A Slump In The Invasion?
Posted in Illegal Aliens & Immigration Reforms on December 28th, 2007 by MorningStar

The Los Angeles Times reported on December 26th that some illegal aliens currently in the U.S are telling their friends and relatives back home to stay put because it isn’t worth the hassle and risk to come here anymore. One reason cited by the Times is the slump in the American housing market and the resulting decline of jobs in the building trades.

Immediately prior to the slump in the American housing market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that there was a nearly 30% increase in construction jobs over the preceding 10 years. Oddly enough, they also noted that while the number of production industry jobs only increased by a mere 10% in the same period of time, the demand for production workers forced the wages of production workers up by nearly 33% while the wages paid to construction workers barely managed to keep up with the 25% rate of inflation. In a market driven economy an increased demand for workers results in higher wages paid as companies are forced to compete for workers. The 10% increase in production jobs resulting in a 33% increase in production worker’s wages is absolutely normal in every respect. However, a 30% increase in construction jobs resulting in no significant wage increase for the workers employed in that field is improbable in a market driven economy until you factor in the huge numbers of illegal aliens employed by the construction companies.

Building contractors struggling to stay afloat in the highly competitive world of new home construction threw their sense of ethics to the side and satisfied the 30% increase in available skilled construction jobs with semi-skilled illegal alien laborers at a lower than average wage. While this shift in honesty allowed the building contractors the ability to remain competitive, it forced the entire industry into a general average wage decline for legal as well as illegal workers and the overall quality of their finished product declined. Furthermore, as the practice of hiring illegal alien workers to work in new home construction increased the competitiveness between building contractors increased even more and the employment of illegal alien workers quickly went from being a stop-gap measure to being a preferred practice. The blue collar jobs of the construction industry which historically served the non-college graduate, middle class American citizens as a means to the economic improvement they desired for themselves and their families quickly began to dry up and the well-paying jobs as skilled carpenters, painters, plumbers and construction laborers, formerly the mainstay of many American middle-class workers, increasingly went to illegal aliens working at greatly reduced rates and leaving millions of American citizens stranded in an economic state of limbo where they can’t even begin to compete with the illegal aliens now filling their former positions.

With one out of every five illegal aliens now in the U.S. working in the building trades, it is clearly evident that, like the agricultural industry, the construction industry has become a magnet for illegal alien workers and the middle-class blue collar American workers who once depended on those jobs for the wages that provided the financial security required to raise their families in comfortable suburban homes have been left out in the cold.

The illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. are fairly pragmatic. As the slump in the American housing market grows and their employment opportunities decrease, fewer will be tempted to risk the consequences of illegal entry. Contrary to what the media editorialists have written and the politicians in Washington might say, the number one motivation for illegal aliens to enter the U.S. is money, and if they can’t be reasonably assured of getting it, they won’t come here. They are not flooding across the unobstructed southern border because they dream of American liberty and freedom and they are certainly not coming here to become part of the American dream, they come here for money, pure and simple , and if they can’t displace American workers employed in good paying jobs, they will stay home. The simple minded claim that they were only interested in jobs that American’s wouldn’t do was a bald-faced political lie used to justify weak immigration enforcement policies.

The second reason why the Los Angeles Times claims that illegal aliens are telling their friends and relatives back home to stay put is that stepped-up workplace raids and increased immigration enforcement is beginning to make many illegal aliens feel less than fully appreciated. While this second reason may have served the editorial needs of a liberal rag openly sympathetic to the criminal invaders of our nation, it is a far cry from the truth because there really hasn’t been any significant increase in workplace raids or increased immigration enforcement in the United States. Workplace raids have been played up by the American media more than ever before because, in our current hysteria driven political environment, they are more controversial and anything even remotely controversial sells newspapers. If the federal government actually began to target the employers of illegal aliens there would be “Help Wantedâ€