Defending the Truth

Is Illegal Immigration Hurting the American Working Class?

As a nation we seem to have finally awoken to the challenges brought on by our unwillingness to address the illegal immigration situation of the past twenty years.

I believe illegal immigration is hurting the millions of Americans that comprise our proud working class.

I support immigration. In fact, I’d go so far as to characterize myself as being a strong supporter. I believe the diversity of our people has played an important role in the evolution --- and success --- of our society over the past one hundred years of American geo-political dominance.

We allow roughly one million people to immigrate into the US each year through legal means. We welcome all races, religions and nationalities. To apply for entrance into the county we ask merely that the applicant follow a relatively simple process --- one that is designed to be fair and reasonable: apply in advance, supply some basic background information (giving us a chance to make sure they’re not, for example, a felon or known terrorist) and have a sponsor that would provide financial support if needed. It’s a process --- like when we went for our first driver’s license or credit card. It requires a little effort and patience on our part, but it makes intuitive sense to us and we accept the notion that society at large has the right --- and responsibility --- to create a reasonable set of guidelines to govern a fair process.

Despite the fairness and transparency of the legal immigration process there are now millions of people in the country today that have skirted the process --- and thumbed their nose at us and our heritage in the process.

There are many commentators writing or speaking about the cultural ramifications of this situation. I’ll leave that to them. I’d rather focus on an economic angle and the impact it is having on our working class.

Do you realize that the federal minimum wage in this country hasn’t been raised since 1997? Once in nine years! During that time the median family income increased by just 12%. Across the same span of time the stock market has gone up by 71%, the average price of a home has easily doubled, and corporate earnings are at all-time highs. The distribution of our wealth has gone decidedly in the favor of the wealthy while the working class has barely benefited.

Why has this occurred? Why haven’t wages and benefits gone up at a better --- and fairer --- rate? There are several reasons, but one of them is the basic role of supply and demand. The size of the labor pool of lower skilled workers has risen so sharply and suddenly during the past five to ten years that the usual balance between labor and business is skewed in favor of big business. There is no pressure on employers to raise wages. The 15 to 18 million illegal immigrants --- most of them lower skilled workers --- have effectively undercut our working class. Exacerbating the problem is that our elected officials (both Republicans and Democrats) has turned a blind eye as unscrupulous employers have brazenly refused to follow our labor and hiring laws by hiring illegal immigrants.

Perhaps I’ve simplified certain aspects of this situation, but I haven’t fabricated any of them: in the ever-present tug-of-war between corporations and employees the majority of leverage currently rests with business. Just take a look at corporate profit which are at all-time highs. I think this is unfair to our working class and I think it’s shortsighted of us to sacrifice their well being because we’re unwilling to crack down on the millions of people that are here illegally or the corporations that knowingly hire them.

In conclusion, I think we owe natural born Americans and LEGAL immigrants the opportunity to earn a decent wage to support themselves and their loved ones. The majority of these folks are honest hard working people that, like most of us, are just trying to get ahead. They came from families of people that helped make this country what it is today and, I believe, should benefit from our successes as a people. The 15 to 18 million illegal immigrants currently here make that difficult to achieve because they are depressing wages and benefits.

Hey, I’m just one guy in a big diverse world, but that’s my view.

You are correct in all aspects, sir- I thank you for that. It is obvious that you write from common sense and not just Hispanic-bashing.
I have commented before that I believe that America as a whole is not against immigration; we just want it done legally. This also needs to include the businesses (large and small) that skirt laws by employing illegals, procuring social security number for them, paying cash wages to skirt taxes,as well as paying less than minimum wages to immigrants.
I think a harsh crackdown against white-collar America can start to reverse these ills. While it is said that a business is responsible only to its shareholders, these businesses are still governed by the laws of America (as we all are) and should be held accountable. I may make some people mad here; but maybe a few well-publicized fines and jail sentences along with some deportation might alleviate a severe and growing problem.

Just because the minimum wage has not increased does not mean that wages have not gone up. Unless you understand the function of the minimum wage you should not complain about its stagnation. Every time the minimum wage has been raised it has hurt those who need jobs the most, those with little or no skills.

Consider this, of the 74 million workers who are paid hourly wages, only 520,000 earn the minimum wage. Which means that less than 1% of the working population. Of this only 5% are below the poverty line whereas 40% have incomes higher than $60,000.

While I will agree that illegal immigrants work to hold down wages, especially in regards to lower skill workers. This has nothing to do with the minimum wage.

Minimum wage allows lower skilled workers to get a foot in the door. Of those who earn minimum wage only 15% still earn it after 3 years, and 63% receive raises within one year. What further goes to illustrate this point about minimum wage is that only 2% of those over the age of 25 earn minimum wage, that means the remaining minimum wage earners are between the ages of 16 and 25. Hmmmmm why do those ages seem so familiar, how about that they coincide with the ages of students. Hmmm could it be that students earn minimum wage more often than others?? Why would this be??? Hmmm perhaps because they go to school and they do not work full-time where they can successful learn a trade. Could it also be because many of these individuals while in school only work part time when school is out.

Of course to answer any of these questions truthfully is to blow your own argument out of the water and into the trash heap.

dmk

Sorry sgt, that bull. The only ones it would hurts is the companies that have to pay more. These jobs still need to be filled and they will be filled, just with a better rate of pay.


Your actually trying to claim that only 5% of the 1%(that you claim are recieving Minimum wage) are below the poverty line? So basicly your saying they all live at home with their parents unless they are illegal immigrants?
How would raising the minimum wage not allow unskilled workers to still get thier foot in the door? The current minimum wage equals legal slave labor!
Let the cheap bastards that have money pay more money, or find an honest line of work, if that doesn't suit their profit margin.

What is bull is the crap that we are being fed to justify the raising of the minimum wage. The increase in wage would not hurt companies at all, they would either decrease their number of employees or increase the cost of their products. So who is hurt, first those seeking jobs because now there are less out there, and finally the consumer who now has to pay more for their products and/or services. In the end those who are hurt the most are those who have lower job skills.

The numbers don't lie. Most of those who hold minimum wage jobs are in the age group of 16 - 25. Mainly students and those who are just entering the labor force. These jobs provide a foot in the door. Raising the wage means either paying more to a person who is not qualified or hiring less, which one do you think companies will choose to do??? Considering that 2/3s of those who do make minimum wage live in households that earn $60,000 a year, if that is slave labor.....well your idea of slavery is a joke.

dmk

Seem like the numbers I come up with are alot different than yours. Also according to all of the working models(all the states that recently raised the Minimum Wage), raising the minimum wage boosts the economy!!
I've done a pretty though search of these working models and here's what I came up with.
The first one I studied was Vermont:
VLWC Facts and Figures
How do people not earning a livable wage get by?
Many people don't make up the difference and do without basic necessities. (For example, over 60,000 Vermonters have no health care.) Others rely on public assistance programs like food stamps, the Low Income Heat Assistance Program, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), and Medicaid. Some of us live in substandard housing, or pay a large percentage of our income for housing. People receive help from family members, work two jobs, barter, or work under the table. More and more people depend on credit, which then means that meeting payments becomes more and more difficult. The total effect of this picture is that many Vermonters lack basic economic security, depend on state and federal public assistance programs and face a declining standard of living.
We maybe able to eventually rid the system of the super high overhead of the nation's welfare costs. At the very least we could get it down to a low number!

Isn't it mostly just young people starting out who aren't earning livable wages?
This is a favorite argument of businesses- the only people earning the minimum wages or low wage in general are teenagers living with their parents. But it just isn't true. According to the phase 8 of the Vermont Job Gap study, Sixty-one percent (61%) of all year round full time workers in Vermont who earned less than $15,000 ($7.20/hr) in 1999 were over 29 years old. Over 10,000 full time workers over 29 earned less than $15,000 per year.

What is the minimum wage in Vermont?
Currently the minimum wage in Vermont is $7.25 an hour ($15,080 /yr. (2006)). It will increase again on Jan. 1, 2007 and every Jan 1st thereafter based on a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) using the national CPI-U (Consumer Price Index-Urban) figure. Nationally, it is $5.15 an hour ($10,712 /yr.). The minimum wage is important even to those earning considerably above it. Because the minimum wage sets a limit on how low wages can go for most people, it also sets the starting point for where wages move up from. Since the minimum wage is so low, it helps keep wages in general lower -even for those of us earning in the $8 to $9 an hour range. If the wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969 when it was a $1.60 an hour, minimum wage would be $8.00 an hour in 2005. However, because it has not, the extremely low minimum wage is helping to pull wages down for everyone.

A cost of living adjustment (COLA) is a tool used to increase wages based on inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is used to adjust dollar values for inflation. There are several ways to calculate a COLA for the minimum wage rate. Some states, such as Washington, base their COLA for the minimum wage rate on changes in the Consumer Price Index for Union Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). In other cases, such as the Federal Poverty Measure, an alternative CPI is used to calculate annual increases. There are currently minimum wage COLA's in Vermont, Oregon, Washington, and Florida.

The same businesses that now hire low-wage workers will still need those jobs done, and the same pool of workers will still apply for those jobs-except now they will be working for livable wages.
Oregon's experience in raising the minimum wage shows this. Between 1997 and 1999 Oregon raised its minimum wage from $4.75 an hour to $6.50 an hour. A recent study by the Oregon Center for Public Policy found that "Oregon's 'highest in the nation' minimum wage continues to raise wages for former welfare recipients and other low-wage workers without harming their employment opportunities. The increase has reversed years of declining wages for welfare recipients and other low-wage workers."

VLWC Facts and Figures

After-tax corporate profits more than doubled since 2000. Yet, for most workers (the bottom 80 percent), inflation-adjusted wages have declined. Commerce Department figures show the decline was so steep that, in the first quarter of 2006 wages and salaries collectively accounted for only 45 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product -- an all-time low, and down from 50 percent as recently as 2001.

Still, there are naysayers. These critics primarily raise two objections to minimum-wage laws. First, they claim such legislation unduly increases business costs, hurting profitability. Well, of course, but child labor laws are expensive and demonstrably contrary to unregulated labor practices. Sweatshop prohibitions are costly, too, and imagine the profit gain if we gutted workplace safety and environmental protection laws. Bottom line, we've historically passed legislation establishing minimal standards of economic justice, and business still manages to produce record profits.

''A rising tide lifts all boats.''
All that economic growth had to go somewhere. If the overwhelming majority of Americans were left out, who gained? Really rich people, that's who. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. Census data, the share of income growth going to America's wealthiest families set a new high in 2005. Instead of all boats, today a rising tide apparently lifts only yachts. Anyone below the yacht-income class better be good at bailing water.
I love this one because at the nice marina's in New England, you don't see alot of small boats.
What's happening with wages in our current economy fails the test of common humanity that is fundamental to capitalist economics. If it's inappropriate to bump the minimum wage when corporate profits are peaking and wages plummeting, maybe we should throw in the towel on having a just economy altogether, and go back to the halcyon days of sweatshops and child labor.
I'm always a bitching about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and it's true. The big Corperations are making record profit and can afford to pay more to the low people on the totem pole.
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Heres one about Oregon:

Oregon Minimum Wage Increases Boost Welfare-to-Work Efforts - Report -5/29/98
Debates over raising the minimum wage often focus on the issue of who will benefit from lifting the wage floor. Some claim that increasing the minimum wage does little for low-income families, because minimum wage earners frequently are teenagers or secondary workers in middle-class families. While the benefits of minimum wage increases are not targeted solely on low-income families, many of the workers whose earnings rise as a result of such increases are in low-income families. In addition, the large majority of minimum wage workers are adults, and many are the primary breadwinner in their family.

New evidence from Oregon suggests that minimum wage increases can have a significant effect on parents who leave welfare for work. As a result of a successful state ballot initiative, the Oregon minimum wage rose from $4.75 an hour to $5.50 an hour in January 1997 and then to $6.00 an hour in January 1998.(1) Data from Oregon's welfare agency show that the earnings of parents who moved from welfare to work were boosted as a result of these increases.

The minimum wage increase appears to have affected a substantial proportion of Oregon's welfare recipients who found work in 1997. In the last quarter of 1997, for example, nearly one-third of the welfare recipients who found work — including half of those who found part-time work — earned the state's new minimum wage of $5.50 an hour. This substantial clustering of wages at the new minimum wage level strongly suggests that many of these workers would have earned less than $5.50 without the increase in the state's wage floor.
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Here's one for the studies in Pennsylvania:

-Small Business Job Growth Faster In States With Minimum Wages Higher Than $5.15-
-Keystone Research Center Releases Revised Fact Sheet on Effects of Raising Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage- Read here:
KRC Minimum Wage Page


I have to believe that there maybe some small businesses that would require help at first. These are the companies that should get tax cuts.
Big companies, most of which doubled their profits last year, from the hardwork of it's employees, can eat it. They can afford to, and should.
This way, not only the rich would prosper, but also the lower income people. That would be good for the country, wouldn't it? According to the working models I've checked out, the answer is yes.

I also have to believe that the plans of the super rich are going to be a deciding factor in exactly how much of an increase will take place. Let's face it, almost every Congressperson stands to make more money off their assets with no wage raise for the poor. But that's just my opinion.

If you can't get a job paying more than $5.50 an hour, you are stupid, lazy, or mentally ill. If you are one of those, why should people pay you more? They shouldn't. If you are handicapped, you probably get some sort of government assistance. The minimum wage is a scam.

You know what I did when I could not find a good paying job? I moved to where they were. It's not the goverment's job to find you a job or determine how much you should get paid in my opinion, unless you are working for the government of course.

I certainly don't think it is the Government's job to get someone work but you seem to think someone who make these kind of wages can afford to just pull up and move to a place with more jobs. People with that type of income can't afford to do that. Most can barely keep up with their current bills never mind have the cash to just relocate just like that! I picked up and just moved stakes twice in the last five years, once to go to a better paying job and the second time to move back to our hometown, because of an injury. We've been back here more than two years and we still haven't entirely caught up with our bills. This is part of the reasons my wife went back in College full time. Things aren't as easy as you think they are (or they use to be) to be able just pick up and go, especially with a family. This isn't the depression where you can load your belongings on a hand cart and start walking! It costs big bucks to move these days.
Plus, in the case of the people in Vermont, who are the ones we speak of in this case study, your talking about half the population moving. What makes more sense, mass migration to where there are jobs or reasonable pay for people that work hard at a 40 hour a week job? Plus, if everyone just decided to moved from places with no work there would be an awful big mess in this country. There then would suddenly be more people in these places you say have jobs than there would be jobs. Your idea is great in theory but totally impractical in practice.