COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS
March 11, 1999
American Immigration and
African American Interests
BY FRANK MORRIS
Translate
Summary
The current high rate of U.S. immigration is not in the U.S. national interest. Those especially hurt include in addition to many poor and working class African Americans include those Americans with less skills and education, especially those working in high immigrant occupations.
In spite of a long history of African American political opposition to high immigration levels, current African American political leadership does not seem to be fully aware of either this long history or the negative effects of current immigration policies on African Americans.
As the American economy moves more and more toward a high demand for higher order intellectual and increased technical training for an information driven global technological dominant economy, the omission of generations of African Americans who were not trained at the highest levels of science and technology in the United States will have devastating consequences. This is especially sad because if America had trained her women and minority scientists and engineers in proportion to their representation in American society, then there would not have been the importation of foreign-born scientists unless the sole purpose would be to drive down the price of scientific labor costs. The educational costs of high immigration to the nation and African Americans were even more serious at the K-12 levels.
Americans have had a long and sad history of giving preferences to immigrant labor over African American labor and that pattern continues to the present. The problem is most intense and the competition is the greatest for the shrinking number of positions in the American economy which require low education and low skills. Our deteriorating sense of our American community seems to unfortunately be driving us to a new century where many African Americans will continue to lag behind our economic ladder impeded by intense immigrant competition for a shrinking number of low skill positions and in addition increased immigrant competition for limited property tax funded public education opportunities. To change this dismal prospect we should rationally begin to reduce our levels of immigration to levels that we can accommodate and assimilate without continually placing many of our less skilled and less educated citizens at risk.
Testimony before Congress
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee of Immigration and Claims, I appreciate the opportunity to address this important issue again. The heart of my message is that the current high levels of immigration are not in the best interests of the United States as a whole and the level is especially not in the interests of some of the relatively less advantaged Americans which always included and continues to include a disproportionate share of African Americans.
Keep in mind that those who are especially hurt are not only many African Americans but also those Americans with less than a high school education, those Americans working in fields with a high proportion of immigrants working with them such as janitors, security guards, construction workers, restaurant and hotel workers, taxi drivers and child care workers in high immigrant states and fields such as agriculture. In a number of these job categories the immigrant competition with African Americans has been devastating for African Americans in high immigrant states.
Our current policies are permitting one of the greatest if not the greatest wave of immigration at a time of great economic restructuring in American when real wages for the less educated have been stagnant and have only slowly begun to rise at the end of our unusual lengthy economic expansion; when the demand for unskilled American labor is on the decline and we continue to lose jobs in manufacturing, we Americans are admitting more immigrants than the all the rest of the world combined and the great majority of those immigrants are unskilled.
Immigration is a clear example of many issues that currently have great impact upon African Americans but many African American political leaders either ignore it or act contrary to the interests of the African American community. This was not always the case. Until the end of World War II all African American leaders of stature always opposed large scale mass American immigration (1). Their reasons were clear. First, American immigration policies were biased against people of color. Second, they realized that African Americans (after slavery was abolished) were more likely to benefit from an American economy which suffered from a labor shortage rather than one with a labor surplus. Third, they realized that since African Americans were always the last hired and the first fired in labor markets, Americans seemed to prefer any available labor market supply before African Americans. Most of these conditions still persist except for the fact that overt racial discrimination in U.S. immigration laws in most cases save possibly Haiti. The differences of the present from the past do not justify the lack of African American attention to this issue or the lack of African American political opposition to American immigration at this scale under current American economic conditions.
Too often the true impact of our current immigration policies on African American communities is either ignored, distorted, or not considered important enough to be given great weight or consideration in this debate. My point is not to devalue the immigrant experience, but to make the often ignored points that not only did all Americans not have an immigrant experience but more importantly, not all Americans have always benefited from an immigrant experience especially in times of large scale mass immigration.
The Effect of Past Immigration
There seems to be a selective American collective memory lapse about the negative effect of mass immigration such as we are currently experiencing upon our African American population. The fact of life is that African Americans do not currently and have not in the past benefited from periods of mass American immigration. We do not often acknowledge that the great migration of African Americans from the rural south to the north and west did not happen until mass U.S. immigration was restricted during and after the first World War (2).
One of the facts of American history that is not widely discussed has been America's willingness to seem to prefer a new immigrant supply of labor when the alternative was to train and employ the more indigenous African American labor source. Booker T. Washington in this 1895 Atlanta exposition speech pleaded with the industrialists no to look to a European labor supply but rather to the black and white labor supply in the south. Instead of providing vocational and craft training for blacks, America turned to a European immigrant pool of labor to stimulate first greater northern and western industries. African Americans were always the residual labor pool and never able to enjoy the benefits of full employment save for times of war when the preferred (white) immigrant supply was not available (3). African Americans were later denied (and continue to be denied) access to skilled craft guilds and later labor unions. The preference and utilization of immigrant over southern black (and white) labor in the nineteenth century has helped to create an economic lag time that continues to plague African Americans as we are now on the verge of the 21st century. This new wave of immigration promises to continue to delay the timetable for many of our poor and less educated African Americans to enjoy the benefits of a more fair American economic justice.
Black basic education in the South and to a lesser degree in the North perpetrate inequitable schools under a legalized separate but equal cover until the 1950s and under funding public schools from local property taxes which inherently bring inequities under our greatly segregated living communities in contemporary America.
Impact of Current Immigration Levels on African American
Educational Effects
Unfortunately African Americans and low income American are more negatively affected by current levels of immigration than any other Americans save possibly an increasing number of highly skilled and trained American Ph.Ds in some science and engineering fields (4).
Although the flawed immigration policy has had bad effects for all Americans, it has been devastating for American minorities such as African Americans. The generous immigration policy coupled with the much better and disproportionate and much better subsidy out of U.S. taxpayer funds of foreign doctoral student over all American minority students and especially much better than the support given to African American doctoral students. North notes that because of the high and rising cost of graduate education, three-quarters of the cost of training a typical foreign-born engineering Ph.D from kindergarten to a doctorate is paid by the U.S. taxpayers (5). This has created a situation that place the economic well being of the African American community in jeopardy because we have received inadequate doctoral training to prepare for or compete in an increasing information and higher order scientifically technologically driven current and future U.S. economy.
The U.S. was the world's science and technology leader by greater margins in the 1950s, 1960s and at earlier times before the great immigration importation of foreign scientists. The continued steps to increase skilled immigration in the sciences has the underlying and often unquestioned assumption that the underrepresentation of minorities and women in American science is more a matter of limited ability among the underrepresented groups rather than of past and present public and private policies that have and continue to limit opportunities for the underrepresented groups.
There are other issues involved with the acceptance of the relatively high levels suggested for the skilled immigrant category. The availability of a huge supply of highly educated foreign workers reduces the incentives that we will take the difficult steps to be sure that all of our native workers and scholars are likely to be developed. Furthermore it has come to light that those who often have had access to higher education in many countries overseas represent a privileged elite that had access to better education opportunities than the majority of American and especially better education opportunities than African Americans of low income Americans. Most natives of India who get access to higher education are upper class Hindus who represent only 17% of the Indian population but occupy almost all the most prestigious education posts (6). We then provide often U.S. subsidized education for doctoral degrees to students of wealth and privilege and better opportunities than we provide our own citizens. If we reduce immigration access to these privileged flows we are then and only then likely to increase educational opportunity at home.
I point out that the presence and ready availability of foreign doctoral students does not provide the needed incentives to fix our American educational systems to provide better opportunities. For the African American minority community this is no longer a theoretical question. The loss of generations of highly trained scientists and scholars of color is more crucial than ever as we move as a society toward more global competition based upon information, communication and knowledge skills. I call this deficit the new slavery. I pointed out that the choice of immigrant person power over African American is consistent with our sad history and present condition of race relations. The evidence that this was and is a conscious choice is found in a chilling study by Leon Bouvier and John Martin of the Center for Immigration Studies. They found that since 1960, if American minorities and women had been represented in the engineering and science fields in proportion to their share of the population, immigration of foreign-born scientists could be negligible. They furthermore found that the current large flows of foreign professionals into fields is likely to further discourage the difficult process of recruiting underrepresented parts of our population (7). Regrettably, I can only conclude that the current status quo is doing just what it was intended to do.
For African Americans our experience in the American labor market as the last hired but first fired has demonstrated that Americans always prefer any other labor supply over choosing African Americans if that choice is available, especially available through immigration. America had a choice from the 1960s through the 1990s. America could have increased her minority scientists through better public and private investment rather than increasing the share of foreign Ph.Ds in science and engineering from 16.8% in 1960 to 40% in 1990 (8). She chose not to take that route and we continue to not take that route.
Sadly, the effects of high immigration on African American educational opportunities are not most felt at the doctoral level. We all pay lip service to the contention that our people are our most important resource in an economic environment that is increasingly dependent upon higher order creative, intellectual and technical skills to propel our increasingly technologically based information, communication and entertainment driven economy. Yet in many high immigrant states, African American students are in competition with children of immigrant parents for a limited slice of the public school education resources. Throughout the nation almost 16% of all school age children have immigrant mothers and in my own state of Texas it is more than one in five. For those with children four years old and younger the percentages are higher. Nationwide it is almost 18% and in Texas it is more than 22% (9). It is no secret that in the Dallas metropolitan area where I reside, the conflict among members of the African American and Latino communities over allocation of resources within the Dallas school board and district has been intense and unfortunate for the children.
American Preferences for Immigrant over African American Labor
Make no mistake about it, the potential for employment is the greatest pull factor for immigration. If the supply of labor, especially unskilled labor, increases in markets where significant numbers of African Americans reside for any reason, you have either a wage depression or labor substitution effect upon African American, who because we have less education, work experience and small business creation rates than other Americans, are disproportionally negatively impacted in those markets. I regret to point out that it is quite possible that high rates of immigration may be permitted to continue because while almost half of African Americans work in high immigrant occupations (42%), only a little more than one in five white Americans (22%) work in high immigrant occupations (10).
It is important to point out that immigration is not evenly distributed across our great country but it has disproportionate impact upon states in the South and West (Texas, California and Florida) and cities of past and present significant immigrant flow patterns (Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC. come to mind).
A fact of life is that many African American citizens are living in dire straits in most of these areas of significant immigration. I consistently confront the myth that immigrants take jobs that other American such as African Americans do no want. This is especially fallacious when we see the extent of immigrant employment in the light manufacturing, services and construction sectors.
The fact is that many African Americans, who as Americans, collectively have less access to education and higher education that other Americans, are especially anxious for job opportunities in light manufacturing, the services and especially construction. African American workers and especially young urban workers were and are being denied opportunities in construction that were given to immigrant construction workers in cities subject to high immigrant migration.
The argument is often made that the jobs that immigrants often take in our urban labor markets are jobs that others, such as African American laborers, do not want. The prototype of such jobs are often day labor positions. The assumption that African American workers do not want these positions is fallacious. According to recent data, the percent of immigrants in the labor force in the laborer and fabricator category (20%) almost equals the percentage of African Americans (22%) (11).
Do not misread me. I am not posing a causal relationship. Immigrants, neither legal nor illegal did not bring about the state of Black America. Yet the patience of African Americans wears thin when America welcomes and provides in the century as it did in the last, a better opportunity to achieve the American dream than it provides for African Americans.
America is the only country in the world that has mass immigration at a time of industrial restructuring of the economy. African Americans are disproportionally hurt by this process because almost half of all immigrants head for cities that also have a large number of African American residents searching and fighting for better low-rent housing, better low skill requirement but high paying jobs, and better public school education for their offspring. Needless to say, as manufacturing and industrial jobs decline, the competition for the other jobs becomes more intense and when this happens African Americans always lose for a variety of reasons. These reasons range from stereotypes about race to a preference to more vulnerable worker for whom the threat of deportation can be held over their heads.
In 1990, immigrants were 10% of the U.S. labor force and were a quarter of all workers without a high school diploma but by 1998 immigrants were 12.2% of the workforce and 31% of immigrants did not have a high school diploma (12). These workers had succeed in displacing African American workers in such areas as the construction trade, the restaurant and hospitality services and in light manufacturing in many cities. We are creating the environment for social conflict.
As mass immigration continues I see reports each day that spell out a continuing decline in the condition for African Americans in the country. A Wall Street Journal article (13) pointed out that African American were the only Americans to suffer permanent job losses at our large corporations during the last recession. The worst losses of all categories was for laborer. The same pattern is still in effect for our next recession. Do not mistake this as a sign that African Americans do not want labor intensive jobs. Whenever we witness employers who have low skilled jobs available we find many African Americans who want to work but are often not chosen. This pattern especially holds for the impressive number of small businesses started by immigrants.
It is a sad but tragic fact that most Americans, much less most immigrant do not really identify with most African Americans as part of a great American community primarily because of our collective land often sad history together. We now have evidence that many immigrants especially owners of Asian businesses in our large cities actually discriminate against African Americans and especially African American youth in businesses located in Black communities (14). These immigrant owners actually prefer to hire illegal immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants over African Americans. They readily accept the negative stereotypes of African Americans extensively portrayed in the movies and on videos. This point is critical because immigrant-owned businesses account for one-quarter of all low wage jobs and one-third of the traditional entry jobs in both New York and Los Angeles (15). This tragedy is compounded because Black immigrants from the West Indies even discriminate against American blacks. These negative stereotypes are accepted by immigrants in spite of the fact that there are an average of 14 African American job applicants for every Harlem minimum wage job opening according to a study done by a Columbia University anthropologist (16).
We assume that past history does not impact on current events. We refuse to accept the possibility that to the extent that African American see themselves being disadvantaged by newcomers, it is natural to feel resentment which may translate into desperation, racial tensions and violence. We should require that all immigrants show an understanding of American history and language by having to pass a test that they understand are willing to accept some hard won parts of our American tradition on such issues as racial and gender equality (17). Many immigrants come from cultures where these concepts are foreign to their experience and they are less likely to have the opportunity to understand and address them if they also have no command of the English language. It goes without saying that American legislators should take the lead to see to it that there are incentives created for America to only admit immigrants with an appreciation for and an awareness of our history and traditions which place great value upon racial and gender equality and an appreciation for the long difficult road to achieve those gains.
I am consistently concerned with our deteriorating sense of an American community where we should have a greater responsibility to other Americans before we give priority to non-American citizens. We need to help protect American workers, especially low-skilled African American workers, from job displacement and eventual job wage depressing effect of workers who should not be competing in the American workplace. I note, with regret, the fact that many will identify and have great sympathy for the overall plight of immigrant workers but be callous toward the fate of other Americans who have suffered from years and generations of unfair treatment. During many of these years and generations of unfair and discriminatory treatment, from other Americans to African Americans, immigrant Americans were able to benefit from employment opportunities which in the past were denied to African Americans. How unfair it is that this pattern still strongly influenced by high immigration levels continues to negatively affect African American workers.
Just as immigration policy was and has been a contributing factor to the limited employment opportunities for African Americans in the last century and for at least three decades of this century, it is time that the labor market effects, especially labor market effects of immigration on African Americans and other low-income workers be addressed as a top priority. Our sense of common purpose and the brother and sisterhood of our shared American experience should permit us to do no less. We must begin to address the gaps in our immigration policies that compound the disadvantages of our people of color at a time when the economic indicators for low income low skilled African Americans is dismal. If we are not going to address this issue, then who will?
Notes
1 Robert Malloy. “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are: Black American on Immigration.” Center paper No. 10, Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, DC, June 1996.
2 Vernon Briggs Jr. “Mass Immigration and the National Interest”. M. E. Sharpe, New York 1992, p. 39.
3 See Sidney M. Wilhelm. “Who Needs the Negro?” UB & U.S., Hampton, 1993.
4 See David S. North. “Soothing the Establishment: The Impact of Foreign-Born Scientists and Engineers on America”. University Press of America, Lanham Maryland, 1995.
5 Ibid.
6 Siddharth Dube. “India's Bitter Divide” Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. XLI, No. 39, June 9, 1995, pp. 38-40.
7 Leon f. Bouvier and John L. Martin. “Foreign-Born Scientists, Engineers and Mathematicians in the United States”. Washington, Center for Immigration Studies, August, 1995, p.3.
8 Frank L. Morris, “The New Slavery: the Denial of Doctoral Opportunities to African American Students.” Urban League Review. Vol. 16 No. 3, Winter 1993.
9 Data from the March 1998 Current Population Survey of the Census Bureau cited in Steven A. Camarota “Immigrants in the United States 1998...” Center for Immigration Studies backgrounder, Washington DC January, 1999 p. 10.
10 Ibid p. 8.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid. p. 5.
13 Rochelle Sharpe “In Latest Recession, Only Blacks Suffered Net Employment Loss.” Wall street Journal, September 14, 1993, p. 1.
14 Johnathan Kaufman, “Help Unwanted: Immigrants' Businesses Often Refuse to Hire Blacks in Inner City” Wall Street Journal, Vol. CCXXV No. 109, June 6, 1995. p.1.
15 Ibid
16 Ibid
17 Norman Matloff, “Are Foreign Nationals Needed in the Computer Industry?” Written testimony before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, April 1995, p. 12, 13.
|