We would like to add something to our post yesterday about the welcome that organized Labor is giving to mass immigration. This indeed is quite a change from the days Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL-CIO, who saw saw mass immigration clearly for what it was–an effort by business interests to drive down workers’ wages in order to boost their profit margins.
As union bosses now promote immigration, they don’t seem to care whether it’s legal or illegal. They justify this stand by parroting warm and fuzzy sentiments about immigrants. But often beneath the sentiments is a motive of pure self-seeking. The unions view immigrants as a source of potential new members. This important to them because union membership has declined significantly in recent decades, due in part to the shift of many unions toward the radical left and their failure to relate to the concerns of American workers.
If unions start growing, their leaders calculate an increase their political clout as well as an increase of their salaries. In effect, they drive workers’ wages down in order to drive their own wages up.
Read more at talkingpointsmemo.com