Thread: Another factor in shortage of jobs for disabled

Letter to the Editor:
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Another factor in shortage of jobs for disabled
October 18, 2007

Your recent article "Tough fight for the disabled" (Globe West, Oct. 11) had as a second headline: "Range of issues leaves labor force untapped." One of the issues I didn't notice in the article was a mention of the impact of immigration, legal or otherwise, on the supply of lower-paying jobs that handicapped and disabled people have traditionally held.

An example of this kind of job is the clearing of shopping carts from store lots. My own mentally handicapped adult son is very proud of the job he has doing this three days per week, three hours per shift, at a local Home Depot.

Getting this job took some doing on the part of the agency that assists him. It also depends on a deliberate decision by his employer to employ the handicapped when there is an abundance of recent immigrant workers in the workforce, ready to work hard for very low wages. As the article describes, many disabled are unemployed, and this includes a lot of my son's peers who would dearly love a real job, which many of them had a few years ago and now can't get because of the glut of new workers willing to do the jobs that "nobody wants." Well, there are many who want to do those jobs, but who have been squeezed out of them.

Tom Largy
Wayland

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... _disabled/

I used to care for the mentally impaired. They worked in kitchens, as janitors and as greeters. They do the best they can at any event and in most cases are excited to give back the their communities and to the state which maintains their survival.

Even before I left it was becoming hard to find them jobs, some where outright fired and replaced and others 'laid off' and gradually replaced while undergoing routine treatments or in the hospital for other reasons.

I have written about this travesty before and it is a shame that our society would rather illegal criminals take jobs than those who deserve them the most.

I, like many others have worked all my life. Starting at 12 with a paper route and working through school and on to a trade later on. Today none of those jobs I had would be available. They would all be filled by the growing population of Hispanics who have taken all the starter jobs as well as trade jobs. This means handicap's jobs too. Just remember that when the Hispanics get into the job..they will only hire others like themselves. Handicapped or not American citizens are "left out in the cold".