Low wage immigration undermines conditions of Irish workers

THE recent ESRI report on the Freedom of Movement for Workers from Central and Eastern Europe was, to say the least, slim on substance.

The authors suggested that evidence of displacement of Irish workers was ‘circumstantial’. This must be the new politically correct term for ‘anecdotal’.

If this was valid, one would have to deduce that the laws of supply and demand in the labour market were miraculously suspended.

The report fails to undermine the research carried out by Manus O’Riordan of SIPTU, columnist Fintan O’Toole or recent articles by David McWilliams — all supported by verifiable statistical data which convincingly argued that unregulated low-wage immigration and unscrupulous hiring practices were undermining wages and conditions of Irish workers, and that displacement in the low wage sector of the economy, up to trades level, was a fact of life.

Indeed, on April 8 last, the Taoiseach was hardly scoring points against himself when he was quoted as saying that local politicians found it “hard to explain that there were unemployed carpenters and builders in their towns when there were huge building sites going on and that there were no Irish working on them.”

The ESRI report advises educating migrant workers of their rights and adequate protection to safeguard against potential future disturbances in the labour market. This is admirable, although it presupposes the non-existence of a black economy, and if it was to succeed Ireland would be unique in the history of low wage immigrant economies.

However, there is no statistical evidence to sanctify our uniqueness. In countries with a history of low wage migrant workers a number of disagreeable truisms emerge.

George Borjas, professor of public policy at Harvard, a respected US expert on the economics of immigration, wrote in the New York Times in 1996: “Low-income workers and taxpayers in immigrant states lose; those who employ immigrants or use immigrant services win, as do the immigrants themselves. The critical issue is how much we care about the wellbeing of immigrants compared with that of the Americans who win and the Americans who lose”.

There are many studies which underline increases in poverty as a result of high levels of unskilled immigration. The consequences are greater inequalities in society and lower wages for native blue-collar workers. As immigration is usually a permanent response to a temporary problem, a large underclass of disparate ethnic groups is created which perpetuates itself into the first and even the second generation and may become alienated from the host society.

This, in turn, can ensure that a weakened and supplicant trade union movement is held hostage by the availability of a large pool of casual labour in the low wage sector of the economy. Conversely, low wage immigration to the US or Europe does not seem to benefit the consumer with lower prices, but only increases profit-taking. This is certainly the case in the housing and hospitality sectors in Ireland. Worst of all, studies in the US and Sweden suggest that low-wage immigrants don’t pay their way because they consume more in public services than they contribute in taxes.

If the Government, supported by the main opposition parties, did not set out deliberately to create a low-wage, unequal society under the guise of promoting interculturalism, it would have gone down the Canadian road.

There an active immigration programme is very particular to encourage only the highly skilled and highly educated. As a result, and in contrast to the US and many European countries, Canada remains a far more equal society with a far smaller alienated underclass.

Simon O’Donnell

7 Church Place

Rathmines

Dublin 6