Jobs at lower wages will continue to prevail (except, of course, for the CEOs with hand picked boards who can manipulate their compensation to astronomical levels).
Add automation, overseas outsourcing and the issuing of 100,000 alien visas a month to further disadvantage the 20 plus million Americans now unemployed or underemployed.
Nice stuff. Bain outsourcer Mitt Romney claims jobs are his thing. But "where is the proof?"—as Candy Crowley challenged Romney spokesthing, former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie, on her Sunday morning show.[ On CNN, Romney Advisor Won’t Say If Romney Will Repeal Obama’s Executive Order On Immigration, by Josh Feldman, Mediaite.com, June 24th, 2012]
Then add the junior Dream Act maneuver by President Obama. American voters might even get the idea that there is no candidate they can count on to protect them against immigration job theft.
In recent articles, I have referred to this phenomenon as “immigration overload”. It has many faces.
For example, this Page One NY Times story, Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay (by David Segal, June 23, 2012). It begins:
“Last year, during his best three-month stretch, Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne—if that were a luxury Mr. Golson could have afforded.
“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”
America’s love affair with the smartphone has helped create tens of thousands of jobs at places like Best Buy and Verizon Wireless and will this year pump billions into the economy.”
Of course, the actual manufacturing of Apple products was offshored years ago:
It might be well to note, as Segal could have but didn’t, that the suffering middle class and those in lower income brackets can’t be helped by the post-1965 invasion of legal and illegal workers.
Segal’s NYT piece goes on:
Within this world, the Apple Store is the undisputed king, a retail phenomenon renowned for impeccable design, deft service and spectacular revenues. Last year, the company’s 327 global stores took in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer—wireless or otherwise—and almost double that of Tiffany, which was No. 2 on the list, according to the research firm RetailSails.
Worldwide, its stores sold $16 billion in merchandise.
But most of Apple’s employees enjoyed little of that wealth. While consumers tend to think of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as the company’s heart and soul, a majority of its workers in the United States are not engineers or executives with hefty salaries and bonuses but rather hourly wage earners selling iPhones and MacBooks.
In short, folks, far too many American workers are being driven into wage immiseration and/or long term unemployment by the immigration overload forced upon us by the greedy, powerfully political corporate elites.
There must be multiple solutions, which will take time to accomplish. However, as with a badly wounded human body suffering dangerous hemorrhaging, we need to apply a tourniquet just to save the life of the Republic—to wit, call an immigration moratorium.
If, tomorrow, one of these Presidential candidates came up with a plan to do that, I bet the reaction in November would be highly favorable.
But don’t hold your breath. The money boys and the ethic/religious lobbyists won’t permit it.
As I have suggested before, there are also other less sweeping but highly important measures such as making E verify mandatory and permanent.
But the key longer term solution will be the dismissal by all Americans of the tribalism I noted in recent pieces. American citizens of all races must put the country first and think in rational demographic terms about lower immigration.
Tragically, our leaders keep ignoring common good and reason. They are by leading our noble democracy into an abyss.
Donald A. Collins [email him], a free lance writer living in Washington, DC. , is Co-Chair of the National Advisory Board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). However, his views are his own.
