II. A Love-Hate Relationship: Illegal Immigrants and the Labor Market

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates between 11.5 and 12 million illegal immigrants live in the United States.25 The resulting costs to taxpayers26 and questions involving border security27 raise many political concerns. However, illegal immigrants have had perhaps their most significant impact on the labor market. There are six to seven million illegal immigrants working in the United States, comprising approximately five percent of the nation's total workforce.28 Whether illegal workers have had a positive or negative effect on the labor market has long been the subject of a heated debate. On the one side, employers claim that the influx of illegal labor is vital to the survival of their businesses. On the other, workers' rights advocates argue that illegal immigrants depress their wages and working conditions. As the following analysis reveals, they both may be right.

Many employers, particularly those in industries involving heavy labor and dangerous or unsavory working conditions, argue that American citizens are simply unwilling to work under the conditions these jobs require.29 The number of illegal aliens employed by these industries suggests that employers are correct. Illegal immigrants comprise “fourteen percent of all construction workers, seventeen percent of all cleaning workers, twelve percent of all food preparation workers, and twenty-four percent of all farm workers.”30 Employers insist the loss of these employees would threaten the viability of their businesses. For example, several North Carolina employers recently stated that illegal immigrants were “meeting [their] critical need” for labor.31 Moreover, attorneys for Swift sought to enjoin immigration officials from conducting raids on its facilities by arguing the company would lose forty percent of its workforce due to the government crack down.32 Members of Congress have even stated that there is a dependency on illegal labor in these industries.33 Therefore, many employers would be hurt by the sudden loss of illegal labor.

This evidence, however, supplies only a partial picture of the self-perpetuating character of employer dependency on illegal labor. Peter Cappelli, Director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, proposes a different theory for this dependency:

Immigrants have been hired to do [low-skilled] jobs in such large numbers, not because Americans refuse them, but because Americans are not willing to perform such tasks where wages are lower than they would otherwise be, where work rules may not exist and where the working conditions may be hazardous. 34

Thus, as more and more employers took advantage of illegal labor to lower their costs, the necessity to stay competitive in the marketplace evolved into industry-wide dependency.35

Professor Cappelli is not alone in this assessment. As early as 1988, Congress was aware employers were hiring cheaper and more vulnerable illegal workers, and that the practice was depressing wages and displacing workers.36 In a recent poll conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies, a majority of the public agreed that Americans would perform these low-skilled jobs if employers were to pay higher wages.37 Additionally, the suit brought by former Swift employees against the company is based on this theory.38 Regardless of the cause of their dependency, however, employers argue the threat to their businesses is nonetheless real.

Political pressure exerted by employers that utilize illegal labor has forced immigration officials to stop otherwise effective enforcement operations. In 1998, immigration officials raided the Georgia onion industry in an effort to catch illegal workers.39 Despite the relative success of the operation in identifying illegal workers, farmers complained to their representatives in Washington, D.C. that the operation left them with insufficient labor to gather their $90 million harvest.40 The operation was halted due to political pressure from Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell and Representative Jack Kingston.41

In 1999, immigration officials launched another enforcement operation to curb illegal labor, known as Operation Vanguard, this time targeting meat-packing facilities in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota. Operation Vanguard was relatively successful, discovering that nearly 5,000 out of 24,000 workers had questionable documentation.42 As was the case in Georgia, political pressure caused by plant closings forced immigration officials to halt operations.43 Not only do these operations demonstrate employers' dependency on illegal immigration, they also reveal the political inhibitor for reform and the reason for such low enforcement numbers by immigration authorities.44

Assuming that employers are dependent on illegal immigrants and that illegal workers have a propensity to displace American workers, illegal labor is a race to the bottom. When employers hire illegal labor, costs for employers go down, which causes profits to go up.45 As a result, competitors of the original employer must respond by lowering their costs to stay competitive in the market.46 In order to lower costs, competitors resort to hiring illegal labor, further entrenching the dependence on illegal immigrants. As the cycle continues, other employers are faced with the option of either hiring the cheaper labor or going out business.47

As a result, enforcement efforts by immigration authorities seem doomed to failure. If an enforcement program becomes too successful, lobbying pressure from industries that have become accustomed to illegal labor intensifies. In turn, the area's Congressional representatives seek to stop the operation on the grounds that selective enforcement would leave targeted employers unable to compete. In the meantime, the number of illegal immigrants entering the country continues to grow because of the increased demand for their low-cost labor, and dependent employers continue to receive an ample supply of illegal labor.

Part III will explore current federal regulation governing the hiring of illegal immigrants. In doing so, the conclusions postulated will cast light on the issues necessary for a comprehensive solution which accounts for the concerns of industries dependent on illegal labor and the need to stop the growing population of illegal immigrants.