Essay 4003

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Immigration hurts blacks

BY MONROE ANDERSON

President Bush scolded some members of his base for, of all things, fear-mongering on illegal immigration. “If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” chided the Fear Monger-In-Chief, the man who would have us believe there could soon be a heaven-bent Muslim terrorist hiding under every bed and in every closet in America. “That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens.'”

The president and his acolytes have turned empty political rhetoric into a pop art. That’s why we had to stay the course rather than cut and run. It’s also why we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, and why we needed a troop surge to get the job done. Even as the president was tongue-lashing some party demagogues for not embracing the Senate compromise bill that would back his push to give virtual amnesty to the 12 million or so illegal immigrants who’ve successfully stolen across U.S. borders, he fell into his habit of using empty political rhetoric: “Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without any penalties,” the president said last week in southern Georgia at a training center for government security officials. “This bill is not an amnesty bill.”

The immigration reform bill is alarmingly reminiscent of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was sold as the solution to the growing immigration problem. The bill 21 years ago gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. The compromise bill for reform now being debated in the Senate would give amnesty to 12 million -- for a price. Those who came here before Jan. 1, 2007, must pay $5,000 in fines and apply for legal status in a process that requires them to return to their home country. That solution is so, so rich and rewarding -- for the rich. Illegal immigration allows the rich to get cheaper and cheaper goods and services and the black working class and poor to get hustled and trickled-down on.

And worse, according to a revised report released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Using data from the 1960-2000 U.S. Census reports, researchers discovered “a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates.”

“This is basic supply and demand,” Jeffrey Grogger told me. Increase the number of low-skilled workers, and wages fall and unemployment increases for black workers. The employment rate of black high school dropouts fell 30 percentage points, to 42.1 percent from 72.1 percent between 1980 and 2000, the study reported. In that same period, an alarming number of unskilled black men were being put behind bars. Although immigration isn’t the only factor, said Grogger, a University of Chicago professor who helped write the report, it “accounts for 10 percent of the incarceration rate.”

In 1980, just 1.3 percent of black high school dropouts were in jail or prison. By 2000, it had skyrocketed to 25.1 percent. Even black men with a high school diploma were more likely to end up being locked up. Their incarceration rates increased to 9.8 percent from 0.5 percent during the same time period. The study reports another alarming statistic for that period. Much of the other 90 percent of the soaring incarceration rate for unskilled black men, Grogger suggested, can be attributed to the war on drugs in general and the crack cocaine epidemic in particular. With those jobs in the inner cities that didn’t go to immigrants being outsourced to the suburbs and Third World countries, uneducated, low-skilled black men turned to drugs and guns as their principal commerce. States enacted tougher sentencing laws, police stepped up enforcement of those laws and existing prisons became overpopulated with African-American men.

Black joblessness is compounded by employers who believe there is a stronger work ethnic among immigrants. During the Joint Economic Hearing on Addressing the Problem of African-American Male Unemployment in March, Sen. Charles Schumer noted that black men with no criminal records were no more likely to find work than white men with criminal records.

Now that’s what I call frightening.