E-Verify would help assure Oregonians, not illegal immigrants, hold Oregon jobs

CAUSA, Oregon's self-proclaimed "immigrant rights organization," and a number of other groups have issued an open letter decrying "anti-immigrant forces . . . proposing statewide ballot measures targeting immigrant families."  I serve on the board of one of those allegedly "anti-immigrant forces" -- Oregonians for Immigration Reform.  And the way the letter says OFIR is "targeting immigrant families" is by spearheading a 2016 initiative to mandate that Oregon employers, via the federal E-Verify system, assure their new hires are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

 

We'll discuss that initiative shortly.  First, let's look at CAUSA and friends' letter.

 

CAUSA believes foreigners here in deliberate violation of U.S. law should enjoy the rights and benefits of legal residents and even U.S. citizens.  In recent years, the group has lobbied for illegal-immigrant "driver cards," taxpayer-funded college aid for illegal-immigrant students, and an end to federal-local partnerships that enforce immigration law -- positions diametrically opposite OFIR's.

 

That CAUSA would attack OFIR and its initiative, then, is no surprise.  The irony is this: Its letter was co-signed by leaders of organizations whose constituents are disproportionately harmed by the presence of illegal immigrants.

 

One signer, for example, is Nikki Fisher of The Bus Project.  This group provides political-engagement opportunities to (among other youths) high-school students.  But does its concern for youths' political opportunities extend as well to their economic opportunities?  

 

Teenagers, experts agree, benefit mightily from early work experience.  But opportunity for that experience is disappearing.  Between 2003 and 2013, Reese Lord of Portland's WorkSystems teen-placement program told the Portland Tribune, summer youth employment fell dramatically -- from 46 percent to 7 percent.  A large part of the reason?  Over that same period, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and other sources estimate, Oregon's illegal-immigrant population roughly doubled -- and, writes the Center for Immigration Studies' Dr. Steven Camarota, "immigrants and teenagers often do the same kind of work."  Indeed, Camarota notes, between 1994 and 2007, "a ten-percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a state's workforce reduced the labor-force participation rate of U.S.-born teenagers by 7.9 percentage points."

 

Another signer is Julia Meier of the Coalition of Communities of Color.  The Coalition claims to represent, among others, black Americans -- who, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, currently suffer an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, almost double the national rate of 5.0 percent.  One critical reason for this: Illegal immigrants now take millions of jobs in occupational fields which historically have employed large numbers of blacks.     

In 2014, for instance, blacks (as per the BLS) comprised 12.1 percent of construction-trades helpers, 14.6 percent of building-maintenance/groundskeeping workers, 13.4 percent of food-preparation workers, 15.3 percent of chefs and head cooks, and 23.5 percent of non-restaurant food servers.  But competing with blacks for employment in these fields are illegal immigrants who, the Pew Research Center has reported, in one recent year comprised 14 percent of workers in construction and extraction, 17 percent in building maintenance/groundskeeping, and 11 percent in food preparation and serving.

 

How does the Coalition of Communities of Color help black Americans by aligning itself with CAUSA, which champions illegal immigrants' "right" to compete with those Americans for the jobs many of them so desperately need?

 

Another signer is Meg Niemi of Service Employees International Union Local 49.  SEIU's members include lower-skilled Americans -- among them housekeepers, custodians and food-service workers -- who for decades have been harmed by the presence of illegal immigrants.

 

In a 2004 study, Harvard professor George Borjas estimated that "between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of . . . natives without a high-school education . . . by 7.4 percent" -- and that half or more of that reduction was due to competition with illegal immigrants.  More recently, Eric A. Ruark and Matthew Graham reported in a FAIR study, even the liberal Center for American Progress has admitted that "reducing the illegal-alien population in the United States by one-third would raise the income of unskilled workers by $400 a year."

 

Now, back to OFIR's E-Verify initiative, which was lambasted by CAUSA et al.  What would that initiative do for young, black and unionized Oregonians?

 

Simple.  At a time when more than 110,000 Oregonians -- among them our most economically vulnerable -- still are unemployed, the initiative, if passed, would help assure the state's businesses employ U.S. citizens and legal residents and not illegal immigrants.  And far from "targeting immigrant families," it would help assure that immigrants who come here legally are not kept from jobs by those who don't.

 

On the issue of jobs and illegal immigration, young, black and unionized Oregonians are better served by OFIR than by their self-proclaimed champions.  In 2016, those Oregonians should support the E-Verify initiative that will advance their interests as jobholders, providers, and Americans.

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Richard F. LaMountain, a former assistant editor of Conservative Digest magazine, serves on the board of directors of Oregonians for Immigration Reform.