Back in 2000, The New York Times opposed the AFL-CIO when it called on the federal government to grant amnesty to the estimated six million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., and for the elimination of most sanctions on employers who hire illegals.
The union was hoping that amnesty would allow them to unionize many of these workers, and increase the volume of their dues-paying members, which had been dwindling.
Despite what would seem like a no-brainer for liberals nowadays, the paper’s editorial page flatly rejected the plan because it would harm poor Americans.
“Amnesty would undermine the integrity of the country’s immigration laws and would depress the wages of its lowest-paid native-born workers,” the paper’s editorial page stated.
The editorial criticized the 1986 amnesty which failed to stop further illegal immigration or increase sanctions on employers who knowingly hire undocumented aliens.
The editorial said any future amnesty would only lead to more illegal immigration.
“The primary problem with amnesties is that they beget more illegal immigration. Demographers trace the doubling of the number of Mexican immigrants since 1990 in part to the amnesty of the 1980’s. Amnesties signal foreign workers that American citizenship can be had by sneaking across the border, or staying beyond the term of one’s visa, and hiding out until Congress passes the next amnesty. The 1980’s amnesty also attracted a large flow of illegal relatives of those workers who became newly legal. All that is unfair to those who play by the immigration rules and wait years to gain legal admission.”
NYT also wrote that granting amnesty and increasing immigration widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and decreases wages for low-skilled Americans.
“[Amnesty] is also unfair to unskilled workers already in the United States. Between about 1980 and 1995, the gap between the wages of high school dropouts and all other workers widened substantially. Prof. George Borjas of Harvard estimates that almost half of this trend can be traced to immigration of unskilled workers. Illegal immigration of unskilled workers induced by another amnesty would make matters worse.”
