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  1. #1

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    Rich man, poor man: the immigration sweepstakes

    Monday, December 25, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

    Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.

    Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
    Rich man, poor man: the immigration sweepstakes

    There's a popular game in America that goes, I'll cut your wages, but you don't cut mine. And the outsourcing of your factory job to China is a good thing, because it makes my paycheck go further at Wal-Mart. We hear this theme a lot in the debate over illegal immigration.

    Consider the recent raids on Swift meat-processing plants. Federal agents arrested 1,187 illegal immigrants at facilities in six states. Mere hours later, economists warned that depriving the industry of illegal labor could raise hamburger prices.

    Illegal immigration is usually presented as a win-win situation: Undocumented foreigners earn far more than they could back home. Consumers get a bargain.

    Nowhere to be seen are America's working poor who get stomped on 13 different ways. They have to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and housing. Low-skilled natives and legal immigrants also end up subsidizing the undocumented because they tend to live in the same communities, which must provide hospitals, police, schools and garbage pickup.

    Who doesn't suffer from illegal immigration? For starters, the people who write about it. I speak of the journalism profession, which has the habit of covering the issue by anecdotes. Reporters thrive on sympathetic stories about illegal immigrants who work hard and go to church.

    But, were a busload of illegals from Australia to turn up at their newspaper and offer reportage at 10 percent below the going rate, the writers would call the authorities so fast that your head would spin. And the publisher's argument that thanks to the cheap Australians, he's able to trim a few cents off the newsstand price would make no impression.

    As it turns out, the meat-processing companies that employ so many illegal immigrants have been enjoying a nearly 50-percent discount on what was the going rate. In 1980, the average meat-processing job paid $19 an hour. The companies then moved their plants to rural areas, far from the Midwest cities and their unions. The industry's wages now average about $9 an hour.

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes to wail about the "labor shortage." It says there aren't enough chambermaids, dishwashers, etc. to work for its members at lousy wages. Odd, but when there's a shortage of labor β€” or anything else β€” doesn't the price of it go up?

    The price of unskilled labor in the United States hasn't gone up. It has gone down. Because of immigration, American-born high-school dropouts experienced a 5-percent loss in wages during the '80s and '90s, according to a study by Harvard economist George Borjas.

    For some reason, the job of keeping prices low has fallen entirely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. If we banged down CEO compensation and sliced lawyers' pay by a third, the same thing would happen. Everyone's prices would drop. The corporation could sell its products for less, and the cost of legal services would fall.

    No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. "If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors," Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, "everyone in this room would benefit." Except the American doctors.

    Suggest a U.S. labor policy that depresses professional pay as a means of keeping prices in check, and you get laughed out of the room. But say that sitting on the wages of unskilled factory workers stems inflationary pressure β€” a frequent argument β€” and the Ph.D.s quietly nod in agreement.

    And that's how the game is played. High pay for me. Low pay for you. The folks at the economic bottom are obviously not making the rules.

    Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com

    2006, The Providence Journal Co.

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  2. #2
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    Great op=ed piece. Hope it gets plenty of readership in oh-so-liberal Seattle.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  3. #3
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    Quote:
    "No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. "If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors," Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, "everyone in this room would benefit." Except the American doctors. "


    This is exactly what will happen with National Health Care; and this is where I draw the line. I will never, never go to a doctor from Panjeb...or any other foreign country!

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