Report: Illegal immigrants contribute billions to (NV) state

[flashl]

Source: Las Vegas Sun

Analysis says exodus would cost state tens of thousands of jobs over time

If Nevada’s undocumented workers left tomorrow, the state would lose tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars, according to the first report to quantify the impact.

The study, from the Houston-based Americans for Immigration Reform, estimates 45,000 jobs would be lost over time and $9.6 billion would no longer circulate through Nevada’s economy each year.

The report is particularly timely because something like the posited scenario — losing tens of thousands of workers — may well be occurring in the Las Vegas Valley. In an April 6 story, the Sun reported that an estimated 60 percent to 80 percent of the valley’s residential construction workers are illegal immigrants. With the downturn in the new housing market, tens of thousands of immigrants have lost jobs and are no longer feeding as much money into the local economy. Many are leaving the area.

Because these workers live and work under the radar, economists did not foresee the effects of their lost wages and spending on state revenue; some say more accurate information could have helped the state plan better and avoid some of its current shortfalls.

Las Vegas Sun

Read more: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/may/23/report-illegal-immigrants-contribute-billions-stat/

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Several towns and states already have regrets after experiencing this economical realization when businesses started to close.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. It's more complicated than the Cheap Labor Lobby would have you believe

Construction jobs, for example, used to be mostly done by well-paid union members. Now they are primarily done by low-skilled and low-paid workers, whether immigrants or not. Imagine how much more money would be flowing into the economy (when the housing market recovers of course) if we returned to the previous situation. Also imagine how much better built the houses would be. Recently, a contractor told me that he wouldn't buy a house in our area (Phoenix, AZ) that was built after 1995, because they are all crap.

This isn't a post against immigration, not at all. If employers really do have a labor shortage, then they should be able to import as many workers as they need. However, they shouldn't get to pay those workers less or give them fewer protections like they want to do with the Guest Slave Worker programs. Remember, businesses are ALWAYS looking to cut their labor costs. Always. That's why reports on the "need" for immigrant labor should be taken with a grain of salt.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I have found the work done by Latinos on my house to be of first quality. I hired Lowe's to complete

several major projects on my 150 year-old Victorian house and they in turn subcontracted the work. Those subcontractors brought in the crews. One was the installation of a new roof (and removing 6 layers of shingles). I was turned down by 5 local 'roofers' because the pitch of the roof was too steep!

I agree that with higher wages, more money flows through the economy, but I doubt it has anything to do with the nationality of the worker.

I lived in Tucson from 1982-1986 and most of the new houses then were 'crap'. Beautiful oak kitchen cabinets ruined by screwing through the cabinet face! Corners not square and walls not level.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. My post has nothing to do with nationality.

It's about cheap labor. The wealthy in this country want everyone else to be slaves and they don't care what color or nationality you are. Progressives need to bear that in mind before embracing corporatist rhetoric in an attempt to be "pro-immigration". You can support the rights of immigrants without supporting the robber baron economic policies that are bringing most of them here.

I am completely pro-immigration. In an ideal world, where workers were treated fairly in every country, we could have a completely open immigration system. People would emigrate to the U.S. because they WANTED to be here, not because they are economic refugees.

[fed_up_mother]

11. I live in Texas

The work done here by many, many Latinos is first rate, and they work their butts off.

However, there's no doubt that the situation contributes greatly to wage suppression. Big business loves it when another middle class person enters the lower class.

sigh

[mrreowwr_kittty]

13. I probably misstated what I meant in my post.

There are many reasons why new houses are crappy, not the least of which is builders cutting corners. Labor is one area where they do that, but also materials as well. There are many developments out here in PHX where homeowners are finding problems in their brand new houses. We're talking expensive McMansions that are literally falling apart because they were built so poorly, too quickly and on the cheap. This is just one more reason we need to strengthen unions in this country, to keep corporations accountable.

[fed_up_mother]

16. I agree completely with that

[flashl]

3. This is just another part of the current economic downturn plus the hidden economy

There are plenty of reports indicating that immigrants are leaving and warning others not to come because they can't find jobs. Now, towns where the exodus is occurring are experiencing the financial pain.

[fed_up_mother]

7. I can remember a time when some of my relatives

moved to Nevada for the job opportunities.

They have since "come home" (well, all but one), since the jobs they once held can no longer support them. My uncle did very beautiful masonry work. Growing up in a blue collar family, most of my male relatives were in construction. Let's just say I'm better with tools than my husband, and I can sure paint and wallpaper much better than him, as well, but I'm glad I don't have to support us on those skills.

[Zorra]

5. But if US citizens were doing the same jobs, wouldn't they be feeding the

economy in much the same, or better, ways?

Why doesn't the article address this fact?

The undocumented workers would not have lost these jobs if the economy had remained relatively stable, and they would still be feeding the economy.

The undocumented workers are apparently leaving because they can't find work, therefore, they have no money. If they have no money, they can't spend money in the community.

So what does this all have to do with the real economic value of undocumented workers to a community?

It's the waning economy that is causing the problem, not the jobless undocumented workers. If US citizens had been doing the same jobs as the newly unemployed undocumented workers, wouldn't they have been spending the same amounts of money in the community, even perhaps more, because they would probably have been a more permanent part of the respective communities in which they worked and lived?

The article does not appear to me to be written from a logical or accurate perspective.

[Indenturedebtor]

6. Citizens who work, earn, and spend create jobs

We should force companies to pay liveable wages, instead of trying to make fewer citizens who are willing to work hard for a better life.

Outsourcing destroys jobs... consumers create them no matter what color/ethnicity/religion they are.

[fed_up_mother]

9. Suppressing wages destroys lives, too, and that's what "cheap" immigrant

labor does to a nation - legal or illegal. It's just worse when the labor is illegal, because the corporations can pay them even less.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

12. And not have to provide them with adequate safety provisions.

When you're scared of being deported, you're probably not going to report unsafe conditions. Notice how the proposed guest worker "solution" retains many of the same advantageous (to the employers) features of an undocumented workforce: No guarantee of pay or benefits. No portability of the visa - so the worker still probably won't report their employer.

[fed_up_mother]

14. You're just a racist for pointing that out.

but thank you for making that observation.

:sarcasm:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

15. It's so frustrating, isn't it?

What kind of liberal DARES to point out that deliberately creating and maintaining an underclass of cheap, exploitable workers is wrong? Really, what was I thinking? :sarcasm:

[fed_up_mother]

18. Growing up on the Gulf Coast

members of my family either worked offshore or in the construction industry.

Now, offshore jobs aren't as plentiful, and consruction work pay sucks.

Thankfully, most of the next generation is college educated - so our jobs are just outsourced. :eyes:

[flashl]

17. Like here. Where workers who are dying on the job must rely on the graciousness of their employers

Construction Worker Deaths on the Strip:

Fall-safety requirement may get OSHA enforcement

With contractors’ consent, state agency to require floors or netting

Responding to pleas from the Ironworkers Union following deaths on the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada workplace safety regulators appear close to what could be a significant change to improve safety in high-rise construction, according to several people involved.

The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration this week asked for and received the support of major contractors to begin enforcing a requirement to provide safety netting or temporary flooring to catch workers who fall. The safety flooring or netting would have broken the plunge of several workers whose deaths the Sun documented in March.

Las Vegas Sun

[mrreowwr_kittty]

8. It's written from the Cheap Labor Lobby standpoint.

What's really sad is to see how many progressives have bought into the frame of the robber barons and have accepted their premises.

[fed_up_mother]

10. True.

Every time I visit this board lately, I feel like I'm in some parallel universe instead of a progressive site.

[VP505]

20. From Wikipedia

Americans for Immigration Reform is led by a group of Houston, Texas business leaders who launched this group in spring 2008 to begin a dialog on immigration policy as it effects consumers, small businesses and United States security. They use the term immigration reform to mean increasing the numbers of legal immigrants who want to live and work in the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Immigration_Reform

[mrreowwr_kittty]

22. They are coopting progressives on this issue.

My local Dem party is taking money from these groups and is repeating their talking points. It's not enough to be for treating undocumented workers with humanity and compassion, you now have to believe that there really are all these "jobs that Americans" won't do (the list grows daily) and that business community wants to import cheap labor for purely altruistic reasons. If you oppose a deliberately created underclass of exploited workers, you are a "xenophobe" and an "isolationist". It's really bizarre.

[flashl]

24. Wonder what the story is going to be after the influx of H1B teachers. nt

[mrreowwr_kittty]

25. Another "job that Americans won't do".

Nursing is now on that list, so why shouldn't teaching?

When's it going to stop? You'd think when they started outsourcing legal services to India (it's happening) that the lawyers would get up in arms about it.

[flashl]

27. From what Ive seen its not going to stop. Ex. nursing is one profession under assault for 20+ years

[hughee99]

23. That was how I read it...

The economy is getting worse because the workers are leaving? The workers are leaving because the economy is getting worse. Yes, these workers contribute a great deal to the economy when they have jobs. The state isn't losing their money because they're leaving, they're leaving because they've lost their jobs and don't have money. If they stayed, without jobs, the state still wouldn't be getting their money.

[primavera]

26. Depends

There isn't anything economically wrong with farming out lower paying work to immigrants, so long as the economy is growing and generating more and better jobs. I mean, we all do this already: most of us elect to buy vegetables, for instance, from a grocery store, as opposed to growing the stuff ourselves, because it's more cost effective for us to buy produce from someone else, thereby allowing us to work as whatever it is that we do. What matters is that whatever we do for a living pays us more than we would make producing the things we choose to purchase. So, in a way, if it were the case that US workers were giving up jobs as fruit pickers in order to work new jobs as cardiac surgeons, no one would have any doubt that those US workers had traded up and were better off having relinquished the lower paying jobs as fruit pickers to work more highly paid jobs as cardiac surgeons, right? The catch is, for that to be a viable outcome, those US workers who used to be fruit pickers need to receive the training to become cardiac surgeons (or whatever). And that is one of the crucial failures of most economic models, which inaccurately presume what economists refer to as costless mobility of labor. But what planet are these economists from? On this planet, a medical school education in this country costs $100K and up. Who's going to pay for that?

Nevertheless, I think it's an important distinction to make. If we were the sort of country which, like Europe, invested heavily in our educational system and actively worked to provide bigger and better job opportunities for US citizens, then giving immigrants jobs as agricultural workers, landscapers, construction workers, etc., wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, we'd be idiots to not farm out those kinds of jobs, because we'd have bigger and better things to do. Since, however, we don't invest in education and re-training, displaced US workers are in a harder situation. Economists will still point out that the US economy contrinues to grow and create new jobs and unemployment figures remain relatively low, from which they deduce that those displaced US workers must somehow be finding other jobs. But I don't really know how those statistics are compiled or to what extent they measure whether said displaced US workers have traded up, or traded down.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

28. Unemployment numbers are notoriously bogus

They've been fiddling with things like participation rates and what constitutes 'full employment' so that it always looks like we have less than 5% at all times. According to more reliable economists, we probably have more like 8 or 9% at this time.

[Outlier]

19. Cheap labor

This country was built on the backs of cheap labor, or free labor if you go back before 1865. African slaves, chinese railroad workers, illegal immigrants they all have one thing in common. They make a few rich and powerful people richer and more powerful.

The people who suffer are the poor, the working class, and the middle class.

There would be no net drop in economic activity, it would only be a slower more sustainable rate of growth, and the benefits from the economic activity would be spread more evenly between capital and labor. The drop in vegas is coming after a speculative housing market/building bubble. That economic level of activity would never have been achieved without the bubble, enabled by cheap labor.

Bush's lax enforcement of the immigration laws and his demonization of those who want them enforced as racist and xenophobes was done to benefit his core constituents the upper class, or as he said his base.

You can only outsource so many jobs in order to lower labor costs and weaken the labor movement. Some of those jobs have to be done in this country. Hotel/restaurant, construction, meat packing. In order to lower that labor cost if you can't outsource the job, in-source the cheap labor. But , don't worry if that suppresses wages, the gov't will provide your wife with food stamps, while you go to college on the GI bill, until we call you over to Iraq for one of your 15 month tours.

[Indenturedebtor]

21. I agree but the point is that the immigration isn't the problem

We can't just let everyone in, but it wouldn't be so damaging IF company's were forced to pay decent and fair wages no matter what. If they couldn't "save" money by exploiting people, companies would likely prefer to hire native english speakers.

How do you track that? Still difficult, there will always be cheaters.

How about a big deterrent: Pay anyone, legal or illegal, below the fair standards (that have yet to be established), and we turn over control and ownership of your company to your employees that you've been exploiting.

Do away with the outsourcing, and I believe these two steps could do a great deal of good.