Immigrant business owners in Seattle are speaking out against a proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and argue such an increase will hurt the city’s robust working immigrant population — the very demographic the wage hike seeks to help.
The employers, all of whom make up the Ethnic Community Coalition, fear that an increase in the minimum wage could have substantial effects on the large population of immigrants living and working in the Seattle, Wash., area, Seattle’s KIRO reported.
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“These people will be harshly impacted by this law,” Lawrence Pang, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, told KIRO.
City officials in Seattle are pushing to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour from $9.19 an hour — a move they say will help put money in the pockets of low-income families and close the income gap. But Seattle business owners fear that such an increase will cause them to close their doors or let go of inexperienced workers — many of whom are immigrants — in favor of high-skilled employees.
Members of the coalition penned a letter to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and signed a petition opposing the wage hike.
“Like many small business owners faced with this possibility, the financial cost to our businesses will be staggering, considering our low profit margins and the proposed 40 percent increase in wages,” the letter reads. “…However, our main concern is that if this policy becomes effective, the people who will be hurt the most are those within the minority and immigrant communities.”
While one immigrant working for Pang said making $15 an hour would be ideal, others worry the increase could actually cause them to lose welfare benefits. And Ethnic Community Coalition members argued such a raise is unsubstantiated.
“As business owners, if faced with paying $15 per hour for an individual from a pool of better-skilled and more experienced workers — over an immigrant with little experience or training, who cannot speak English — that to maximize our bottom line, efficiency, and economy of scale we will opt to hire the more experienced individual,” the group told Murray.
Immigrants make up 19 percent of Washington’s population, and the state currently boasts the highest minimum wage in the country. A committee formed to propose a recommendation to raise Seattle’s minimum wage is expected to present their measure to Murray this week.
