The High Cost of Cheap Labor

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17606
By Richard Lamm
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 5, 2005

It is easy to see why illegal immigrants are attractive to employers. These are generally good, hard working people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or less), who don't generally get health or other benefits, and if they complain, they can be easily fired. For some employers it is an abused form of labor. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.

But it is not "cheap labor." It may be "cheap" to those who pay the wages, but for the rest of us it is clearly "subsidized" labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other municipal costs imposed by this workforce. That has become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.

For decades, illegal immigrants were single men who would come up from Mexico or Central America alone, pick crops or perform other low paid physical labor and then go home. They were indeed "cheap labor." But starting in the 1960s, these workers either brought their families or smuggled them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal costs.

Illegal immigration today isn’t "cheap" labor, except to the employer. To the rest of us it is "subsidized labor," where a few get the benefit and the rest of us pay. These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myth of "cheap labor" and "jobs Americans won’t do" persists.

It is hard to get an exact profile of the people who live in the underground economy, but the average family of illegal immigrants has 2 to 4 school-age kids. It costs U.S. taxpayers more than $7000 a child just to educate them in our public schools. Now no minimum wage workers, or even low wage workers, pay anywhere near enough in taxes to pay for even one child in school. Even if their parents were paying all federal and state taxes, Colorado’s estimated 30,000 school-age children of workers illegally in the U.S. impose gargantuan costs on other taxpayers.

The dilemma is compounded by the fact that approximately 50 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash, off the books. Go to any construction site almost anywhere in America, and you will find workers paid cash wages. Virtually every city in America has an area where illegals gather and people come by to get “cheap” cash-wage labor.

The health care cost of this "cheap" workforce is also significant and subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. The total cost of this “subsidized” labor is impossible to ascertain and difficult to even estimate, but it is immense and growing as our population of these workers grows. A few benefit, many pay.

Americans pay in more ways than taxes. Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced to compete against these admittedly hard working people. Even employers, who don’t want to wink at false documents, are forced to lower wages just to be competitive. In many ways it is a “race to the bottom,” fueled by poor people often recruited from evermore-distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely.

Professor George Borjas of Harvard, an immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market from newcomers.

Let me suggest that correctly analyzed, the fight against illegal immigration is both a liberal and conservative cause. There is no moral or legal justification for this abused form of labor.


Richard D. Lamm served three-terms as governor of Colorado. He is Co-Director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies and a member of the Board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Email Dick Lamm at rlamm@aol.com.


http://www.sierratimes.com/05/12/01/64_12_116_12_20839.htm
December 1, 2005
The Sierra Times
Illegal Alien Advocates Exploit Mexican Immigrants
Jim Kouri, CPP

The debate over illegal immigration is intensifying with most Americans calling for tighter border security and lots more immigration enforcement. A minority of special interest advocates on the left -- some on the right -- oppose the elimination of a revolving door illegal immigration and in fact want fewer restrictions on illegal immigration. The agenda of some Libertarian Republicans is obvious -- cheap labor. However, what are the motives of members of the Democrat Party? Why does it appear they are exploiting illegal immigrants, most of whom are Mexican nationals?

Whenever this hot-button issue is discussed on a broadcast or cable news show, the Democrats always claim the moral high-ground by cloaking their talking points with an air of superior compassion. But beneath that facade of compassion may be a cynical, treacherous goal -- more votes at the expense of people's lives and freedom.

This writer has covered the illegal immigration story and related subjects for a number of years. The suffering of many illegal immigrants is hidden from Americans by a compliant news media who want to show a positive spin on illegal immigrants. You'll rarely, if ever, read a story in the New York Times about criminal aliens who routinely kill, assault, rape and rob American citizens. You'd be hard-pressed to find a story in the Washington Post about a human trafficking ring running sex slave establishments using children. And when hundreds of illegal aliens were discovered working at military installations and nuclear power plants, where were the reporters from the wire services?

The Democrats, the Libertarian-wing of the Republican Party and the mainstream news media bend over backwards to put a happy face on an American underworld filled with misery, brutality and hopelessness.

For instance, in Long Island, New York, a successful businessman was arrested for his harboring of an illegal alien. But it was far more than that: he had the Latino man living in the basement of his mansion and the illegal alien worked as a valet for the man and his family. Then at 6 AM in the morning, the businessman woke the illegal and drove him to the businessman's factory in the Bronx, and the illegal immigrant worked 10 hours a day without compensation. All this immigrant received were three squares and a cot in a basement. No wages. No weekends off. No holidays. No vacations.

This writer recently wrote an article regarding 11 illegal aliens -- men, women and children -- found dead in a railroad boxcar in Iowa. Another article addressed the apprehension and conviction of a human smuggling ring "enforcer" who, in addition to brutalizing women, disposed of the newly born baby of an illegal alien woman who was kept in an apartment and was forced to work in sleazy bars in New Jersey. Still another article involved a gang of kidnappers who abducted illegal immigrants from their smugglers and held them for ransom. These cases are not extraordinary. They are all too commonplace.

Is this what the compassionate liberals have in mind for the tens of thousands of illegal aliens coming into the United States annually? Even their arguments in support of illegal immigrants smack of racism. They tell Americans that these undocumented aliens take jobs Americans won't take, for instance, cleaning toilets. In essence they are saying illegal aliens are sub-humans cattled into the United States to perform a function. This is de facto slavery, plain and simple.

The fact of the matter is when liberal-left activists, who've hijacked the Democrat Party, see hordes of illegal aliens crossing the border, they see votes. Same as when they see a dead body -- they see a new Democrat voter. Or when they see a US prison population of hundreds of thousands of convicts. Potential votes. While they make baseless allegations that Republicans are disenfranchising certain groups of people so they will not vote, the Democrats enfranchise illegal aliens who are voting for whomever is busing them to the election polls. And don't fool yourself; illegal aliens are voting. Which is why the Democrat Party opposes states trying to pass legislation that requires voters to display a valid voter ID card.

The American left long ago realized their hopes for raising the standard of living for the world's poor was indeed a hopeless dream. So in their zeal to obtain equality of living standards and fodder for their arrogant attempts at social engineering, they are eagerly trying to replace a European-based population who voluntarily observe birth control, with a Third-World population that does not practice birth control. While American families will have one or two children, Third-World immigrants will have up to nine or ten kids. This cynical social engineering plan results from their notion that if they can't move us out of power, they'll breed us out of power. In turn, with an enslaved electorate, they can bring about their true goal of a Socialist utopia. A utopia built on the suffering of millions of illegal aliens.

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Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He's a staff writer for New Media Alliance (thenma.org), and he's a columnist for TheConservativeVoice.Com, AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he's syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com, Booksamillion.com, and can be ordered at local bookstores. If you wish to sign up for his intelligence reports, write to JimKouriReports@aol.com. Kouri's own website is located at http://jimkouri.us