Trump Immigration Enforcement Will Be Bad For Employers And Illegals, Good For American Workers
The New York Times is worried that employers, the beneficiaries of illegal immigration, will suffer when there’s workplace immigration enforcement.
Sudden Loss of Undocumented Workers Threw Tech Supplier Into Upheaval
Jabil says it required “herculean efforts” to replace employees from a staffing agency. Other businesses are bracing for “an enforcement storm” under President-elect Trump.
By Steve Eder
Steve Eder is part of a team of reporters investigating staffing agencies’ role in filling jobs with immigrants who are in the country illegally.
December 16, 2024
Jabil, a major manufacturer of electronics components for the tech industry, made a startling discovery in the spring of 2021: It had been relying on dozens of undocumented workers, contracted from a staffing agency, to power its manufacturing sites near Silicon Valley.
Jabil insisted they be fired, setting off what it called a “mass exodus” from its work force that required expensive and “herculean efforts” to find replacements, including hosting job fairs and borrowing workers from a client.
Well, they were required by law to fire them—the fault is with the illegals for working there, and the staffing agencies for hiring them, all of which distorts the labor market and displaces American workers.
The upheaval caused the company to fall behind on both existing orders and bids for new business, costing it up to $50 million, according to interviews and allegations in an ongoing lawsuit against the staffing agency.
How Jabil navigated the sudden loss of undocumented workers — years before Donald J. Trump won re-election on a pledge of mass deportations of illegal immigrants — foreshadows the possible road ahead for companies that rely on staffing agencies to fill jobs at factories, warehouses and distribution centers.
The New York Times reported in November that staffing firms were among the top employers of unauthorized workers at work sites inspected for immigration violations over the past decade. Now with Mr. Trump’s victory, some firms are fearing the worst. [More]
Jabil sounds like a foreign firm, but actually it was founded in Detroit by two white guys whose names are James and Bill.
It looks like Jabil has recovered, but it’s the distorting effect of lack of immigration enforcement for the last 30 years that has put employers in this bind. While the NYT has only recently discovered staffing agencies—which are intended to keep the employer from being responsible for their employees’ immigration status, although as Jabil knows, they’re still liable—reporters on the immigration beat have been familiar with them for years.
The Center For Immigration Studies’ David North reports that in Florida’s Key West, a
gang of aliens from the republic of Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atlanta) ran a string of staffing agencies that hired illegal aliens for hotels and bars and stiffed the federal government of millions in taxes owed, according to another Law360 article.
In this case, the lead defendant, who worked for the Paradise Hospitality companies, is Eka Samadashvili, who is identified as the companies’ bookkeeper and sounds like the chief conspirator. She pleaded guilty in April to both harboring illegal workers and obstructing the collection of federal taxes. She must repay $8.5 million in federal taxes and serve three years in prison.
One of her colleagues, former champion weightlifter Davit Pavliashvili, was sent to prison for 18 months and ordered to repay $16,000 in unpaid income taxes. Another colleague got four months in prison.
It is good to see prison terms for these “white collar” crimes.
There’s good news for employers, though! America is just full of Americans who are willing to do the work that employers and media have been saying for years that “Americans won’t do.”
The Center for Immigration Studies has an article titled
New Analyses Show Huge Pool of Untapped Labor in U.S.
Two reports examine national and state-level employment trends
By CIS on December 19, 2024
Two new reports from the Center for Immigration Studies reveal a significant and long-term decline in labor force participation among U.S. born working-age men, particularly those without a bachelor’s degree. The reports emphasize the untapped labor potential in the United States, with millions of U.S.-born adults remaining on the economic sidelines, challenging the argument that a shortage of workers necessitates reliance on illegal immigration.
The primary report documents a six-decade long increase in the number and share of working-age U.S.-born men who are not in the labor force — neither working nor looking for work. Those who are not in the labor force are not counted as unemployed because they have not looked for work in the prior four weeks. A companion report also released today highlights similar trends at the state level, underscoring the scale of this issue across the country. Both analyses highlight the social consequences of declining labor force participation, including increased crime, overdose deaths, and welfare dependency.
Companion: Labor Force Participation Deterioration Among the U.S.-Born at the State Level, 1960 to 2024
“Relying on immigrant workers has allowed our country to ignore the decades-long decline in labor force participation,” said Steven Camarota the Center’s Director of Research and the report’s lead author. “Reducing immigration would cause wages to rise, incentivizing work and compelling policymakers to undertake much-needed reforms in welfare and disability programs.” [More]
Here’s a graph of all the Americans who have been “Working-Age, but Not Working” over the last 64 years:
There are a lot of Americans who don’t have jobs, who can do jobs, and who will do jobs when they’re not being displaced by cheaper foreign labor.
On Twitter, CIS’s Mark Krikorian said
Mass immigration enables us to ignore the huge number of Americans neither working nor looking for work.
The incoming Trump Administration, unlike previous Republican Administrations, specifically the George W. Bush Administration, looks like it actually cares about Americans versus illegals, and can get something done.
This will be good for all Americans who don’t directly profit from illegal alien labor.
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