The H-2B guest-worker program is a precision tool for lowering wages, which is why we editorialize today that Republicans should kill it — despite inevitable objections from industry.
But some fear that employers are also using refugees to get cheap labor. For instance, look at agri-business giant JBS in Ottumwa, Iowa. “The city and the school district are preparing for the arrival of up to 200 refugees who will be employed by JBS,” the Ottumwa Courier reports.
This is good news in many ways — for the refugees, for retailers, landlords and restaurants in Ottumwa. But what about the unemployed of Ottumwa?
Ottumwa has about 1,000 unemployed people — those seeking work, but out of a job. That’s an unemployment rate of about 8.5 percent, nearly double the national average.
If JBS can hire 200 Burmese refugees, why couldn’t it have hired 200 of those 1,000 unemployed people already living in Ottumwa?
There are many possible explanations, but this is the sort of question any discussion of immigration needs to address.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s commentary editor, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
