Thread: Work of illegals indispensable to our economy

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/124531.php

Work of illegals indispensable to our economy
Our view: Comprehensive, practical immigration reform that addresses concerns of all is urgently needed
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.14.2006

Unless we're willing to pay higher prices for many of the things we take for granted — our homes, for example — we have to recognize the vital role illegal immigrants play in our economy and pressure policy-makers to create a legal framework in which businesses and all workers can openly contribute to our society and our economy.

The Star's Brady McCombs and Thomas Stauffer, authors of a four-day investigative series on the construction industry that ends today (Page A1), revealed that demands for low housing costs, coupled with an untenable verification system and legal-work-force shortages, are the foundation of a flourishing illegal-labor-built economy.
Illegal workers, lower costs

The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C., told McCombs and Stauffer that illegal workers make up 34 percent of the construction work force in Arizona. However, more than half of the 27,000 construction laborers in Tucson are here illegally.

Even with illegal immigrants putting up homes in our community, the local industry has a shortage of 5,000 workers. It's clear they're not taking anyone's job. If wages were higher, more legal workers still wouldn't pick up a hammer.

"If there were 5,000 local construction workers available, skilled or unskilled, they'd be snapped up tomorrow," builder Michael Keith told McCombs and Stauffer. "They don't exist. End of story."
So what would happen if 13,500 illegal construction workers in Tucson were suddenly unemployed by cracking down on companies for which they worked?

Home-building would come to a standstill, at least for a while, and legal workers would have an increase in pay compared to wages paid to illegals, McCombs and Stauffer reported.

The hit to our economy would be tremendous. The construction industry is worth $2 billion a year in Tucson. You can't take that kind of money out of an economy our size and expect our community to prosper. All of Tucson's businesses, big and small, would be affected.

Based on economists' projections, the Star found that illegal labor holds down prices by as much as $38,000 on a median-priced $267,000 Tucson home. It's not a stretch to say other industries, such as hospitality, are in similar situations.

On top of the demand to keep prices down and deal with a limited labor market, employers are burdened with verifying the laborers' legal status — having to discern real from fraudulent documents, something the Immigration and Naturalization Service has difficulty doing.

The government isn't making verification simple, as it is often bogged down with lack of communication and limited information sharing among departments, such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

The peek at how illegal labor fits into the construction industry offers a glimpse at similar situations in other sectors. Like construction, other industries would suffer without illegal workers.

"The Arizona economy, the Tucson economy, the national economy continues to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs each year for low-skilled workers in construction, landscaping, food preparation and cleaning at a time when there just aren't enough Americans around to fill all the jobs," Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute, told McCombs and Stauffer.

Aboveboard answers needed

Immigration law does not address the needs of the U.S. economy and its culture of illegal immigration in the workplace.

That's why it is important for Congress to follow President Bush's lead and pass a comprehensive immigration-reform package that includes not only border security, but a guest-worker program and a way for hardworking illegal immigrants with roots in America to remain in the country and earn legal status and, eventually, citizenship.

Our community's businesses should not be enticed to break the law by the ease of finding and hiring illegal workers. Rather, they should be given the tools to avoid hiring illegal workers, such as fraud-proof documents and a reliable verification system for self-enforcement.

In a May 21 editorial, we called for the United States and Mexico to open employment offices south of the border where temporary workers could go to meet recruiters for industries in the United States.

"Immigrants in the United States illegally could be enlisted to work for a fixed period of time in these places — call them employment consulates if you like — performing a service for both Mexico and the United States and in the process earning money and points toward legal citizenship," we said on May 21.

This is but one idea to create a workable alternative to illegal immigration by acknowledging the real needs of employers, the illegal immigrant and our local economy.

Congress, get to work on real, comprehensive immigration reforms that address security, employer, worker and economic needs.

Bologna. If illegals are such an impact on keeping prices down, particularly in construction as this article states, how to you explain the recent housing boom and now leveling off.

Exactly, the housing median out here in California has gone over 400,000.
So the higher ups plan to continue exploiting labor? Businesses and corperate industries do not keep prices low because they the use low cost labor. If that was so inflation would be down. They use them for higher profit margins and to avoid paying taxes and workers comp,PERIOD!
And after all said and done, say they were all legalized, their wages would have to be raised.
So either way, whether a workers program (which I`m totaly against) or chase their illegal asses out of here, there may be some type of impact (mostly on them) But more American workers will have jobs to pay for any inflated price that may come along.