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Mass Immigration Displaces Black Workers

by Lewis Loflin

In a speech before MALDEF AG Holder claims "Amnesty is a Civil Right" yet ignores the causes of black worker displacement and poverty.

What hasn't been reported is a letter from three of the eight members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to the Congressional Black Caucus. They confirm what this writer has said for years that mass legal-illegal immigration has devastated black workers driving down their standard of living and even displacing them from the workforce entirely.

So why are white liberals so determined to throw poor black people "under the bus" for Hispanics? Part of the answer is corporate funding of open border organizations and the large number of well-moneyed people operating for their own interests in maintaining political power. They see Hispanics as a new foundation of their power base.

To understand why see Race as an Issue in the 2012 Elections by the New York Times.

Some excerpts from that letter (download here) makes the case clear:

In light of recent debates on comprehensive immigration reform, we are writing to address a rarely discussed effect of granting legal status or effective amnesty to illegal immigrants. Such grant of legal status will likely disproportionately harm lower-skilled African-Americans by making it more difficult for them to obtain employment and depressing their wages when they do obtain employment. The increased employment difficulties will likely have negative consequences that extend far beyond economics.

They cited economist Gordon Hanson's research on how mass immigration "accounts for about 40 percent of the 18 percentage point decline in black employment rates" from 1960-2000. Even as the big downturn destroyed black income and assets in 2001, out of control immigration under President Bush devastated black workers and favored lower wage Hispanics and big business.

See Study Says White Families Wealth Advantage Has Grown.

Yet Mr. Holder says,

"[I]t is long past time to reform our immigration system in a way that is fair; that guarantees that all are playing by the same rules..."

Here he wants to award non-citizens (and their illegal employers) with a "fair" system at the same time inflicting upon black American citizens an unfair and abusive labor market keeping them in poverty. Yet the Congressional Black Caucus joins AG Holder in destroying low-skill black workers. The letter has a number of facts that only the most criminally indifferent could ignore.

Blacks and illegal immigrants both "are disproportionately likely to be low-skilled" and thus assures a massive surplus of low-skill labor "preventing wages from rising" which is why black income (in fact all low-skill workers) so lags average white income.

And that "research found that illegal immigrants had displaced U.S. citizens in industries that had traditionally employed large numbers of African-Americans, such as meatpacking." Come to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia or Hamblen County Tennessee where imported illegal aliens have pushed low-income legal workers out of the job market.

The Census Bureau released a report in February 2012 finding that 50.9 percent of native-born blacks had only a high school education at best while "75.5 percent of foreign-born Hispanics had not been educated beyond high school." This "relegates" black men in particular to the "low-skilled labor market, where they must compete against low-skilled Hispanics for work."

In fact employers prefer not to hire blacks at all finding illegal aliens easier to abuse and exploit. What isn't being said is if these workers suddenly become legal, they will be relegated to the same undesirable status as blacks once again be replaced by new illegal workers. The worse black unemployment and poverty rates seem to be in those areas flooded with immigrants legal and illegal, in particular large urban areas.

Yet it's reported the new "immigration reform" of 2013 will include not only legalizing 11-20 million illegal aliens but import an additional 22 million additional guest workers!

Harvard professor George Borjas notes that illegal aliens cost native born workers $99 to $118 billion a year amounting to $1396.00 each, heavily loaded towards the lowest skilled workers, in particular black men. Julie Hotchkiss, a research economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, estimated that,

"as a result of this growth in the share of undocumented workers, the annual earnings of the average documented worker in Georgia in 2007 were 2.9 percent ($960) lower than they were in 2000....Annual earnings for the average documented worker in the leisure and hospitality sector in 2007 were 9.1 percent ($1,520) lower than they were in 2000."

For poor families $80 a month really hurts. This loss in wages is most devastating for black families and is believed to contribute to a number of social ills related to family breakdown. Some states do require use of E-Verify to give some protection to low-skill workers, but legalization would end even that small advantage:

Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants would only exacerbate this problem facing low-skilled men,who are disproportionately African-American. The dearth of job opportunities gives these men less confidence in their ability to support a family, and gives women reason to fear that these prospective husbands will be only another mouth to feed. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants will only further harm African-American workers.

Not only will the low-skilled labor market continue to experience a surplus of workers, making it difficult for African-Americans to find job opportunities, but African Americans will be deprived of one of their few advantages in this market.

Some states require private employers to use E-Verify to establish that their workers are in the country legally. This levels the playing field a bit for African-Americans. If illegal immigrants are granted legal status, this small advantage disappears...

Conclusion

Legalizing the up to 20 million illegal aliens will wreck an already depressed labor market in particular for low-achieving non-Asian minorities. Many of those that are supposed to protect the interests of black Americans such as the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and other leftist special interests stab them in back by following policies that directly hurt black workers.

We can't continue this policy of artificial wage suppression then make up for with welfare and government handouts. This system makes the poor virtual slaves to government hacks and social engineers using them as test subjects in one failed project after another. A paycheck will create more self esteem than all of the silly government programs left-wing academics and think tanks can concoct in their isolated fantasy world.

This endless brow-beating on "white racism" is a lie to draw attention away from the big lies fed to black Americans by the race hustlers. The people behind this are in fact are a small white elite that betrays working class whites as well as blacks.

As lower class whites such as myself I have absolutely no more power against these people than the abused black workers. The only power most of us really have is we can mitigate some of the abuse, but the white working class has nobody to protect or speak for them outside perhaps Ron Paul. (And we know what the Wall Street Republicans locked him out of the convention.)

Why hasn't this letter been made more public? Political correctness and cries of racism derails any rational discussion on this issue and if black Americans want to continue to be useful idiots for the liberal race hustlers they have no hope for a future.

Here in Appalachia we deal with the poverty hustlers who grow rich operating government programs while the average poor white sees little but welfare dependency and economic exploitation. Sound familiar?

I don't like Malcolm X, but he is not a stupid man when he called the "foxy white liberals" for what they really are.

Enforcing existing immigration and labor laws and ending this endless deluge of foreign replacement workers at below market wage scales will allow all working people both white a fair to have some leverage against these abusive and exploitive employers. That will give black workers the leverage to earn a living and break the chains of government dependency.







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