Next "job Americans won’t do": trucking

Issue 76: May 31, 2001

Gallup Poll: 75% of Americans said that immigrants mostly take low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want.

+== TIME OUT PROJECT ==+

In the early 1960s, a job on the kill floor of Union Pack, a stockyard in Omaha, Nebraska, paid about $14.00 per hour — decent middle class wages for a tough, nasty job.

Then came the 1965 Immigration Act, which left us with an incoherent immigration policy of diversity lotteries, anchor babies, targeted amnesties, unsustainable population growth, sham marriages, chain migration, immigration lawyers’ lobbies, and the previously unknown phenomenon of mass illegal immigration.

Today, thanks to illegal immigration, jobs in the meat packing industry in Nebraska pay about $8.00 per hour — barely half what they paid four decades ago. These jobs are now often referred to as "jobs Americans won’t do."

American trucking faces a fate similar to that suffered by American meat-packing. Under the corporate-backed North American Free Trade Agreement, domestic truck drivers are going to be unfairly forced to compete with drivers from Mexico — a country where the cost of living is one-tenth that of the United States.

George W. Bush calls this kind of borderless capitalism "spreading democracy," but according to Rob Black, a Teamsters’ Union spokesperson, cross-border trucking is a "race to the bottom" for American truckers.

Instead of talking about "jobs Americans won’t do," we should be referring to "wages Americans can’t accept." American public policy needs to treat American workers fairly.

AFL-CIO News: http://www.aflcio.org/publ/newsonline/96mar22/nafta.html
New York Times, "Forgotten threat: free trade in population:" http://projectusa.org/immigration-corporate-welfare.html#nyt

+== TAKE POSITIVE ACTION ==+

Opening American highways to Mexican trucking presents another problem in addition to the displacement of American workers: an increase in illegal immigration.

In an interesting San Antonio Express-News piece on border-area trucking, Dane Schiller reports that, "Agents in South Texas are finding a record number of undocumented immigrants in tractor-trailer rigs. They’ve been hidden among everything from palm trees and rotten cabbage to electrical coils."

With the possible exception of President Bush, the Ned Flanders of U.S.-Mexico relations, anyone can see that an increase in cross-border trucking will mean a significant rise in illegal immigration.

This puts the AFL-CIO, of which the main trucking union, the Teamsters, is a member, in a compromised position. According to its website, the AFL-CIO both opposes the NAFTA trucking rules and advocates amnesties for illegal aliens. http://www.aflcio.org/publ/estatements/feb2000/immigr.htm

If the Bush Administration does indeed open the border and all of America in January 2002 to Mexican trucks, we can expect an increase in illegal immigration via cross-border trucking.

According to spokesperson Richard Greer, AFL-CIO support for amnesties remains in effect and would thus include amnesties for all the cheap foreign labor that will be illegally smuggled into the United States on Mexican trucks under the new NAFTA rules. (The AFL-CIO hopes to turn the border jumpers into dues-paying union members, though history shows the American labor movement has been strongest during periods of little or no immigration.)

While amnesties, NAFTA and illegal immigration will benefit some business interests, the experience of the meat-packing industry shows this is not good for the American worker — especially the working poor and recent immigrants. This probably explains why, in conversations with persons at the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters, we found little private enthusiasm for amnesties.

You can contact the AFL-CIO and urge them to oppose amnesties, since amnesties encourage illegal immigration, are unfair to those immigrants who play by the rules and immigrate legally, and hurt the most vulnerable Americans.

Phone: (202) 637-5000
feedback@aflcio.org

+== QUOTE OF THE WEEK ==+

‘Every effort to enact immigration legislation must expect to meet a number of hostile forces and, in particular, two hostile forces of considerable strength.

‘One of these is composed of corporation employers who desire to employ physical strength (broad backs) at the lowest possible wage and who prefer a rapidly revolving labor supply at low wages to a regular supply of American wage earners at fair wages.

Samuel Gompers
founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and himself an immigrant
(from a letter to Congress dated March 19,1924)

+==EMAIL OF THE WEEK==+

U.S. law needs to be changed to stop permitting persons traveling from ANYWHERE within the Western Hemisphere into the U.S. with nothing more than a VERBAL DECLARATION that they are a U.S. citizen.

U.S. INS Agent (name withheld)

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