Businesses need immigrants
In class we recently
discussed how different immigration laws and regulations have been passed depending on the agendas of different presidential administration. We mentioned
that sometimes immigration is not even truly part of the presidential agenda,as is the case with the Obama administration, because immigration has nothing to offer the nation (economically). For instance, with the Bush era immigrants were focused on and it was easier to obtain green cards because the
agricultural sector needed more labor workers (and immigrants could be more easily taken advantage of). In the U.S News’ article “Business Groups Not Backing Down on Immigration Reform”, Lauren Fox states that a new report actually demonstrates a new demand for immigrants since it is assumed that they will willingly fill in low-paying jobs. That is, there are many businesses that depend on low-skilled workers because they are willing to work for less. Furthermore, the study demonstrated the urgency of the issue by showing that there has also been a decrease in the number of Americans willing to work low-paying jobs. In fact, in the news we have recently been hearing all the demands for a raise in minimum wage. (A couple of days ago Connecticut even became the first state to raise the minimum wage.) Thus, businesses have spoken out to demonstrate that they are nothing giving up on an immigration reform because they would be the group most benefitted by the arrival of immigrants.
Over the last century, American work standards of slowly improved and continue to improve even today. Following this logic, it makes sense that less and less Americans are willing to work in these low-skilled and often poor-conditioned occupations. It is true that many employers want immigration reform for access to low skill labor. What the article fails to mention is that many employers also have massive gains from unreformed immigration. The lack of documentation for many immigrant workers allows employers to pay and provide less for their employees. Many businesses rely on this unreformed workers to keep their profits up and stay in the market. This might be an underlying reason for inaction in immigration reform.