What really happens when you remove illegals from the job market. Do their jobs go undone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s an accepted bit of cultural wisdom that illegal immigrants do the jobs that ordinary Americans will not do. Landscaping, housekeeping, repetitive and physically demanding factory and industrial work, construction etc.

Stepping back I really have to wonder if this this true. The old refrain by many employers was that “I can’t get an American to do these jobs that the illegals are perfectly happy to do.”

Labor availability is mainly a function of supply and demand. It’s obvious that if employers can get away with paying rock bottom wages for physically demanding, low skill jobs, they will, as it makes them more profitable and competitive, but what is going to happen when illegals largely disappear from the job pool of a community? Do the jobs simply go undone or do wages rise? Do manufacturers go out of business if they have to hire US workers for more than minimum wage? Someone was doing these jobs before illegal immigration was as pervasive as it is today.

Are there any real life examples to go by as to what really happens when the illegals vanish from the labor pool?

2

I don’t have any real life examples of illegal immigrants being removed from the job market but I can say that there are many hgih school kids around here who had/are having trouble finding summer jobs. Those businesses that used to hire kids (lawn services, fast food, waiting tables, car wash, etc) are now hiring illegal immigrants.

When people try to make the argument that illegal immigrants are doing jobs Americans won’t do, I don’t agree. When I was a teenager my friends and I worked alot of crap jobs because we wanted to buy a car (and insurance and gas to go with it). There are teens out there now willing to do the same thing but those entry-level service industry jobs just aren’t available to them anymore.

As I said, this is based on MY experience and what I have observed in talking with teens of my friends. Of course, YMMV.

3

The employers will have to raise wages to attract legal workers. They’ll pass the costs on to their customers, so whatever good or service that company provides will get a little more expensive. Eventually, a new equilibrium will develop.

The old line about Americans not wanting to do those jobs is total bullshit. What they really mean is, they can’t get Americans to do those jobs for the piss-poor, often below-minimum-wage, wages that illegal immigrants will accept because they have no choice.

With unemployment at near 10%, do you really think that there aren’t any legal American who would be willing to take a job as a roofer or a nanny or watever, provided you were willing to pay them fairly?

4

THe fact is, the people who employ illegals are mostly paying them under the table. They are not paying social security or income taxes, and neither are the illegals. These employers are stealing from the people who DO pay their taxes, because the illegals get free medical care (at local emergency rooms), which is paid for by taxpayers.

5

The jobs would get done. It’s about how cheap the employers can get away with being. The phrase should be I can’t get anybody to do the job, because I’m not willing to pay more.

6

There often are employers who would be willing to pay more to hire legit workers, but they can’t - because all of their competitors in that industry are hiring illegals for sub-min-wage, and so they can’t remain competitive without stooping to the same practice.

Prices for goods and services will go up, but in most cases, not by much, since the cost of the unskilled labor is often only a portion of the overall cost of a product.

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Impact of Increased Wages on Food Cost

Dr. Philip Martin, a leading academic authority on agricultural labor, notes that American consumers now spend more on alcoholic beverages on average than they spend on fresh fruits and vegetables.

An average household currently spends about $370 per year on fruits and vegetables. If curtailing illegal alien agricultural labor caused tighter labor conditions and a 40 percent increase in wages, the increased cost to the American family would be $9 a year, or about 2.4 cents per day. Yet for the farm laborer, the change would mean an increase in earnings from $8,800 to $12,350 for each 1,000 hours of work (25 weeks if the worker worked 40-hour weeks). That increase would move the worker from beneath the federal poverty line to above it.

According to Dr. Martin, “…consumers who pay $1 for a pound of apples, or $1 for a head of lettuce, are giving 16 to 19 cents to the farmer and 5 to 6 cents to the farm worker.” 3 Therefore, a 40 percent increase in the 5 to 6 cents a pound that the farm worker receives would amount to an increase of about 2 cents per pound that would probably be passed on to the consumer.

(Martin, Philip, PhD., Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California-Davis, “How we Eat: 2004,” Rural Migration News Vol. 13 No. 4, January 2006.)

Impact of Increased Hotel Wages
Let’s use Los Angeles as an example. A new “living wage” law just took effect there, setting housekeeping wages at $10.64 per hour if there are no benefits. That comes out to $85.12 per shift before taxes. At the LAX Hilton a housekeeper is expected to clean sixteen rooms per eight hour shift (2007 figure). That means the hotel pays her $5.32 per room.

If Hilton increased housekeeping wages by 50%, to $15.96 per hour ($127.68 per shift) it would cost $7.98 to clean each room, or $2.66 more. That cost can be passed on to the hotel guest.

The cheapest unrestricted room rate (as of March, 2008) is $239 a day. The extra cost of the wage increase to the guest is 1.1%.

7

I can’t really say for all industries. But in the agricultural sector, there are numerous reports of crops rotting in the fields following immigration sweeps and general crackdowns. Colorado and Arizona have both leased state prisoners, paid about $1-2 per day, to farmers in order to bring in crops during labor shortages that followed immigration actions. Department of Labor estimates that around 50-60% of agricultural workers are undocumented. United Farm Workers puts it at 80-90%.

http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1549_0_4_0
http://demo.democracydata.com/agjobs/pdf/WSJ_Immigration%20Non-Harvest.pdf

8

I can’t find the original article I once read about the Crider poultry plant’s labor woes after it was raided and lost it’s illegal immigrant workforce. This blog has a run-down of the story though:

The full entry also talks about the business practices of the Crider plant (they seem to treat their workers pretty shabby) and other business examples.

9

I agree with nearly all of what you say except about the inevitability of price rises if you employ legal workers.

Over this side of the pond, in my personal experience ,there are people running cleaning companies and nursing homes, employing “asylum seekers” at rock bottom rates.

They take dubiously legal deductions from their wages amongst other things,
(charging them for training and cleaning materials, handling charges for processing their pay)
and who justify their practices by saying that their businesses would be unable to stay afloat if they payed higher wages.
These self same people live in extremely large and incredibly expensive homes,own several Rolls Royces, have several top rate foreign holidays a year and generally live very pleasant life styles.

If they employed locals at a living rate they might have to drive less expensive cars, or have a couple fewer holidays a year but they could retail their services at their present rates.

One of the major losers we have as a result of these business practices are university students, who in years past used to do the lower paid jobs to get themselves through college.

(And gain useful experience of life at the same time)

The business “Vultures” not only rob from our present but they rob from our future.

Of course we will always have those people who don’t want to work and would rather live on welfare, but these by no means make up the majority of the working age population.

But you can almost certainly guarantee that in debates like this they will be trotted out as the norm in an attempt to justify employing semi slave labour.

“Oh yes the kids round here turn their noses up at - Insert figure here- per hour ,so thats why we employ Outer Mongolians etc.”

10

Given the unemployment rate, I know the work would get done.

But not without complaining. A lot of former office workers have never had calluses on their hands. It would be a shock. Think Mike Rowe in Dirty Jobs except the job doesn’t end after 1 day.

11

Surely there is some wage they could offer that would attract legal workers to pick their crops. Or, they could use the mechanical pickers that are widely available in other countries. But they simply don’t want to pay that much. Which gives me an idea - if Western farmers have the right to labor at a price they like, then don’t I have the right to vegetables at a price I like? They think wages are too high; likewise I think asparagus is too expensive, so I’m going to steal some. I know it’s against the law to steal, but it’s against the law for the asparagus farm to hire illegal aliens, so turnabout is fair play.

Seriously, though. I had a tree cut down in my yard this week, and the guys who did it were plain old white Americans. I used to live in LA, and I mentioned to my wife that if we still lived there, there would be approximately a 99.9% chance that the guys the landscaper sent to cut the tree down would have been illegal aliens. Yet, I had no trouble getting the job done where I am now. I don’t think I paid more than I would have in LA, either. Maybe the landscaper doesn’t make the kind of profits he could make in LA with illegal labor, but people around here, in their naivete, seem to have respect for the law. I’d like to have my lawn mowed for $2, but alas, nobody will do it. Are there any countries where peasants or serfs still exist? I’ll just move there.

12

Not at a wage where it would still be possible to sell produce that is competitively priced with imports. Are you ok with a majority of industrial-scale farms just packing up and leaving the fruit/vegetable business? Some people feel that maintaining a viable domestic agricultural industry is a matter of national security. It’s a very complicated topic.

Aparagus crop reduced by 30,000 acres in California since 2000, farmers cannot compete with imports from Peru & Mexico;

13

I think this is accurate.

As an anecdotal experience, my babysitter’s daughter’s boyfriend works doing something akin to cutting down branches (I’m not very sure, I just had a quick discussion with him about it). He said that he hasn’t been able to secure any work in the last few months because he was constantly underbid by ‘illegals’. I’m not sure how he knew they were illegal or anything, but the point is that ‘legals’ (at least this one I reference) are fighting a bidding war to do labor jobs.

Again, I have no evidence that the war is with actual illegals - just that labor is cheap because there is a plethora of laborers out there.

14

Agreed 100%. Were were the gobs of savings when the company’s costs went down because of all the now-available cheap (and illegal) labor?

That’s the clincher, isn’t it?

Back in the 80s when I was young and looking for part time employment, I would apply to such places as landscapers, fast food, construction labor etc. All these positions at the time were filled with young-uns like me at the time. Now, the positions are all filled by immigrants, illegal or not. As far as I know I’m not seeing any employment opportunities for ex-lawn maintenance guys.

Don’t freakin’ tell me that illegals aren’t taking Citizen’s jobs.

15

I’m in a part of Canada where illegal immigrants aren’t a problem, but there’s still an issue. Those high school kids? They don’t want to work. My (retired) dad works a couple of hours a day at a fast food joint doing things like sweeping the parking lot. He says the kids there are just lazy and will just not show up for work, not calling in or anything.

So his boss got some people from the Philippines to come work. Totally legal and everything, he owns an extra house and the workers stay there (I don’t know if it’s for free or greatly reduced rent). Those workers are so happy to come to Canada and work a normal workday at a fast food place. I’m not saying this as a ‘everything’s better here!’ brag, but that teens these days aren’t that willing to work crap jobs.

16

Wrong, they often pay both. Example:

They pay into the system, but aren’t eligible for benefits. So, that’s about 7 billion a year we’d lose for Social Security alone if they vanished.

17

I’m wondering if we couldn’t add another factor. It seems to me that any job at all, however low paying, would be better than no job. But there does seem to be an ego factor at play with many of our younger workers which didn’t exist to such a broad extent some decades ago.

I’ve heard plenty of “I’m not going to scrub toilets, take out trash, flip burgers, whatever.” Maybe it’s just the usual bluster but I think people used to be more accepting of the idea that you can start small and work your way up and that it doesn’t reflect poorly on you.

I also think parents are less apt to set limits than they used to with their young and so they fill in the gaps for kids who don’t have jobs rather than allow their child to go without thereby motivating him to get out there and do whatever to make a buck.

Maybe it’s only my observation but I’ve met a lot of parents who make excuses for their children rather than allow them to hurt a little and challenge them to succeed.

18

I wanted to chime in and say I’ve heard/read about the same phenomenon (teens not being able to get stereotypical “summer” jobs") but the reason given was different. Perhaps it’s a regional thing, but in a lot of places, those jobs aren’t available to teens because they’re been taken by adults (citizens) who’ve lost their regular jobs in the extended economic downturn. A lot of legal American citizens have lost their jobs lately, if you haven’t heard, and most of them have snagged the “teen summertime” jobs long ago. (Plus, they aren’t going back to school in September.)

19

No, I do not consider asparagus a national security issue. If Mexico can provide jobs for its many, many unskilled laborers by growing asparagus for export, more power to them. Maybe that way they won’t have to jump the border.

Whatever happened to the United Farm Workers? I seem to remember a time when it was considered a no-no to buy grapes, because the UFW was running a boycott to protest the low wages and bad conditions for grape pickers. If people will pay double for organic produce, and extra for “fair trade” coffee, wouldn’t they pay a premium for “fair wage” produce as well?

20

If you look at Uganda you found when they expelled the Asian, who were there legally, the country suffered for a few years but long term it was actually good. Today Uganda has one of the highest numbers of middle class. When the jobs left, someone took them. It’s not like they went undone.

Illegals cost a lot more than wages. For instance, they won’t report crime, this allows criminals to flourish. They live in substandard housing, this allows slum lords to make money whereas they’d have to fix there properties. Those are just two examples. And I am NOT blaming the illegals.

Illegals don’t work for minimum wage they work for sub-minimum. All that happens when you take illegals and make them legal is they quit those subminimum jobs and take minimum wage LEGAL jobs.

Not only are the workers illegal but almost all the time the jobs the work at are illegal as well.

The same argument when the slaves were freed and when child labor laws were put in force were made. Yes people suffered for year or so, then it levels out.