Thread: CA State crisis looms amid immigration crackdown

More Pro-illegal business whining:
State crisis looms amid immigration crackdown
By Dan Walters / The Bee's Capitol bureau08/19/07 04:33:08
http://www.fresnobee.com/columnists/wal ... 16224.html

Having attempted -- and failed -- to gain congressional approval for immigration reform that would create a pathway to legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country, the Bush administration has declared a crackdown on employers who hire workers without valid Social Security numbers.

It's uncertain whether the crackdown -- requiring employers to fire workers without valid numbers -- is serious or mostly a political ploy aimed at calling anti-immigrant groups' bluff and persuading Congress to move on immigration reform. It's probably the latter, given the predictions by administration officials of negative economic impact. But to the extent that it is serious, its greatest effect would be felt in California's economy, which is extraordinarily dependent on immigrant workers.

California farmers were already complaining about shortages of field workers, and if the crackdown continues, those complaints will extend to hotels, restaurants, construction, landscaping and other segments of the service economy that use large numbers of low-skilled workers.

Anti-immigration activists will contend that the crackdown will merely open up jobs for citizens and legal immigrants who are unemployed, but as a new statistical report from the Palo Alto-based Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy underscores, it's an argument that doesn't hold water.

California has, it's believed, about 3 million illegal immigrants, of which nearly two-thirds are workers.

Were the Bush crackdown to continue and succeed in driving them out of their jobs, employers would have an estimated 1.85 million jobs to fill.

But as the center points out, California has fewer than half that many workers on its unemployment rolls, so even were every one of those jobless workers to take a newly opened job slot, we would still have a million-worker shortage.

It is, moreover, ludicrous to assume that all of those unemployed workers would fill the job vacancies, many, if not most, of which involve hard physical labor and relatively low pay. Unemployment in California has been running at less than 5%, which in historic terms is very low, and most of those on the rolls are just there temporarily.

The essential question is this: Would an unemployed real estate salesperson clean hotel rooms, wash dishes in a restaurant or pick crops as an alternative to collecting unemployment insurance? Not likely.

The report's numbers accentuate what intelligent people already know -- that illegal immigrant workers provide important labor for huge segments of the California economy and that without them, the economy would face a crisis. And that brings us back to the stalled-out immigration reform legislation in Congress.

The solution to the dilemma is obvious: replacing the underground economy of illegal workers with the dignity of a guest-worker program, thereby reducing or eliminating the dangerous chaos along the border, and building a humane, workable path to legalization for those already filling vital roles in the economy.

Dan Walters writes for The Bee’s Capitol bureau. E-mail: dwalters@sacbee.com; mail: P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852.

California is ground zero for illegal immigration. And it would survive. It would just force long overdue changes such as mechanization for harvesting. And it would change the demographics in favor of American CITIZENS! I'd be willing to bet Californians who've fled might start moving back home too.

Originally Posted by cvangel

California is ground zero for illegal immigration. And it would survive. It would just force long overdue changes such as mechanization for harvesting. And it would change the demographics in favor of American CITIZENS! I'd be willing to bet Californians who've fled might start moving back home too.

Agree totally cv!

Hear, hear!! Good points!!!