Effects On Displacing Low-Skilled American Labor

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Effects On Displacing Low-Skilled American Labor

According to one study, in New York, �Some of the 86 factory operators who unlucky enough to have been raided in a city with more than 6,000 garment factories do in fact just hire more illegal workers. This enables businesses to compete with foreign companies that often pay less than 50 cents an hour.� There have been many attempts to enact legislation to help control this problem, but many of these are ineffectual, or as in the above case, employers routinely continue to hire cheap sources of illegal labor despite the imposition of fines for having previously done so. One study conducted at Rice University and reported in Cacas (1994) contends that �2.07 million American workers were displaced in 1992 by immigrants.�

The percentage of undocumented or illegal workers compared to legal workers is quite high according to the literature. In another study conducted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), researchers investigated the meatpacking industry, one in which many illegal immigrants find employment. The study found that �a test project involving 234 employers in Santa Ana and the City of Industry, California, found 3,000 illegal immigrants among 11,400 workers checked.� This study found that most employers want to hire lawful workers, but it is often hard for them to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. All

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There are some aspects of society that once reviewed for both waves of immigration demonstrate the similarities and differences of each wave: assimilation; economic effects; politics. Theories on assimilation have changed since the beginning of the 20th century. Previously, observers explained that immigrant cultures and ethnic identities fade rapidly upon arrival in the U.S. It was also argued that the culture shock of immigration has deleterious effects on immigrant families. In the past few decades these theories have swung to the other extreme. Now scholars contend that immigrant cultural identities do not rapidly fade, in fact they persist and help immigrants adjust to the challenges of their new environment. The reality of the situation is that the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes for both waves of emigration in the 20th century.

In general, both in the early 1900s and the late 1900s, strong waves of emigration occurred because of population overcrowding in donor countries and because the economic systems of donor countries were at least partly integrated into the U.S. (i.e., the receiving nation). One need only look at the high numbers of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean after the passage of NAFTA to see that this is certainly true for immigrants from the south. The following chart shows the origin of immigrants to the U.S. in 1992:

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		Wide Web \| City HYPOTHESES \| Responsibility Act \| Gene McNary \| America Caribbean \| Mexico Border \| INS INS \| Labor STATEMENT \| Mexican Asian \| World War \| illegal immigrants \| illegal immigration \| undocumented workers \| american workers \| undocumented immigrants \| 20th century \| green card \| latin america \| undocumented aliens \| hire illegal \| low-skilled american workers \| hire illegal immigrants \| illegal immigration reform \| undocumented workers employment \| immigration reform immigrant \|