Big Red Car here down in Texas in the ATX — Austin By God Texas. Down here the Big Red Car knows a thing or two about immigration and the border.
Bad news — it’s way, way worse than you could ever know right now.
Let’s say you were a carpenter — a man (sorry ladies, we’re not going to be politically correct today cause most carpenters are guys, sorry) who makes his living butchering wood and pounding nails or riding herd on a nail gun. You love the smell of sawdust, the sound of a power saw and the sense of worth created by seeing your talent and time transformed into real things like houses and trim and shopping centers. You are a builder.
When you go home at night, you smell like a man and you’ve got that good kind of tired–the tired of a man who has done a damn good day’s work and who has put food on his family’s table. You are an American worker and you are a stud.
You are the kind of man who has built America! Give yourself a pat on the back! You deserve it.
Unfortunately for the last six years your wages have not increased. Your cost of living has gone up but your income has actually gone down. You are earning less today in real terms than you were six years ago.
You are not alone. Every middle class wage earner in America has seen their average family income decline dramatically.
How is immigration going to impact the carpenters?
How do you think the President’s plans to give amnesty to 12-20MM illegal workers in the United States is going to impact your pocketbook, carpenter?
It is going to dampen wages — that means wages are going to continue to go down.
It is going to flood the market with talented but unskilled labor that is going to be looking to learn a skill like carpentry. This means the supply of workers (carpenters) is going to increase. When supply increases, prices decrease. That means your wages.
At a time that there is almost no meaningful job creation, the supply of labor to chase those limited jobs is going to increase dramatically.
Illegal immigrants — made legal by the arbitrary stroke of the President pen — are going to be willing to work for less money and under more trying conditions. The gains made by labor as to wages and working conditions are going to evaporate.
Bottom line, carpenters, it is going to hit you in the pocketbook. It is going to hit you hard and only a couple of decades of growth is going to make it right. Do you have a couple of decades to wait in line for this labor bubble to be absorbed?
The President’s plan to grant a wholesale amnesty is a very bad plan for any worker in America. It is a betrayal of the basic contract between a nation and its citizens — to protect our citizens from adverse conditions not to create those adverse conditions and hardships.
If I were a carpenter………….I’d be very angry about the President’s plan to steal my livelihood for political purposes.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be kind to a carpenter today cause the President’s getting ready to pick his pocket.
