Assume Congress was considering a “comprehensive” plan to reduce wages for the poor, increase crime in minority neighborhoods, further diminish already failing public schools, and seriously strain an overburdened health care system.
Surely such a proposal would be dismissed as “un-American”.
Yet this is exactly what the current amnesty/guest worker bill would accomplish.
While multi-national corporations brazenly urge Congress to decriminalize the subsidized illegal labor of an estimated 20 million illegal aliens, there has been little public exposure of what would happen to low-income U.S. citizens, particularly minorities.
T. Willard Fair is President of the Urban League of Greater Miami and in his own words “devoted much of his adult life to helping black men build constructive lives.” During recent testimony before Congress, Mr. Fair asked a series of real-life questions striking at the heart of the proposed amnesty.
“Think about it this way: If there’s a young black man in Liberty City, where I live, who’s good with his hands and wants to become a carpenter, which is more likely to help him achieve that goal — amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?
Which is more likely to help an ex-convict or recovering addict get hired at an entry-level job and start the climb back to a decent life — amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?
Which is more likely to persuade a teenager in the inner city to reject the lure of gang life and instead stick with honest employment — amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?”
Dr. Norman Matloff is a highly regarded professor and former Chairman for the University of California Davis Affirmative Action Committee. Influenced by his childhood in predominantly Latino East Los Angeles, Dr. Matloff’s professional career has been devoted to helping minorities. He is married to an immigrant. During testimony before Congress, Dr. Matloff summarized his lengthy and detailed research into the destructive impact of illegal/legal immigration on minorities, “The adverse impacts are both economic and non-economic in nature: increased job competition; lowered wages; reduced opportunities for entrepreneurs; reductions in quality of education and housing; increased exposure to disease.”
Monroe Anderson, a well-respected African-American columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently penned a column entitled “Immigration Hurts Blacks.” He describes the current Senate amnesty proposal this way, “…so rich and rewarding — for the rich. Illegal immigration allows the rich to get cheaper and cheaper goods and services and the black working class and poor to get hustled and trickled-down on.”
A 2006 raid at a chicken processing plant in Stillmore resulted in the employer, Crider Inc., turning to the state employment office for the first time in years. The result cast doubt on the long-standing claim “these are jobs Americans won’t do,” more than 400 applicants came looking for work. Almost every new Crider employee is African-American. According to news reports, for the first time since illegal aliens began arriving in the mid-1990s, a majority of the production line workers are now black Americans.
Professors George Borjas of Harvard, Jeffrey Grogger of the University of California, and Dr. Gordon Hanson from MIT conducted an exhaustive study for the National Bureau of Economic Research determining the impact of immigration, both legal/illegal, on black males. Their summary is unambiguous, “As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose.”
Dr. Frank Morris, a former associate dean at the University of Maryland, now leads a non-profit organization Choose Black America. A recent press statement by Dr. Morris describes outrage felt by many African-Americans, “All Americans are harmed by rampant illegal immigration, but it is blacks, in particular, who have lost economic opportunities, watched their kids’ schools flood with non-English speaking students, and felt the direct impact in countless ways. Our government has failed us, our elected officials have failed us and now they are prepared to compound the damage with an amnesty and guest worker program that will set black Americans back a hundred years.”
As elites in Washington, D.C. seek to satisfy their corporate masters, while simultaneously attempting to purchase a new ethnic voting block, faithful public servants like T. Willard Fair of the Urban League must pick up the pieces of those left behind.
Perhaps we should all listen to his advice: “The interests of black Americans are clear: No amnesty; no guestworkers; enforce the immigration law.”
Sen. Chip Rogers serves as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He represents the 21st Senate District, which includes portions of Cherokee and Cobb counties. He can be reached at his office at (404) 463-1378 or by email at chip.rogers@senate.ga.gov.
