A Country Should Do Its Own Work

Why are American companies importing foreign workers into the United States? According to these companies, they need the best and the brightest, and American workers just aren't up to their standards. They claim they need foreign workers for innovative ideas to stay on the cutting edge, and Americans no longer have the new ideas or technical skills. They argue that they need foreign workers with special abilities and educational skills that American school kids aren't taught. Seasonal agricultural crop interests often claim that Americans simply won't do the work in that sector.

U.S. Immigration Laws Are Not Tied To Labor Market Need

Immigration levels do not adjust to economic conditions. Unlike many countries, the United States does not adjust immigration with fluctuations in the economy. We, therefore, continue to import new workers even when many Americans are unemployed. For example, the government predicts that the economy will grow by 22.3 million jobs over the next ten years. Yet, with legal immigration at its present level--and we could completely stop illegal immigration--the number of entrants into the job market will outstrip available new jobs by about one-and-a-half million.

Businesses Ignore The American Worker

A country should do its own work. Many companies and multinational corporations are increasingly relying on imported foreign labor to the exclusion of American workers. American schools and employers should better prepare American workers for the jobs of tomorrow. At a time when we are moving people off welfare and downsizing government, we have plenty of Americans to do any type of job as long as they are trained and attracted by a fair wage. However, many companies would rather import a worker than make the effort of training Americans. What incentive does American business have to help train the American worker if it believes a ready supply of foreign workers will be available?

Abuse Of The Labor Certification Process Is Rampant

The current labor certification process is full of loopholes to the detriment of the American worker. For example, too frequently the experience that underlies labor certification applications is obtained while a foreign employee works in this country as a temporary (nonimmigrant) worker. A 1996 Labor Department report found 98.7 percent of temporary worker petitions were for aliens already in this country. Nearly three quarters were already working for the employer who filed the petition, and over one-eithth were working illegally. The "bootstrapping" of nonimmigrant visa categories--the H, F, J, L and even B visas--with the immigration occupational preferences has created a seamless web of labor displacement and wage depression to the prejudice of the American worker.

Immigrants Displace Native Workers

Public attention has recently been drawn to situations where American workers are fired and replaced with temporary foreign workers, particularly in computer programming. Why would an employer pay a higher wage to an American worker when he could easily bring in foreign workers for a lower wage? The employer gains while the average worker pays with his or her job, and the nation pays in higher taxes.

For example, a GAO study found that a decade of heavy immigration to Los Angeles had changed the janitorial industry from a mostly unionized one with a predominantly native black work force to one of non-unionized immigrants--often illegal aliens. In other industries, such as nursing and meat packing, ethnic recruiting networks have largely shut out U.S. workers.

Immigration's Labor Effects Harm The Whole Country

When an employer brings a foreign worker to this country the worker is able to bring his or her spouse and minor children. The typical foreign worker is makes a wage below that of the displaced American worker and pays less in taxes--or may receive rebates from the Earned-Income Tax Credit system. Because of the lost taxes, more of the burden falls on the surrounding community for the public benefits the immigrant and his family receive, such as public education, infrastructure, crime prevention and medical care.

Low-wage immigrant workers have been found to account for about half of the lowering of real wages earned by workers with less than a high school degree over the last decade. In this process, immigration contributes to the growing income disparity between the poor and the well-off in this country, as documented in the annual report to the President by the Council of Economic Advisers.

What To Do

Before they were severely amended, the employment reforms in the Senate immigration reform bill (S. 1394) constituted a step in the right direction. They shifted the emphasis from unskilled and lesser skilled occupations to those higher skilled occupations that would most benefit the U.S. We must continue to try to reform our employment based immigration system to ensure that those who truly do have extraordinary abilities are able to come to the U.S., but that the American worker is protected from job displacement and wage depression.

-- Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR);

http://www.fairus.org

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