Unemployment, Immigrants,Nativism and Blame
Written by Bruce Goldstein Friday, 11 December 2009 09:55
The anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies issues reports which tend to link difficulties and ills in American society and our economy to the existence of immigrants (authorized and unauthorized). CIS's new report is "a Huge Pool of Potential Workers: Unemployment, Underemployment, and Non-Work Among Native-Born Americans." The press release says that less-educated "native born workers" face "competition from immigrants - legal and illegal." Walter Ewing's posting on the Immigration Impact blog offers a sensible response. One of his many points can be applied to agriculture: laid-off workers from manufacturing and other jobs in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, and North Carolina are not relocating to take jobs on farms in California, Washington, Arizona or Florida.
The immigration system is broken and should be fixed. We need more jobs and government must help create good jobs. Workers need to be treated decently in those jobs and need to be able to have a voice at work: labor laws should be strengthened and enforced. What we don't need are wedge issues to divide America. Instead of blaming immigrants, we need to focus on developing and implementing sensible policies on immigration, labor law and jobs creation.
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