Who gets hurt? Is Illegal Immigration a victimless crime? Part III

This is Part III of a four-part series on the victims of illegal immigration.


San Diego, CA ---In Parts I & II of this series we have established that crossing our borders illegally, is in fact a crime according to US Code Title 8 Section 1325. Additionally, I addressed the issues of illegal immigration crime and its impact on the community, including how immigrant on immigrant crime is violent and often unreported.

How does this crime of crossing our borders illegally affect the economy, the American worker and the taxpayer during good times and bad? Well, during good times the impact is still there, we just do not notice it as much, which is precisely how, given the economic boom over the last seven years or so, the impact has gone somewhat unnoticed and has spiraled out of control. For verification one only need to look at the fiscal condition of California.

As the economy began to seriously falter in 2008, warning bells went off and the impact on the American worker became more and more apparent. In employment for example the competition for jobs across all industries and career fields increased as the number of available jobs declined markedly and the number of layoffs soared.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center there are estimated to be 11.9 million illegal aliens in the United States, 76% of whom are Hispanic and 59% of those are Mexican. Asian illegal immigrants total 11% and those from the Middle East are less than 2%. Central and South America send us the remainder. In 2008 Pew estimated that approximately 8.3% of the workforce on average are Illegal Aliens with California, Arizona and Nevada topping 10% each.

As an occupation, farming leads the pack with 25% of all farm workers illegally in the United States. This however is misleading because as a percentage of the overall illegal population and not just the percentage of farm workers, only about 4% of the total are engaged in farming or agriculture. Ninety–six percent of those working are employed elsewhere. In the construction industry nearly 17.3% are illegal (up from 10.2% in 2003). Building, grounds keeping and maintenance jobs are nearly 1 in 5 held by illegal aliens. Production jobs are 10% and persons illegally in this country even hold 10% of the managerial and technical jobs. The latter, being mostly as a result of overstayed visas and not border fence jumpers.

So much for the argument that illegal aliens are only “doing the jobs Americans won’t do. Fact is in many cases they are “doing the jobs Americans used to do.â€