THE NATIONAL JOURNAL, May 12, 2007, Saturday

Copyright 2007 National Journal Group, Inc.
THE NATIONAL JOURNAL

May 12, 2007

SECTION: LOBBYING & LAW

HEADLINE: Immigration Economics

BYLINE: Neil Munro

HIGHLIGHT:
Some African-Americans say that illegal immigrationhurts the black community.

BODY:
Lobbyists and House members who support immigration have been
jarred by a newspaper advertisement that uses the moral clout of
a veteran black civil-rights leader to highlight anger among
working-class African-Americans about current immigration
levels.

In response to the anger highlighted in the ad, the
advocates have proposed a package of laws to counter perceptions
that immigration, both illegal and legal, is harming the black
community. The proposals include new anti-racism laws,
additional job-training programs, more business regulations, and
a public education campaign that would "counter stereotypes
about immigrants and African-Americans," says a statement by the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which helped draft the
package.

"We're not going to get anywhere without educating people
[that] the immigrants will not undermine our quality of life,"
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told National Journal. She is
a leader on immigration issues for the Congressional Black
Caucus and sits on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on
Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and
International Law. The subcommittee is drafting an immigration
bill that may offer some form of amnesty to illegal immigrants
in the United States -- whose numbers could be as high as 12
million -- and create a new inflow of "guest workers."

The ad has been running in such inside-the-Beltway
publications as Roll Call and The Washington Post as part of a
$50,000 media campaign by the Coalition for the Future American
Worker, which calls itself an umbrella organization of
professional trade associations, population and environment
organizations, and immigration reform groups.

The ad is dominated by a photo of T. Willard Fair, head of
the Miami Urban League, and a declaration that "amnesty for
illegal workers is not just a slap in the face to black
Americans. It's an economic disaster." Fair has been fighting
racial discrimination for 44 years, and he sits on the board of
the D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which wants to
curb immigration.

The coalition has formed a "527" group called Independent
Voices for Change and is trying to raise money "from folks in
America, black and white, who share our particular position on
this issue," Fair said.

The coalition hopes that the ad will help win over a
decisive number of swing-voting whites in both parties by
shielding them from charges of xenophobia and racism. "We [also]
want to help the representatives understand that the majority
restrictionist position is a good moral one and on high ground,"
said Roy Beck, executive director for NumbersUSA, which supports
the coalition.

The small-dollar ad campaign has already prompted House
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., to urge a
broader consideration of immigration's economic impact. The
displacement of U.S. workers, especially black workers, by waves
of immigrants is "a serious problem," he said. "A
full-employment economy has been my life's goal," said Conyers,
who was first elected to Congress in 1964. He would not
speculate on how an immigration bill would affect that goal.

At a May 3 hearing of the House immigration subcommittee,
the witness selected by the panel's Republicans was Vernon
Briggs, a Democrat and a labor-relations professor at Cornell
University, who argued that immigration "hurts the poor" and
will eventually produce a "nightmare" society where a few rich
dominate the many poor. Such an outcome, he said, would result
because unskilled American workers can't compete against
low-wage unskilled migrants.

Polls show that African-Americans and low-income people
mostly oppose greater immigration. A survey of 6,000 people
released in March 2006 by the Pew Research Center for the People
and the Press reported that 58 percent of "financially
struggling" Democratic respondents, and 56 percent of black
Democratic respondents, believed that legal and illegal
immigrants were "a burden."

Informal polls show even greater opposition to immigration.
Up to 80 percent of blacks in Houston oppose further Hispanic
immigration, said Michael Harris, a leading talk-show host on
KCOH radio in that city. "Most of my audience opposes it. They
see Hispanics as competition for jobs ... [and] rental
property," said Harris, who is African-American. Crowding in
schools and hospitals, as well as Hispanics' use of
affirmative-action benefits, also angers blacks, who feel
excluded from jobs when they can't speak Spanish, Harris said.

Some academic studies support such fears. Between 1995 and
2000, legal and illegal immigration reduced wages for U.S. high
school dropouts by 9.5 percent, according to a study by
economist George Borjas of Harvard University. Immigration since
2000 has likely pushed wages down further, he said. In March,
the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent, but the rate for high
school dropouts was 7.0 -- and was even higher for blacks (8.3
percent) and for black dropouts (18.7 percent), according to the
Labor Department.

Many black legislators are reluctant to discuss the
immigration controversy. "For many members, it is a very tricky
issue," said an aide to Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.

Lobbyists for greater immigration downplay these concerns.
"There's quite strong support among minority communities for
legalization [of illegal immigrants]," said Frank Sharry, the
executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an
immigration-advocacy group that is backed by Hispanic groups;
immigration lawyers; the restaurant industry; and UNITE HERE, a
union whose 450,000 members work in hotels, restaurants, and
casinos and in the textile sector.

Sharry, however, conceded that the prospect of continued
immigration is contentious among blacks. "That's where the
concerns about competition and job displacement become more
intense," he said.

Immigration has helped the national economy, even as it has
had "very detrimental impacts" on unskilled workers in some
industries, such as meatpacking, where wages and the number of
unionized workers have fallen dramatically since the early
1980s, said immigration supporter Gerald Jaynes, a professor of
economics and African-American studies at Yale University.
Jaynes says that relocation and training programs should aid
those workers who lose out.

For decades, said Wade Henderson, the president of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, black unemployment has
exceeded the rate for whites because of racial discrimination,
and is now exacerbated by free trade in a global economy. He
said the impact of immigration is overstated. "As a lifelong
civil-rights advocate, I do not see this as an issue of
economics," Henderson said. "I see it as a moral one."

The legislative proposals offered by Henderson and his
allies call for, among other things, tighter enforcement of
fair-wage and overtime requirements, new rules on hiring and
advancement, job training, and expansion of naturalization rules
for workers recruited in any guest-worker program.

Arguments that immigration leaves blacks at an economic
disadvantage are intended to split the political alliance
between blacks and Latinos, said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala. In the
1890s, an emerging alliance of blacks and poor whites was broken
up by wealthier interests, and "I see echoes of it in our
politics today," he said. Henderson concurred, saying at the May
3 hearing that opponents of additional immigration "are not now,
nor have they ever been, friends of African-Americans."

"This is a thinly veiled charge of racism," retorted Rep.
Steve King, R-Iowa, the panel's ranking member, who says that
his constituents have lost income because local meatpacking
plants prefer to hire low-wage illegal immigrants. Asked in an
interview about King's comments, Henderson said that King's
"reaction suggests to me he does protest too much."

A potential white-black economic alliance against
immigration would pose a political problem for diversity
advocates. "We need to respond to these [Fair] ads," Rep. Luis
Gutierrez, D-Ill., told the hearing, because "history shows
[that blacks and Hispanics] have so much in common."

Although there is a tight alliance among African-American
and Hispanic legislators and liberal advocacy groups, the
immigration issue can mean headaches for representatives. For
example, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has repeatedly decried the
proposed guest-worker program and the use of illegal immigrants
as "slavery," yet he told National Journal, "I've a lot of
Dominicans [in my district].... I don't know what I'm going to
do." In 2000, Hispanics composed 48 percent of his district.

Top Democratic leaders and activists see Hispanic migration
as a long-term opportunity for the party. The arrival of
additional immigrant workers is "bad for blue-collars," Rep.
Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services
Committee, told National Journal late last year. But immigrants
can help elect Democratic majorities, and "if [a Democratic
Congress] were to significantly strengthen unions, then you
would offset the negative effect on the income of workers," he
said.

Such calculations don't allay opponents of increased
migration. "The [Democratic] Party is certainly no longer the
party of the old Left -- unions, working people, minimum wages,
health and safety in the workplace -- and [it] now has gotten
into diversity, client politics, and all the rest of it," said
Briggs, who favors the ideal of economic equality.

Harris, the Houston radio host, says: "The black caucus is
more Democratic than black, they're more tied to the party than
to the people, and our representation ain't [worth] jack."