Illegals’ Effect on Job Market Mixed, GAO Says

WASHINGTON — Illegal aliens are driving down wages and job conditions for low-income native Americans and legal immigrants but also are indirectly enhancing job opportunities for some higher-skilled workers, congressional investigators say in a new report.

Hurt most by the tide of illegal workers sweeping border, farm and some metropolitan areas are native and legally documented immigrant crop pickers, janitors and food-processing workers, the General Accounting Office says.

Wage and benefit increases won by largely legal Mexican migrants and native black workers under union organizing campaigns in those industries in the 1970s have disappeared as they have been displaced by illegal immigrants working at often below-minimum wages, the GAO said in a 70-page report.

For example, janitors in downtown Los Angeles office buildings--most of them black or legal Latino immigrants--had won wage and benefits reaching a peak of $12 an hour by 1983 under union contracts, according to the report.

However, a group of aggressive non-union janitorial services hiring predominantly illegal immigrants have since wrested away the best building contracts, driving the union scale back down to $4 an hour and below.

Experience of Janitors

Of 2,500 black janitors working under high-wage contracts in 1977, only 100 still enjoyed comparable wages by 1985, the GAO said. The union still had 600 working members, but 500 of them had suffered large pay cuts.

Citrus and tomato pickers in Southern California--many of them Mexicans admitted under guest-worker programs--have seen their wages and benefits drop by 18% since 1975 because of the growing use of illegal immigrants by farm labor contractors, the GAO said.

However, the congressional investigators said it is impossible to measure what it called the “net effects” of the growing use of illegal aliens in other businesses, such as full-service restaurants and high-fashion shoe and garment manufacturing.

The increased supply of illegal workers undoubtedly depressed wages for some natives or legal immigrants in those industries, too, the GAO said.

“But, at the same time, by stimulating business, (they) also expanded employment opportunities and wages for other legal and native workers in complementary, usually skilled occupations,” it said.

Benefits for Highly Skilled

As an example, it cited full-service restaurants that use illegal aliens as dishwashers and busboys. The associated labor savings allow low prices that lead to expanded sales, creating jobs for more higher-skilled and higher-paid chefs and waiters, the GAO said.

Citing case studies in New York City and Los Angeles, the GAO said illegal immigrants working at low wages by U.S. standards have meant the survival of small, specialized companies in the high-fashion women’s footwear and garment industries.

The studies quoted owners of those companies as saying they are under intense cost pressure from foreign producers and could not find Americans or legal immigrants willing to work all day behind sewing machines or with the skills needed to produce high-fashion women’s shoes.

Without a supply of illegal workers, the GAO concluded, many of those businesses would close down or move their operations out of the country.

The Labor Department strongly disagreed with the GAO’s conclusions, saying none of the studies it surveyed offered any concrete evidence of a positive effect from using illegal workers, except the comments from employers.

Labor Department Reply

In a formal reply to the report, the department also disputed GAO’s premise that legal workers won’t take many of the low-wage jobs, particularly in the shoe and garment industries.

“The fact is that large numbers of native and legal U.S. workers are in the same labor market as illegal workers,” the Labor Department said. “If wages were not depressed by illegal workers, even greater numbers of native and legal workers would be in that labor market.”

The study was requested by Congress in 1985, when it was considering immigration reform legislation enacted a year later providing for government fines against employers who use illegal aliens.

If successful, the GAO said, those employer sanctions will force wages up for legal immigrants and natives, causing “considerable stress” financially for growers and some manufacturers.