Immigration reform this year is not just dead but rotting, despite the earnest efforts of talking heads on the left to create a buzz in recent days ("The Democrats standing up and fighting: immigration reform to be central to the midterms!" an ever-sanguine Keith Olberman said last week). Immigrants who expect a quicker path to citizenship anytime soon appear to be destined for disappointment.
This is a politics site, so here's some pure political calculus for you. Immigration reform doesn't energize the progressive base enough to compensate for how much it antagonizes center-right independents. Sixty-six percent of recent online poll respondents (Angus Reid, Summer 2010) said they'd support a law like Arizona's in their state, requiring their own police to determine people's citizenship status if there was "reasonable suspicion" the people were illegal immigrants. A nearly equal percentage supported arresting those people if they couldn't prove they were legally in the United States.
Why? The same poll gives us the likely answer. Six out of ten Americans think that immigrants take jobs away from those born in this country. And with unemployment hovering around 10 percent, with 14.9 million Americans out of work, isn't some enlightened xenophobia called for? Probably not. But it is understandable, given our unemployment rate.
In a recent Washington Post column, Ezra Klein makes the case that more immigrants means more workers and more workers means more economic growth. It's the same argument touted by the powerful and relentlessly on-point U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the U.S.'s largest lobbying groups and the voice of American business interests on Capitol Hill. Not known for bleeding-heart positions, the Chamber has been demanding an accelerated path to citizenship and an expanded guest worker program for years.
Why is there still demand for foreign labor despite so many Americans looking for work? Well, maybe the Chamber does hope, as some anti-immigration activists suggest, that a greater labor supply will depress wages and save its members money. That's in their interest, no doubt. But they insist, and there is evidence to suggest, that foreign labor is an immutable fact of our economy. It's not a question of if they come, but how. There are some jobs that American citizens don't apply for or leave quickly if they do.
HDNet's Dan Rather Reports journalist Robin Stein spent the last several months fighting to wrest data from various government agencies about a program that's often considered to be the prototype for the guest worker system of the future. It's called the H-2B guest worker program, named after the visa U.S. companies now use to bring in foreign workers to do temporary jobs they say they cannot fill with Americans.
Getting H-2B visas involves a multi-step application process that prevents -- at least theoretically -- employers from replacing American workers with lower-paid foreign labor. Companies must attest that the jobs are temporary and that they've tried and failed to recruit American workers (by putting want-ads in local newspapers and State Workforce Agencies). Employers must also pledge to pay their H-2B workers whatever the Department of Labor determines to be "prevailing wage" for that job -- namely the market rate local workers are earning. For example, a hotel in Orlando, FL must pay an entry level H-2B housekeeper no less than $8.07/hr but the same job in Las Vegas, NV has an hourly rate of $10.23.
In practice, critics say -- and the Obama administration agrees -- that the rules are riddled with loopholes and the enforcement is virtually non-existent. Still hiring an H-2B worker entails more time and money than hiring an illegal foreigner or an American worker.
And yet according to federal data for the first half of fiscal year 2010, companies in metro St. Louis -- where unemployment is 10.1 percent -- claimed to have no choice but to resort to foreign guest workers to fill 1793 jobs. Businesses in Chicago, with 10.5 percent unemployment had 639 jobs that were approved to go to H-2b workers. Even in Detroit with its 15.2 percent unemployment 249 jobs apparently had no takers.
All in all, companies have applied for H-2B workers to fill 1.3 million jobs over the past 10 years. Those are just one class of legal guest workers; and of course there are the millions more foreigners -- an estimated 8.3 million -- who work illegally in the United States on any given day.
The federal numbers gathered by Dan Rather Reports about 10 years of H-2B applications from U.S. businesses are a remarkable snapshot of work done out of sight of middle-class Americans. H-2B workers muck our stables (47,000 guest workers requested) and shuck our shellfish (15,000). There were nearly 40,000 H-2B jobs in circuses and amusement parks, nearly 150,000 in housekeeping, and almost half a million in landscaping,
These are the support jobs of the new low-pay, streamlined American service economy we claim to want to train our own children to inhabit. Though some economists say it would be better for the American economy to return to "making" and not just "doing," those decisions need to be made at the level of economic policy, not immigration policy.
In our story, we travel to Cape Cod, MA and Orlando, FL and learn the personal stories of people on all sides of this difficult question -- employers, American workers, and the immigrants themselves. We see the suffering and catch-22s created by American immigration policy and begin to think about what we might do to fix it and start a conversation that's well overdue, hoping to prop it along.
In order to give the public an easy way to search the federal data of companies that have applied for H-2B guest worker visas from 1999 through June 2010 Dan Rather Reports created this on-line database and asked PolicyMap to create this interactive map.
Dan Rather Reports airs Tuesdays on HDNet at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET. This episode is also available on iTunes.
There are no jobs Americans won't do, there are just no jobs where Americans will let employers abuse them... and THAT is what employers REALLY want.. someone they can take advantage of.
All our fun spots need service workers, but the service workers can't afford to live near the fun spots. Oh, dear. What is Nantucket to do?
Please remember these are the same people who built million dollar homes without streets or services (like garbage pick up) with our tax dollars in Afghanistan.....
If this was adhered to there would be no problem at all. If the companies were honest about this all would be fine. But, this just is not the case. My daughter just got hired on by a major corporation (unnamed here) as a mechanical engineer. She is in a minority of Americans in her area.....most are from India. You can't tell me that there aren't enough American engineers out there to fill those positions. The American workers with that sort of education are having a very difficult time finding jobs because they are over qualified for the lower ones and the ones they are qualified for are filled by these H-2B workers brought over by the corporations.
The question is, do we want to condone the kind of employment that creates "demand" for foreign guest workers in the interest of a "free market". I say no. And therefore we need strong immigration controls, not because we dislike immigrants, but rather the opposite, we cannot abide the low wages and mistreatment.
"They" are apparently dumb, easily exploited, and allow themselves to be abused. I guess that is because "they" want to be in this "great" country, so much, right? And we let them even though "they" are not as capable as "we" are.
You speak of foreigners as though they all have an extra chromosome and claim that your position comes from a desire to help them.
Can you at least be honest that you are just a nationalist who is afraid of the "other"?
I also expect them to stop all unemployment payments and welfare programs saying that those programs must be of a local, non governmental level. Of course poor people will continue to be welcome in to the military and the mercenary civilian organizations now being used by the Defense Department in increasing numbers.
P.S. if the republicans get back in it;s going to be the same s--t again that we have every time they get in. gas has already gone up almost 30 cents a gallon, we need to cut are taxes we don't have enough money,give us more we will we will let something trickle down to you. yada yada yada.
Aug 2008 ICE arrests 57 illegal aliens employed by Asheville DoD Contractor Mills Manufacturing Corporation (MMC) who manufactures parachutes for the U.S. military. This raid was NOT precipitated by any of the DoD contract inspectors who should have been on top of what was going on. ICE found that 85% of the production workforce were illegal aliens! And don't tell me that North Carolina citizens - both male and female can't sew or manufacture parachutes. North Carolina was a big textile producing and sewing state for many years until production was shut down and sent to China and elsewhere. Any company producing items for DoD must comply with US labor and all other applicable laws. So much for compliance in this case.
http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0808/080812asheville.htm