viewpoint
BY GORDON LAFER
Summer Jobs
No Americans wanted
I
t’s summer — the season when high school and
college kids hit the streets looking for jobs. But the
hunt is getting harder than ever. The percentage
of teenagers who got jobs last summer was the lowest
since World War II. This year, 1.5 million teenagers were
unemployed as of May — before school let out.
For decades, American college kids have fl ocked to cheesy
boardwalk towns as one of the prime sources of summer work. But this year,
when members of Congress escape D.C. for the Maryland shore, the people
who sell them T-shirts, serve them cotton candy and usher their kids onto the
boardwalk rides are most likely to be Russians or Ukrainians.
How did these jobs get outsourced to kids from the East? Simple. It’s a
giveaway from Republican leaders — the same people who can’t stop complaining
about “illegal immigrants” — to their donors in the retail industry.
Under the J-1 visa program, up to 150,000 foreign students work in the
U.S. every summer — primarily from the former Soviet Union. There is no limit
on the number of students who can be brought in, and no requirement that
employers hire Americans before turning to foreigners. Though the program is
promoted as “cultural exchange,” there is, in fact, no culture and no exchange.
No American kids are going to work in Moscow. And those who come here get no
educational content whatsoever. In fact, the government pays so little attention
to the jobs these kids get that the J-1 workers were found working in strip clubs
last summer.
This is cheap labor, pure and simple. Employers prefer these kids to hiring
Americans for obvious reasons. First, in Russia, unlike the U.S., it’s legal to
advertise for “cute blonde girl, 18-21.” No fatties in the cultural exchange!
Furthermore, employers get to pay low wages, no Social Security, no Medicare,
and no health insurance. And even if J-1 workers are cheated out of their modest
wages, they’re unlikely to ever complain.
Here’s what you need to know about being a guestworker: you don’t get a
visa to the U.S.; you get a visa to a single employer. If you do anything to piss
off your boss, you can be fi red on the spot. And if you’re fi red, you’re deported.
It costs a few thousand dollars to get here, and most people don’t have that
kind of money, so they borrow it from friends and family. So if you’re deported
before the summer is over, you’ve screwed your extended family.
This is what makes guestworkers beloved by bosses everywhere. Spray
pesticides on them in the fi elds; make them sleep 10 to a room; overcharge them
for crappy trailer housing — they won’t make a peep. And if they do — send them
home! It’s not like they can write a letter to their congressman.
Last year, student guestworkers were paid as little as $1 an hour, with some
housed in apartments so crowded that they slept in shifts and ate on the fl oor.
In Ocean City, Md., a church found itself serving meals to 1,700 foreign students
who lined up nightly at its homeless shelter.
Employers prefer these cheap, docile and disposable workers to us uppity
locals — and they’re trying to replace more and more of us. In 2010, U.S.
corporations applied to import guestworkers for almost every type of service
work — including 40,000 jobs in circuses and amusement parks, 150,000
housekeepers, and almost 500,000 landscape workers. I guess these are some
of the “job creators” we keep hearing about.
Here in Oregon, guestworkers have long been used for landscape, forestry,
and construction work, and are now also running county fairs, as Beaverton-
based Butler Amusements claims it can’t fi nd Americans willing to do this work.
Every couple of years, someone in Washington tries to crack down on the
use of guestworkers. But they never get past the corporate lobbies. The biggest
organization pushing for guestworkers is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which
founded the “Essential Worker Immigration Coalition.” From its name, you might
think EWIC is focused on registered nurses or software programmers; instead,
they defi ne “essential workers” as “less skilled and unskilled labor.” EWIC’s
membership includes the National Restaurant Association, the Hotel & Lodging
Association, Association of Amusement Parks, and the Nursery and Landscape
Association. In other words, all the service industries that can’t physically move
to Mexico or China now want to bring Mexico and China to them, so they can
take advantage of third-world wages without having to leave home.
For the millions of unemployed Americans, it may be a shock to hear that
there’s a critical shortage of people willing to wait tables or cut timber. But
for big business, what’s “essential” about foreign workers is not their skills,
but their desperation. And to replace us with bargain-basement labor, they’re
willing to pay handsomely — to politicians, that is. For instance, the Restaurant
Association — a big proponent of guest workers — has given $4.5 million to
federal politicians since 2005.
For business, guestworkers offer all the advantages of undocumented
workers without the stigma of illegality. For elected offi cials, too, guestworkers
are a win-win: politicians can guarantee the fl ow of cheap workers to their
corporate backers, while still talking tough against the “illegals.” The only ones
who lose out are all the rest of us — us and the kids eating on the fl oor.
Gordon Lafer is a UO political scientist and in 2009-10 served as a senior policy advisor to the U.S. House
of Representatives. He is also the author of Free and Fair? How Labor Law Fails U.S. Democratic Election
Standards (2005).
4 JULY 28, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
letters
TO THE EDITOR
BEING THERE
I wish to publicly thank Sacred
Heart Medical Center for their “Bridge
Program.”
Thank you so much for having such a
wonderful program and for being there
for me, without question, though from
the start you knew I had no insurance to
reimburse you. I was hospitalized three
different times in the span of four months.
I found all the hospital staff, volunteers,
CNAs, clergy, counselors, nurses and
doctors quite compassionate and caring.
I was suffering from depression and to
receive a letter saying that my complete
bill was being forgiven brought me relief
beyond description. It is tough enough to
pull oneself up from the depths of despair,
but when you add on top of it all the worries
of a massive hospital bill, along with the
guilt you feel for the fi nancial hardship
you have brought upon your family, the
thoughts of losing our home became very
real during this medical emergency.
I know some in our community were not
happy with the expense spent on our new
community hospital, and I, too, still question
its location in a fl ood plain. But I can attest
to the healing powers of the river, which
my wife and I could view from my hospital
room. Once again thank you so much
for your thoughtfulness and generosity. I
promise to do what I can in my own simple
small ways to give back to our wonderful
Eugene/Springfi eld community. To those
able fi nancially to give to local charities, I
would give my heartfelt recommendation to
Sacred Heart’s “Bridge Program.”
I own my own small business and live
a pretty simple life. To throw my own
two cents into the pot, I would love to see
some sort of (here comes that scary word)
socialized health care system adopted by
our country. I would also like to thank all
those who had me in their thoughts and
prayers as I found my way back up.
Tim Boyden
Eugene
INSURRECTION
Foreseeing a time that a rebelling
political party would seek to do harm to the
fi nancial security of our nation for political
gain, the framework of our government was
amended to derail such an insurrection.
Amendment 14, Section 4 states, “The
validity of the public debt of the United
States ... shall not be questioned.” The
current turmoil about the unconstitutional
debt ceiling would not be occurring if our
leaders would just read the Constitution.
Either we use our Constitution to govern,
or we ignore it and lose it.
Michael T. Hinojosa
Drain
GOOD GOVERNANCE
Your recent cover story (7/14) about the
majority of Lane County commissioners’
hard shift to the right ought to be a wake-
up call for Lane County residents.
Whether it’s clean water or energy
effi ciency, the majority approach to
public policy is to rely on voluntary
compliance or do nothing at all. Either
way, we have no assurance our watershed
or residential energy conservation needs
will be met. Good governance requires a
commitment to policies that sustain the
entire community, not just a few wealthy
donors. Many of these decisions have been
made without the necessary transparency
for an engaged electorate to have informed
consent as to their effi cacy. I encourage
EW to continue exploring the impact of
county policies that affect us all.
Pat Reilly
Eugene
AUDITING STANDARDS
If the article by Mr. Pittman (“Auditing
the Auditor,” 7/14) is even half right, there
appears to be “trouble in River City.”
By defi nition an auditor is charged with
the responsibility to audit — i.e. to evaluate
— and report to elected offi cials with a
copy available to citizens, the same as the
Audit Division of the Oregon Secretary
of State. The Yellow Book produced by
the GAO establishes Generally Accepted
Government
Auditing
Standards
(GAGAS). The Audit Division follows
these procedures, and their website shows
how it should be done. Is the police auditor
following these standards? The reports
by the police auditor must be available on
the city website — the same as the Audit
Division. If not, the city of Eugene is
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