Thread: Illegals Taking More and More Jobs

Illegals taking more and more jobs
By Jack Spillane, Standard-Times staff writer

NEW BEDFORD — Last summer, 40 or 50 carpenters from Local 1305, the Fall River chapter of the New England Council of Carpenters, didn't work at all.
Ron Rheaume, the business manager for the union, said that means about 10 percent of the union's 500-strong work force couldn't find any jobs for the first time in recent memory.
The biggest reason, he believes, is the influx of illegal immigrants who have begun to work in the New England construction industry over the past four to five years.
"It's blatant and it's everywhere," he said. "It's happening in prevailing wage jobs and it's happening in state projects. It's happening all over the place."
John O'Connor, a senior organizer with the carpenter's union, said the employment situation in Massachusetts has been so changed by illegal labor that it is even becoming impossible for high school students to find such traditional part-time positions as bus boys, landscapers or painters.
And it's not just a problem of the immigrants undercutting high wages by working cheap, he said.
"They're taking the lower-wage jobs from Americans who work in lower-wage jobs."
Mr. Rheame and Mr. O'Connor stressed that they are not anti-immigrant, just anti-exploitation of workers by employers, some of whom have themselves been undercut by other unscrupulous, anti-union contractors.
Illegal immigration over the past half-decade has quietly risen from a fringe issue — a problem most evident in the siren rants of talk radio callers — to a front-line, national issue that no self-preserving American politician can ignore.
Even the McCain-Kennedy Bill — a moderate bill that would allow illegal immigrants to eventually become U.S. citizens — includes a provision for the construction of a border fence between the southwestern United States and Mexico.
Advocacy groups have formed, and even pro-immigrant Democrats and moderate Republicans now acknowledge that the influx of undocumented workers is depressing American wages.
Russell Gale, a member of the Massachusetts Citizens for Immigration Reform, said there isn't a labor shortage in the United States, there's simply unfair, corporate-driven, government policies that are eliminating good-paying jobs.
"The high-tech jobs have gone to India, the manufacturing jobs have gone to China and the service jobs are going to illegal aliens," he said.
The immigration-jobs issue touches close to home in New Bedford.
John "Buddy" Andrade, a longtime New Bedford activist, charged yesterday that every day construction jobs are being performed in the city by immigrant workers while American residents of color are going unemployed.
The same prejudice was also evident at the Michael Bianco factory in the South End, where 361 illegal immigrants were removed from their jobs Tuesday, he said.
Cape Verdean and other city residents of color were not considered for those positions, he contended, because they would not accept the unreasonable working conditions and low wages.
"It's racism," he said. "They don't want any Americans. They don't want anyone who is going to challenge them."
Many union leaders say illegal immigrants are not themselves the problem.
Warren Pepicelli, an official with the union that represents the kind of stitchers employed by Michael Bianco Inc., said the sewing factory jobs have already gone overseas because of free-trade agreements passed over the past 15 years.
His union, the Boston-based UNITEHERE, is moving to unionize service-sector industries (hotels, restaurants, laundries), trying to make them middle-class jobs, he said.
UNITEHERE does not think foreign workers are taking jobs from Americans, he said.
"I think the problem here is the employer who is exploiting undocumented workers."
His union would like to organize the illegal immigrants that work in places like the Bianco factory, Mr. Pepicelli said, but the workers are too afraid of the owners.
"The problem is that the employers, if they know their people are undocumented, will scare the workers from organizing themselves by threatening them with deportation," he said.
With the flood of illegal immigrants now estimated at 12 million, even progressive political leaders have said it is a major problem.
Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., says he supports the construction of a border fence as part of a multi-pronged approach that would also allow the millions of illegal immigrants residing in the Untied States to become legal.
Rep. Frank also supports a national registry — he stresses it would be a central information repository, not an identity card — so employers could definitively know who's legal and who isn't.
"I don't think it's feasible to deport all the people in this condition," he said.
Rep. Frank said he thinks the presence of illegal workers, to some extent, does depress American wages, as well as allow adverse working conditions.
"When you're illegal, you can't join a union and advocate for your legal rights," he said.
Contact Jack Spillane
at jspillane@s-t.com



http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/03 ... 2local.htm

I don't think it's feasible to deport all the people in this condition," he said

He also thinks marriage should be between a man and a man . Yeah like I am going to listen to you barney