Insights from Pat Buchanan in Hire Americans First
Excerpts
Over 800,000 people quit the labor force in September. They packed it in. They stopped looking for work. That is six times the number who quit looking in August and five times the monthly average of those who have given up the search for work in the year since Lehman Brothers died.
Adding to the near 15 million unemployed those who have given up looking for work and those who have taken low-paying part-time jobs, the Washington Times estimates the true employment rate at 17 percent. We used to call that a depression. Yet, with nearly 25 million Americans unemployed, or no longer looking for work, or in low-wage part-time jobs, 8.5 million U.S. jobs are believed to be held by illegal aliens who broke into the country or overstayed their visas. ...
For every job opening in the country, there are six unemployed Americans. With this surplus of idle labor and shortage of jobs, the men who do the hiring are in the catbird’s seat. They can cut wages in the knowledge that desperate Americans will have to accept what is offered. Comes the rote response: Immigrants and illegal aliens only take jobs Americans do not want and will not do. But, last month, a front-page article in USA Today demolished that argument.
When a 2006 raid on six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants rounded up 1,200 illegal aliens, 10 percent of the workforce, Swift was up and running at full staff within months. How? Native-born Americans in the hundreds came out and took the jobs. Says Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain, “Whenever there’s an immigration raid, you find white, black and legal immigrant labor lining up to do these jobs Americans will supposedly not do.” ...
Illegal aliens gravitate to jobs in construction, farming, fishing and forestry. Yet native-born Americans outnumber immigrants three to one in construction and two to one in farming, fishing and forestry, according to Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. Illegals are thus taking jobs Americans not only will do, but Americans are doing. ...
If jobs are available in the United States, Americans should go to the front of the line to get them, ahead of illegal aliens. And as there are six Americans out of work for every job opening, it is time to call a moratorium on immigration. Why are we bringing into the United States over a million legal immigrants a year to compete for jobs against 15 million to 25 million Americans who can’t find work or full-time jobs to take care of their families?
Who is America for -- if not for Americans first?
Read entire article here.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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4 comments:
Many times, the immigrant, illegal or otherwise, will work harder and for less. Predictably, employers want to hire those types of workers. Companies then pass on those savings to us consumers.
We have an unemployment system currently paying millions NOT to work -- a problem. I also think the american worker is over-regulated, putting them at a disadvantage.
If we did not have such a pervasive welfare system, maybe this would not be such an issue?
Yes, it's understandable that people coming from distressed parts of the world are eager workers. But Americans should not have to compete with the world's population, no matter what amount of "savings" go to consumers. I don't buy the libertarian "We are the world" philosophy of economics.
And it is not just welfare types who are affected. For the past several years, we have seen middle class white kids displaced for those summer jobs they used to count on, by an endless flow of foreign laborers. The jobs that retired people thought they could count on when they turned 62, to supplement small pensions or, perhaps, no pensions at all, only Social Security, are now going to another population. And, of course, no employers need take any chances on hiring an ex-con, as they once did, when they are flooded with other choices.
I don't believe that we should care about what "hard workers" foreigners are, before we take care of American needs. I don't believe that employers should be in what Buchanan calls "the catbird’s seat," with the power to exploit wages to their heart's content. It's not just about having a "hard worker," it's about cheap labor. And those "savings" to consumers for all those gadgets and junk they can't stop buying, well, I guess they'll just have to have fewer savings.
Most of what you describe is a unfortunate consequence of our massive welfare state. I'm not talking your typical welfare (food stamps, sec. 8, etc.).
Why not hire the white kid? Maybe because of minimum wage laws, payroll taxes, etc.? Why hire the white kid when the illegal takes less and works harder. Its a no brainer. I'll even say that americans worked harder before the New Deal.
Until the welfare state is dealt with, we will always have this problem.
I say the solution lies in property rights.
Property rights means I can keep what I earn, distribute it how I please, pay who I want however much we mutually agree upon. That means no tax confiscation to pay for myriad welfare programs and bailouts. We dont have that here in America. Until we get much closer to that ideal, the problem of illegal immigration and the inevitable intrusive govt response to it will continue.
I am acquainted with a fifty year old white American roofer who routinely uses illegal Mexican labor, because they work so hard, so well for so little. I knew him well enough to know that he gotten his first roofing job from another white American.
I practically grew up with this person. He never did any type of work for the sheer joy of it; it was always about the money and the roofer who hired him paid him better than a fast food chain would.
I find it hard to believe that today's young Americans are any different than he was, yet he disdains hiring them in favor of people who will work much harder for far less money, because they have no rights.
Moreover, we all know that these workers are paid under the table, so they do not have to report their income making them eligible to receive housing, food stamps, money and free medical care through welfare services. So, in essence, this roofer is shifting most of his labor costs on the American taxpayer.
It is people like this guy who are destroying this country.
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