Foreign Workers Taking Jobs Americans Want, Group's Ad Says
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/novembe ... n_ad.shtml
Foreign Workers Taking Jobs Americans Want, Group's Ad Says
By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
November 23, 2005
(CNSNews.com) -- A coalition of trade groups has launched a television ad campaign to address immigration and the notion that "foreign workers do jobs Americans won't do."
The Coalition for the Future American Worker (CFAW) said its campaign is directed at President Bush and features blue-collar and service employees urging the president to cut the number of foreign workers allowed to enter the country. Bush has praised foreign labor for taking jobs Americans won't do, but that's a fallacy, the group said.
"This public education campaign is long overdue. Hardly anybody is standing up for American workers and blue-collar families any more," said CFAW spokesman Roy Beck.
"Yet, they are the ones disproportionately affected by these uninhibited flows of foreign labor. Americans' wages are being depressed, their jobs are being taken and they're helpless to do much about it," Beck added.
In the commercial's opening scene, an unemployed man is sitting on the back steps of a middle-class home, saying "President Bush says foreign workers do jobs Americans won't do. Mr. President, I'll do that job."
Then the words "12 million Americans can't find a full time job" are featured on the screen.
A hotel worker then tells Bush "if immigration increases, we'll have more foreign workers who will work for next to nothing. I need to make enough to feed my family." That is followed by a screen saying that foreign workers depress U.S. wages. The ad offers "educational facts throughout."
According to Beck, all the jobs that are usually filled in high numbers by foreigners were recently filled by Americans.
"The massive influx of foreign workers has collapsed one occupation after another so that they no longer provide middle-class wages and benefits," Beck said.
For example, he said the meat packing industry once paid "good middle class wages" but after discovering that there is "an endless supply" of foreigners to fill those jobs, the industry has "dramatically" cut wages and safety conditions.
"It's really a shame. Our misguided immigration policies are causing American workers to lose wages and eventually their jobs," Beck said. "The size of the flow of foreign workers into this country is unprecedented and undermining our entire middle-class society."