By Joe Guzzardi
02/07/2006
Here are a few additional thoughts on James Fulford’s earlier blog regarding Hutchinson’s take on Blacks and illegal immigration.
I'll be kind and say simply that Hutchinson is woefully under-informed about the impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans.
And I'll be even more charitable by not taking apart point by point — something I could easily do — Hutchinson’s suggestion that Blacks should distance themselves from anti-illegal alien activism because the movement is heavy with racists.
Instead, I'll make a factual statement and then ask a simple question based on that statement.
The fact: Hispanics have passed African-Americans as the country’s largest minority group. This has been done almost exclusively through illegal immigration and births to illegal immigrants. Think about it: Mexicans illegally in the U.S. have displaced Black Americans, legal citizens with all the rights of white Americans, as the nation’s biggest minority bloc.
My question: In what specific and tangible way have African-Americans benefited from illegal immigration that has relentlessly and dramatically increased since 1965? The answer, of course, is that in no way have they benefited. And the reason, at least in part, is because so-called Black leaders and spokesmen like Hutchinson are in deep denial and refuse to fight for what is rightfully theirs.
Look, for example at what one African-American told me about the effect of illegal immigration on wages in his profession.
In 2002, as part of a column I wrote titled, ???Amnesty According to Rolling Stone and Gangbox.Com,??? I interviewed Gregory A. Butler, a 33-year-old African-American and member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in New York’s Local 608.
From my column:
"Butler told me that illegal immigrants have severely impacted wages for Americas 5 million carpenters. According to Butler, contractors who bid out Sheetrock jobs are frequently abusive to illegal aliens. And they often demand 100 boards per worker per day about twice the normal production. The contractors bill out at union rates, pay less than half that rate and pocket the difference. Furthermore, according to Butler, some illegal aliens are working in Manhattan for $30 daily plus a ham sandwich."
And in my follow-up column, "Rolling Stone vs. American Workers," Butler added this when I asked him what happens to all the young Black men who are shut out of decent jobs because of illegal immigration:
"Some enlist in the military. The vast majority struggle to get the few legit jobs out there and make due with whatever they can get. As for the rest, have you ever wondered why there are 1 million blacks in prison? "Many black men, denied a legit job, are driven into low level street drug sales. And since our war of drugs targets the bottom of the rung, they end up in jail. The same for those caught in petty theft. "We've really been hurt by losing the low level jobs to the illegal aliens."
Based on the position Hutchinson took in his column, you can only conclude that either his head is wedged or he is willing to sell out his fellow Blacks to Mexicans before he would stand with white Americans for immigration reform.
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