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AFL-CIO's annual convention gets started on Monday, presumably because
members don't want to show up for work next week. One of the top
items on the agenda will be support for an amnesty of illegal aliens.
The union's executive council endorsed this idea last year; now
the general membership must approve it.
Unions traditionally
have opposed high levels of immigration on the understandable grounds
that importing low-wage workers depresses wages for union members.
This stance has wavered in recent years, perhaps because so many
union members are now public-sector employees relatively isolated
from these wage pressures. A formal vote backing the executive council,
however, will mark the total collapse of Big Labor's historic position.
AFL-CIO president
John Sweeney knows that he has to recruit about 400,000 more union
members each year simply to avoid suffering net losses in union
membership--and he believes immigrants represent an untapped pool
of potential recruits. In recent years, about one-quarter of all
new entrants to the workforce have been foreign-born. A substantial
minority of these people have been illegal aliens. Legalizing them
would make unionizing them much easier.
Yet Sweeney
is making a strategic mistake, according to Cornell University's
Vernon Briggs. He says that union membership typically increases
during periods of immigrant restriction and decreases during periods
of generous admissions (such as the current period). In a report
published by the Center for Immigration Studies, Briggs warns the
AFL-CIO against a pro-immigration policy: "It means that success
in the organization of immigrants will not translate into any real
ability to increase significantly the wages or benefits of many
such organized workers. As long as the labor market continues to
be flooded with low-skilled immigrant job seekers, unions will not
be able to defy the market forces that will suppress upward wage
pressures."
Native
Spun Update
On Tuesday, NRO ran a story discussing a bill in honor of Native
American Month. The bill falsely claims that "Native American
governments developed the fundamental principles of freedom of speech
and separation of powers in government." The bill passed on
a voice vote. During the "debate" preceding that vote,
many congressmen expressed the earnest wish that all Americans would
learn more about the history of Native Americans. Perhaps the congressmen
should take their own advice.
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