Diplomas who have very low participation rates in the labor force, and then youre bringing in workers to compete directly against the workers who are either losing their jobs to automation or who cant find work because theres not enough jobs for workers in our own country without education. And so particularly, i mean, go to an American City that has labor force problems. Wherever that may be. Say detroit. How is it fair or right or proper that if, say, you open up a new business in detroit that the unemployed workers of detroit are going to have to compete against an endless flow of unskilled workers for the exact same jobs, reducing pay for those positions, and reducing their chances of getting those jobs while at the same time ultrahighskilled workers are on the back of the line to get into the country. It makes no sense. The numbers are too large, and the numbers of low skilled workers in particular is a major detriment to u. S. Workers. So i think the more we have this conversatio
george borhas an economist looked at the impact on wages when you have illegal wab labor influx of labor coming into a market. think of mq packing. over the short term wages will drop 8% and over the long term they ll drop 3%. we re talking, look at the wages at meat packing a very common industry in the midwest here. 30 years ago you walked into a meat packing facility and see lots of u.s. citizens working in those jobs and it was paying really well. in fact, it was paying better than it is today, in some cases. and, by the way, some are still uniized today and some aren t. here i am perfectly happy to say if the unions help protect the american worker, the more power to them. but now you go to the same meat packing plants and they re lower in absolute dollars. they re at the floor. it s hard to earn a living wage
working in a plant like that. illegal labor has depressed the wages. i don t think anyone will seriously dispute that. who is paying those wages and who is making the decisions to lower those wages. not those workers. an economist out of harvard university and has written a lot on wage effects on this. the actual literature of illegal immigration is incredibly contested and not necessarily matched by other people but i think it s interesting to say, you read that story the 3% prediction over the duration, over the long term. a drop in the beginning and 3% cut over time. when you think to yourself, i want to stop people from getting a 3% wage cut. there are 9,000 things you can do before you look at illegal immigration. if we re talking about a 3% wage cut, there are a o] of things we can talk about. and on small business saturday they remind a nation of the benefits of shopping small.
card in this country, the more momentum there s going to be. the more support there s going to be, and our message to folks in congress is, if you are serious about immigration reform, then ask yourselves, what s in the best interest of americans and american workers and ultimately this has to be a part of that. let s go to glen. two quick questions. first of all, let s have some statistics. there have been a lot of studies out there that don t show a correlation between low skilled immigration and the loss of jobs for native workers. cite for me, if you could, one or two studies with specific numbers that prove the correlation between those two things because your entire policy is based on that. and secondly, i have sources that told me about a month ago that you guys have sort of elbowed infrastructure out of the way to get immigration on the legislative queue. tell me why this is more important than infrastructure. the latter statement isn t true. i think the most recent study i