Thread: The Labor Shortage

New York Sun Editorial

The Labor Shortage
New York Sun Editorial
August 13, 2007
http://www.nysun.com/article/60361

The Bush administration is greeting the latest stock market jitters by imposing onerous new regulations on American businesses. Among the measures announced by the White House is that the Department of Homeland Security will increase fines on employers who hire illegal immigrants. "DHS will use existing authority to update civil fines for inflation in order to boost fines by about 25 percent, as much as is allowed under current law," the press release said. Last we checked, the inflation rate in this country was a lot less than 25%. In case anyone missed the point, Secretary Chertoff underscored it, warning in a press conference on Friday, "there's going to be an economic consequence to tough law enforcement."

And how. The front page headline in this morning 's number of Crain's New York Business reports, "Firms hit wall on tech hiring." It reports that a Manhattan-based online-video company, after searching for months in New York City for six software developers, "opened a satellite office in Toronto." When it comes to labor in New York, "Right now the demand is exceeding the supply," Crain's quotes the company's chief executive, Bart Feder, as saying.

The White House's immigration initiative also includes a plan to crack down on employers who report Social Security numbers for employees that don't match up with the government databases. The employees would have to be fired. A Washington Post editorial yesterday warned that the measure will "force employers to cycle furiously through workers, at a cost of time and money."

The White House said that as part of its plan "the Department Of Education Will Launch A Free, Web-Based Portal To Help Immigrants Learn English." It wouldn't be surprising if the Web site has to be programmed in Toronto or India, because Congress has set legal immigration levels so low that there is a shortage of qualified workers here in America. Nor is it only small companies feeling the consequences, but large ones, too; a vice president of Google, Laszlo Bock, testified before Congress in June that "each and every day we find ourselves unable to pursue highly qualified candidates because there are not enough H-1B visas."

Anyone hoping that the next Republican president will improve our approach to this issue may be disappointed; Mayor Giuliani, who spoke beautifully of the value of immigration while he was mayor, has as a presidential candidate spoken of immigration primarily as a counterterrorism matter rather than an economic principle or moral concern. Governor Romney, meanwhile, is trying to get to the nativist side of Mr. Giuliani, attacking him for allowing New York to become a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants. To which we would say, we'd happily allow the entire country to become an immigrant sanctuary, which is what it was founded as, if it could duplicate the economic growth and reductions in crime that took place in New York City under Mr. Giuliani's leadership.

George Melloan, one of the sages of the Wall Street Journal, warned on July 27 that "The federally mandated severance of labor supply from demand is inopportune." Since then, following the failure of Congress to pass the comprehensive immigration legislation championed by Senators Kennedy and McCain and by President Bush that would have legalized many of the illegal immigrants, the stock market, which knows a protectionist mood when it sees one, has dipped about 2%, as measured by the Standard and Poor's 500 Index. How much more will the market have to slide before the Bush administration stops announcing plans to crack down on employers and starts focusing on getting them the workers they need?

The workers they need are right here, where they have always been. My profession, IT, was decimated by imported foreign workers. We were being laid off in droves, while they were bringing in foreign workers by the planeload, sometimes even making us train our replacements. After a couple of years of this, we started seeing job ads demanding 'recent' or 'current' work experience. In other words, if you'd had to take a non IT job to survive, you were no longer welcome back in the profession, even when times improved. What do you want to bet that the same business shouting 'shortage' are turning away American applicants on one pretext or another?

This is a threat made from Chertoff. I am tired of listening to his retoric. Let the WalMart's of the United States raise prices. Let Home Depot and all the burger joints, hotels and restarunts raise their prices. The American people just won't be buying as much will they? If they want us to buy then they will need to lower there prices and pay a fair wage with benefits to the American people.
Maybe the CEO's don't need to make 40 million a year. Maybe our insurance rates will go down. Maybe our taxes can fall into line. Maybe the corporations don't need to make record profits.
Maybe just maybe our economy will even out and we won't be riding on a false economy made up of illegal immigrants taking our jobs and making record profits to corporations, at the taxpayers expense.
Just maybe the middle class will flourish again.

Couldn't have said it better myself Paige! If the corporations poured one fourth of the money they spend on media poor-mouthing and political posturing into educational programs and community college training for Americans, there would be no shortage of skilled workers! The truth is that corporate greed is the underlying cause of the failing economy, plain and simple. Oh sure, they blame it on the need to reward the investor to keep the company strong, but all the while the execs are feathering their nests with investor dollars through ridiculous salaries, stock options, pensions, and other perks. Get ready for the "big crash" because investors are starting to watch their money closer and are figuring out the greedy schemes.

The reason that many companies using illegals so that they can make larger profits to pay their CEOs millions. The profits that are given to shareholders is extremely small and many time a company goes bankrupt while CEO and other officers are getting richer and richer. If CEOs would make responseable salaries companies could pay americans a good salary and benefits. Politicans and CEOs need to realize that Americans know what is happening but due to wages being decreased Americans want to purchase low cost goods so that they can provide their children more.

If there really is a labor shortage in the U.S., and we really do need to raise our immigration quotas, then why not be fair about it? Why not allow people from other countries to come here and pick our lettuce and slaughter our chickens? Why do we have to fill these jobs with Mexicans and Central Americans?

It seems discriminatory and blatantly unfair to the rest of the world. There are plenty of people who would love to take a boat or an airplane to America and have a chance to become a U.S. citizen.

It's just plain wrong to rgive amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens here who DID NOT respect our laws and apply to come to our country legally. So I say send them all back, and then, if it's really necessary, raise the immigration quotas. But allow people from Ethiopia, China, India, and so on...to have a chance to immigrate here LEGALLY.

I guess my point here is, if we truly do need more immigrants to do the jobs Americans won't do (and the jury is still out on that), then the answer is NOT to give amnesty to tens of millions of people who came here illegally...all from one country. It's discriminatory, and it rewards illegal behavior.

Be fair about it.