New Haven Register (Connecticut), January 27, 2008, Sunday

Copyright 2008 New Haven

New Haven Register (Connecticut)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

January 27, 2008, Sunday

SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS

HEADLINE: Blacks losing jobs to illegals?

BYLINE: Mary E. O'Leary, New Haven Register, Conn.

BODY:

Jan. 27--NEW HAVEN -- New Haven Alderman Yusuf Shah was pretty worked up.

Told that a group called Community Watchdog Project was planning to leaflet black churches to convince worshippers that illegal immigrants were taking jobs from blacks, Shah said he found the claim "ludicrous."

"We have access to a lot of things that immigrants don't have access to," Shah said, as he ticked off educational opportunities and financial aid, not to mention English language skills, all of which give citizens more than a leg up in the job market.

"How could they (illegal immigrants) prevent anybody who is African American from getting a job?" he asked.

Beyond that, Shah said putting a wedge between groups of residents, no matter where they come from, is counterproductive.

"We don't have the luxury to be divided in this city. Division doesn't work. Only when we come together and work as one, do we make progress," said Shah, the Democratic alderman from Ward 23 in the Dwight neighborhood.

Alan Felder, a unionized plumber at Yale University, is as incensed as Shah -- but from a different point of view.

Felder, a member of Community Watchdog Project, said black citizens are losing low-wage jobs to the growing number of illegal immigrants flowing into the city, which some estimate is as high as 15,000 residents.

"It's just a matter of giving people the right information," Felder said.

A member of Local 35 of Unite HERE, Felder led a recent petition drive protesting that a portion of the union's dues are used by the national union to fight for immigrant rights.

"We didn't know that our money is going to try to help organize our competition. That would be like the United States is funding al Qaeda," said Felder, who doesn't agree with the labor movement's goal of strengthening its ranks by reaching out to all workers.

He also objected to the fact that Local 35 President Bob Proto signed a solidarity statement in December, along with city officials, community leaders and other union organizers, recognizing the rights of workers and immigrants, although Proto said he did so as an individual, rather than as a labor official.

Shah and Felder do have something in common. They are black.

Dustin Gold of North Branford put the watchdog organization together this summer after New Haven issued ID cards for all residents, including illegal immigrants, to access city services, which they objected to as a welcoming gesture to this group.

Among other things, the mainly suburban group, which is an offshoot of Southern Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Reform, campaigns that undocumented workers depress wages and cause unemployment for citizens in low-paying jobs.

Several national studies, however, question that assumption; others find there has been an effect, particularly among high school dropouts, but argue that competition from immigrants is only one barrier to employment for this group, among many factors.

Steven Pitts, an economist at the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, in 2006 found there is no correlation between rising rates of immigration, with an estimated 12 million currently in the U.S., and unemployment among blacks.

He said blaming immigration masks the true causes of employment issues for blacks, which Pitts said are "persistent racism in hiring ... and incarceration among African Americans."

The New York Times reported last year that almost three-quarters of young, black, male high school dropouts were either unemployed or jailed.

To put things in context, U.S. labor statistics show that for the last half century, the unemployment rate for blacks has been approximately twice as high as for white Americans, a number that has remained essentially static, even as the percentage of foreign born residents has increased.

Jared Bernstein, the senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., a liberal think tank, doesn't feel immigrants are a threat to native Americans in the job market.

He credits the increasing stridency in the immigration debate in this decade to tepid job creation, as opposed to the late 1990s when the large inflow of immigrants into the country, was matched by enough jobs to absorb all workers.

Where immigrants dominate a market, "they are more likely to compete with each other than with native workers," Bernstein wrote in 2006, pointing to non management jobs in construction in Washington and New York.

He did say that the one area where citizens are "crowded out" by immigrants is among high school dropouts.

"But there are mitigating factors to consider here as well. As would be expected in an advanced economy like ours, high school dropouts are a small and shrinking share of our work force (11 percent of the adult work force last year), and immigrants are a fast-growing share of this disadvantaged group, while the native share is contracting," Bernstein wrote.

One of the most recent studies, that may give a glimpse into the future for the rest of the country, was done in 2007 by the Public Policy Institute of California, a state which has a higher share of immigrants in its population than any other and where immigrants constitute one-third of the labor force.

The study by economist Giovanni Peri for the nonpartisan institute looked at census and American Community Survey data for California from 1960 to 2004, and estimated how wages and behavior responded to the increase of immigrants across age and education groups.

His first conclusion was that there no evidence that the inflow of immigrants depressed jobs for natives with similar education and experience.

Secondly, Peri said from 1990 to 2004, immigration actually induced a 4 percent wage jump for the average native worker, including dropouts, although they were on the low end with a 0.2 percent uptick. This rise increased, however, between 3 and 7 percent, for workers who had at least completed high school.

In his third conclusion, Peri, a professor at the University of California at Davis, found that the newest immigrants were the residents who suffered the most, with those who came to California before 1990 losing between 17 and 20 percent in income due to the newer immigrants entering the labor market.

He explained the 4 percent wage growth over the 14 year period ending in 2004 as the "complementary effect."

"As the number of immigrants available for certain jobs and task increases, so does the need for complementary jobs in managing, organizing and training -- work typically done by natives," Peri wrote.

"The findings would seem to defuse one of the most inflammatory issues for those who advocate measures aimed at 'protecting the livelihood of American citizens,'" Peri wrote. "Because California leads the nation in immigration trends (with a 40 percent jump in its foreign born residents over 14 years), this study may provide glimpses into the future and the potential effects of immigration on wages and employment at the national level."

A 2006 study by the Pew Hispanic Center found no evidence that young, poorly educated immigrants had an impact on the job prospects of native workers with the same status. The Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers, offered the same conclusion as Peri on complementary jobs in a study released last summer.

The council found that immigration "has a positive effect on the American economy as whole and on the income of native-born American workers. On average, U.S. natives benefit from immigration. Immigrants tend to complement (not substitute for) natives, raising natives' productivity and income."

There isn't a consensus, however, on whether immigration aggravates the causes of unemployment among blacks.

Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School of Management at the University of Pennsylvania, and Vernon Briggs of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, feel strongly that illegal immigrants cut into job opportunities for low-skill U.S. workers.

Cappelli has said it is a "complete myth" that immigrants take jobs that Americans don't want.

"Many employers seek illegal workers for the simple reason that it keeps costs down and means the companies do not have to invest in equipment and other capital improvements," Cappelli said in a 2006 article published at Wharton.

Cappelli feels the U.S. needs laws that address "the real economic issues. If you allow more unskilled workers into the U.S., it will lower costs for employers. It will also lower wages for people who do those jobs. It's clearly a political question," he said at the time.

Briggs said tougher immigration laws would protect the immigrants who put themselves in dangerous situations for little money.

"Tragically, many employers, if given a choice between illegal immigrants or U.S. citizens, will always take the illegal immigrant," he said.

A study by George Borgas of Harvard University concluded that 42 percent of the drop in employment between 1980 and 2000 for native Americans was due to immigration, while the rest were other factors.

Stephen Steinlight, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, said it is tough to address some of those factors, such as globalization, but "we can cut immigration if we want."

Steinlight also pointed to research indicating a prejudice by employers against low-skilled black workers over immigrants. If you work to lower the influx of illegal immigrants, "you don't give them the option" to discriminate against blacks, he said.

Bernard Anderson, another Wharton economist, however, said there is also evidence that blacks have moved beyond the low-skill jobs now held by immigrants. He said blacks improved their occupational status considerably as a result of the civil rights movement with 70 percent now holding better paying white collar, service sector and auto-industry employment.

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, in testimony last spring before Congress, rejected what he referred to as simplistic analyses that blame immigration for the problems of low-skilled workers and he questioned the motives of advocates of this approach.

"To anyone who looks closely ... it is clear that immigration restrictionists are not -- and never have been -- our friends," he said, pointing to the lack of support from them when the Voting Rights Act came up for reauthorization, or when votes are taken on hate crime laws, affirmative action and Head Start.

Gold took issue with anyone who suggests their efforts are racially motivated, particularly their efforts to warn blacks about the impact of immigration, and in an e-mail to supporters, he resolved to double their efforts.

"They will have 9 to 5, five-day-a-week, hired goons fighting their battle, but we have true patriots fighting ours. We will win, but everyone must step it up a notch," Gold wrote in the email on plans to distribute fliers outside churches today.

"They" in the e-mail refers to city officials and immigrant advocacy groups, including a law clinic at Yale University.

Shah feels he has to speak out against the effort by the watchdog group.

"We don't need anyone to scare African Americans into a hate-based bias against another cross-section of people," he said.

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