at large also emerge.

It's difficult to explain to my brother that American consumers, like him, benefit from the toil of undocumented workers. Prices of food are kept down because of the undocumented workers.

My brother finds it difficult to swallow the explanation that food costs him less. He'd gladly pay a little more for food if he had enough work.

My brother is not bitter about undocumented workers. If he is, he hasn't told me, probably because I have often written about their plight. It's something my brother understands. He knows what poverty is, having experienced it first hand.

What he does not understand is the fact that as he is contemplating retirement he may not have health care. He may not have a decent pension.

It wasn't always like this. Things have deteriorated considerably in the last several years. The downturn in the economy has reduced the amount of available work. Companies became more addicted to cheaper and cheaper labor. Some of them have moved factories overseas.

Those companies which cannot move overseas have benefited from the availability of illegal immigration. In essence, people from overseas come to them asking for work. And they oblige. Construction, like agriculture, and the service industry in general, has become a magnet for undocumented workers.

President Bush's proposal to allow workers from other countries to enter the US if jobs are awaiting them will further erode the number of jobs available to American workers. And their presence will depress wages for all workers.

Globalization is supposed to spark economic growth and provide more jobs for everyone. That has not been the case. My brother will muddle through and retire in a few years. But there are a lot of people in my brother's situation who are much younger and who will be severely affected by government policies which help companies become more productive yet further reduce the American middle class.

My brother does not blame undocumented workers. It's our government that's responsible, particularly the Bush administration which seems clueless about the needs of American workers like my brother. So when members of the current Administration say that the outsourcing of US jobs will be beneficial, people like my brother wonder which country Bush is the president of.

Domenico Maceri (dmaceri@hotmail.com), PhD, UC Santa Barbara, teaches foreign languages at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA.