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Re: REP. BERMAN (D-CA) ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN AMNESTY
VCT Web Posted 3/31/2000
Congressman Howard Berman
Fax: (202) 225-3196
Dear Congressman Berman:
Your endorsement of the AFL-CIO's illegal alien amnesty plan reminded me of George Herbert's, "He that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas". AFL-CIO advocacy of amnesty for 6 million illegals is a sneaky membership ploy nurtured under the sleazy, sub-rosa slogan, "if you can't beat em, recruit em".
Union recruitment of illegal aliens is a despicable act to reward millions of people who brazenly defied U.S. law. Amnesty for illegal hurts the American worker by ensuring a steady supply of unlawful newcomers willing to accept inferior working conditions and inferior pay. Moreover, amnesty will only encourage more workers to cross the borders illegally. The AFL-CIO's amnesty endorsement for illegal aliens serves no interest but their own avarice. This plan is a con-job extraordinaire, drafted in a smoke filled room of labor opportunists. My suggestion would be for all of these union bigwigs to return to this room every July 4th, while keeping the blinds pulled.
In the Seventies, Cesar Chavez volunteered his United Farm Worker staff to patrol the southern border to keep out the Mexican immigrants who were driving down the wages of Mexican-American stoop laborers in his union. By cutting down the supply of farm workers competing for jobs, Chavez managed to drive up their wages during the Seventies. But the Mexican economic crisis of the early Eighties, and the lack of any real federal effort to keep surging illegals out of the U.S. overwhelmed his efforts under a flood of cheap immigrant workers. Stoop laborers' wages stopped growing in 1981.
Long time union activist and California Assemblyman Gil Cedillo said in 1997, "We move the union movement deep into the Latino community. We have displaced other work communities -- clothing, hotel and restaurant industries used to be done by Blacks and Anglos. Now we need to organize to be in a position to lead this country! Because of immigration and the birth rate, our population is growing -- Latinos are all over this nation!" It was Cedillo's movement that wiped-out American Black janitors in Los Angeles in the 1980s. It was this same movement that wiped-out American dry wallers in Southern California a few years later.
The economy benefits in the long run from labor shortages that encourage increased productivity and technological innovation, not from legions of educationally and technically deficient workers. The surging American economy is fueled by investments in technological advances in computers, telecommunications, bioscience, mechanized factories and other technologies that require a labor force comprised of highly educated people with marketable skills. Just the opposite of your nutty endorsement of an Uncle Sam sanctuary for hordes of uneducated illegal aliens with less than 8 years formal education, a labor force woefully unprepared to make it skill-hungry America. And it's these same illegal workers, as I mentioned above, who place huge wage and displacement pressures on the lowest-wage workers already here.
In the meantime, the California economy is creating virtually zero net new jobs for high school dropouts, a segment saturated by legal & illegal immigrants.
The bottom line of the union's treachery is they're trying to line their pockets over the short run while remaining indifferent to the probability that illegal alien union members will sow the seeds for the ultimate destruction of American worker's high standards of living.
As this controversy heats up, it's a near-certainty that you and John Sweeney will become increasingly uncomfortable with your Hartz 2-1 collars. There're no moral or patriotic imperatives for beating the amnesty drums for millions of illegal immigrants, in fact, just the opposite. Aside from the discomforts of multiple flea bites, rolling the dice with our country's future is utterly shameful and unconscionable.
Sincerely,
(Name withheld by VCT)
