Channel: The News and Observer  Author: Kristin Collins

Business owners once said they needed illegal workers because there weren’t enough Americans willing to do dirty and lowly jobs. Now, unemployment is nearing 10 percent, and citizens are lining up for jobs they once would have rejected. Yet, some say, many employers still want illegal immigrants.
“They prefer immigrants, especially now,” said James Lee, an electrician who hasn’t found work since Thanksgiving. “I don’t think it’s fair when there’s so many of us in the shape we’re in now.”

Lee, 47, said American workers can’t compete against immigrants who are willing to work for low pay and under unreasonable conditions. And now that jobs are scarce—nearly a quarter of construction workers nationwide are unemployed—Lee is one of a growing chorus who say that illegal immigrants are leaving citizen workers with fewer options.

“It’s just more people out there competing for what little work there is,” said Franklin Tigner, a Louisburg construction subcontractor who was searching for a job last week.

Such concerns prompted legislative action. More than two dozen state lawmakers proposed a bill this month that would require North Carolina companies getting federal stimulus money to verify that their workers are in the country legally. They say the $787 billion plan should benefit U.S. citizens.

“With unemployment in North Carolina approaching 10 percent, with the layoffs we’ve seen, we have plenty of Americans who need those jobs,” said Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Cary Republican who is one of the bill’s co-sponsors.

Some, however, argue that the equation is not so simple.

Immigrants don’t just fill jobs; they also create them by buying cars, groceries, homes and services.

“If they weren’t here, I’d have less people employed here, no question about that,” said Durham car dealer Kyle Ollis, who sells about a third of his cars to Hispanic customers.

And many business owners say that the vast supply of dependable labor that immigrants provided was responsible for much of the growth in industries such as construction and landscaping. Without immigrant labor, they say, their companies couldn’t have created so many jobs in North Carolina.

Now, in a time of shrinking profits, some say those productive and loyal workers could mean the difference between survival and failure…..

Doug Woodward, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina, said native workers have less at stake than immigrants. Because of that, he said, they can’t match immigrants’ productivity.

“The Latino work force, they’re hungry and eager to work as many hours as they can get,” Woodward said. “They’ll start on the worst tasks and work themselves up to something better. There’s such an incentive to hire them because it’s the difference between being profitable and not being profitable.”

....Vernon Briggs, a labor economics professor at Cornell University, said the picture for U.S. workers will only get worse if employers continue to have their pick of a vast supply of vulnerable immigrants.

Briggs said strict enforcement of immigration laws is the only salvation for the unemployed.

“We need to start putting some employers in jail,” he said. “No one wants to compete with people who will work the longest for the lowest pay, under the worst working conditions, and that’s what the illegal immigrant is.”

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