Importing Immigrants, Exporting Jobs
Published: January 15, 1992
To the Editor:
"Accepting the Harsh Truth of a Blue-Collar Recession" (front page, Dec. 25), on the loss of more than one million blue-collar jobs in the current recession, correctly points out that not all of those jobs will return after the recession is over. While some have been lost because of increased efficiency, many are non- and low-skill manufacturing jobs. Where have those jobs gone?
They, like hundreds of thousands of such jobs during the 1980's, have been exported to the third world because the work can be done there at less cost. While this is just good economics, it does raise a question about our immigration policy.
Most of the 800,000 legal immigrants entering the United States each year would normally take non- and low-skilled manufacturing jobs. But the very jobs the new immigrants need are the ones that have been leaving the U.S. and going to the countries from which the immigrants come. How then are the new immigrants to find work, and what do they do if they cannot?
The answer to that question is to be found in your Dec. 3 report that in California 40 percent of newly arriving immigrants end up on welfare. Obviously, under current immigration policy, there is a mismatch between the skills needed to find work in the United States today and the skills of new immigrants. We need an immigration policy that recognizes that fact. ROBERT KNOWLES New York, Dec. 29, 1991