Workers lose jobs, pay to illegal aliens

What has been good for state coffers, some industries and immigrant families has been hard on some workers.

At the Roofers Local Union 142 in Des Moines, Bob Pearson can tell you all about the good-paying union jobs lost in an industry he says has been overrun in recent years by undocumented workers.

Pearson, the union's business manager, said just three union shops for roofers exist now in the region covering central and western Iowa.

Union workers make $11 to $30 an hour, he said, but it's not uncommon to find undocumented workers tearing off roofs for cash, making less than the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage.

"It's a major problem in this business," he said. "We've lost all the union shops in Nebraska. They've got people there working for a fourth of what they should be making. It's like they are coming up by the semi-full, and it's the business owners who are profiting."

But even as workers such as roofers and construction employees cry foul, business owners in agriculture and food processing say immigrant workers are still needed.

Farmers across the state have said Iowa needs a worker program that would allow them to tap migrant labor for extended periods. Aging populations dominate rural areas in Iowa, where local workers are hard to find.

"I can't hire a nonexistent work force," said Darin Dykstra, whose 3,000-head dairy operation in northwest Iowa relies on immigrant labor.

Dykstra, of Maurice, pays roughly $10.50 to $16 an hour, plus health care and paid vacation after three months. He said local workers tend to quit after a few shifts, so all but one of his 32 employees are Hispanic immigrants. The same is true of his whole industry, he said.

"If all the dairies in Iowa were raided tomorrow, it would be a disaster for the state," he said.

Dykstra said his operation runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so he needs reliable workers.

The Hispanics he has employed are reliable, and "I think they are also more in touch with agriculture," he said.

Dykstra said he has listened to people such as U.S. Rep. Steve King, the western Iowa Republican, call loudly for greater enforcement, but he said Congress first needs to offer employers workable programs - like a guest worker program - that aren't cumbersome.

This year, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, told Politico that without labor provided by unauthorized immigrants, Americans would spend a lot more - "three, four or five times more - for food, or we would have to import food and have all the food security risks."

King criticized those comments, saying illegal immigrants were taking American jobs and sapping social safety-net programs.

Economists say changes in immigration don't tend to affect the unemployment rate.

Anti-illegal immigration groups such as FAIR have argued that the presence of unauthorized immigrants in Iowa has not only driven down wages but also driven up the price of housing and health care in heavily Hispanic areas, such as Buena Vista County.

Research by Harvard University professor George Borjas has documented immigration-related wage reductions. By increasing the labor supply, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of U.S.-born men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4 percent.

The impact was greatest, about 7.4 percent, among those born in the United States who did not graduate from high school - roughly the poorest one-tenth of the work force at the time. Roughly 90 percent of adults in Iowa households have high school diplomas or more education, according to the latest three-year estimates - 2006-08 - from the U.S. Census.

The reduction in earnings occurred regardless of whether the immigrants were legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It was the presence of additional workers that reduced wages, not their legal status.

While some lawmakers favor requiring better verification of workers' status using programs like E-Verify, business leaders worry about the expense and accuracy of such systems.

Ed Wallace of the Iowa Taxpayers Association said his group represents 160 companies, many of them multinational in biosciences and agriculture.

"Many of them want to do due diligence and want to make sure they have documented people," he said. "But it can be sometimes very, very difficult."

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101003/NEWS/10030351/-1/PROM/Workers-lose-jobs-pay-to-immigrants