Thomas Farley
In the midst of a job-killing pandemic, President Biden is trying to pass a bill that would give 11 million undocumented immigrants the legal right to work here. If he’s successful, it’s going to hit our state hard.
Maine is not a haven of white-collar office workers. Only 33% of us have college degrees, a number that falls below the national average and trails 21 other states.
Many of us make our livings at commercial fisheries, in lumber and paper mills, retail stores, and retirement homes. In sheer numbers, these working-class industries dominate our state’s economy.
Blue-collar Mainers need every good-paying job they can get. The working class bore the brunt of layoffs and job losses during the pandemic as restaurants, retail stores, and hotels shut down. The median household in Maine makes just under $59,000 per year, nearly $7,000 less than the national average.
So, especially for our hardscrabble state, Biden’s amnesty plan will make the labor market tighter than it already is — as millions of people suddenly join the legal workforce.
Undocumented immigrants come to America precisely because they seek working-class jobs. They’re most likely to work in construction, transportation, manufacturing, farming, or retail services, according to the Pew Research Center.
American workers need and want those same jobs. Even though three-quarters of Americans believe undocumented immigrants only fill in at tasks Americans won’t do, the data proves otherwise. Of the 474 occupations recognized by the Department of Commerce, all but a handful have a majority native-born workforce.
Undocumented immigrants already siphon off income that would otherwise have gone to Americans. According to Harvard economist George Borjas, they decrease the wages of native-born Americans by $118 billion per year.
Making matters worse, the timing of this amnesty proposal is terrible.
We are still hurting from the pandemic-fueled recession. Despite some recovery, our national unemployment rate hovers around 6%, far higher than pre-pandemic levels. In Maine, it’s a bit better — 4.8 percent. But that’s still almost two percentage points higher than a year ago.
Those hardest hit by the pandemic have been the less skilled. So our state’s jobless would now have to compete against new workers who also seek jobs with lower-skill requirements.
But even if the economy magically recovered and jobs reappeared, amnesty and immigration expansion would still hurt our working-class by putting downward pressure on wages. Employers who in the past were forbidden to hire low-cost illegals could now turn to this new source of labor — at wages below currently prevailing wage rates.
Sen. Susan Collins is one of those rare Republicans whose opinion really matters to her Democratic colleagues. For the sake of her constituents — and hard-working Americans everywhere — Sen. Collins should make the case against Biden’s one-size-fits-all amnesty plan. It hurts our citizens, overturns our country’s purported concern for the rule of law, and encourages waves of new undocumented immigrants to come here.
Sen. Collins has established herself as a moderate who fiercely defends our state’s interests in Washington. She knows what puts food on the tables of Maine’s pandemic-ravaged workers. And she can help folks find good jobs at decent wages by rejecting amnesty and other proposals that harm the working majority of our citizens.
Thomas Farley is the president of Farley, Inc., a Rockport-based landscape design, construction and maintenance company that has served Maine for 40 years.
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