Since the [Agriprocessors] raid in May, which resulted in the arrest of nearly 400 illegal workers, serious allegations have emerged against the plant, which is owned by the Brooklyn-based Rubashkin family. Those allegations include inhumane working conditions, egregious violations of child-labor laws, sexual harassment of female workers, and multiple workplace safety infractions...
[I]gnoring the problem of illegal immigration virtually guarantees that Agriprocessors’ despicable practices will be repeated elsewhere...
We don’t have a plethora of manufacturing jobs anymore, we don’t suffer from under-population, and we no longer need unskilled immigrants. We have 73 million adult Americans with only a high school education, and that’s more than enough unskilled labor. With cheap immigrant labor flooding the market, millions of Americans are unemployed, and many have despaired about finding work.
Massive immigration has disastrous consequences for America’s most vulnerable: the unemployed, partially employed, working poor, recent legal immigrants, African-Americans, and elderly working populations.
Legalization will sanction and perpetuate this assault on struggling Americans by flooding the workforce with more cheap labor.
A 1997 study by the American Academy of Sciences found that the cheap labor of illegal aliens and poor immigrants caused a 44 percent decrease in wages among the poorest Americans from 1980 to 1994.
