Where Illegal Immigration is Good Business

For John, BLUF:  Immigration is not just about creating new Americans.  It is also about changing the balance in what used to be a melting pot.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Here is an item on immigration from The Wall Street Journal.  "Georgia Town is Case Study in Immigration Debate:  Some Employers Say Influx Has Helped Bottom Line". The town is Dalton, Georgia.  The town is named after Newburyport, Massachusetts, born Tristram Dalton.

DALTON, Ga.— Charles Carmical doesn’t like President Barack Obama’s politics and doesn’t endorse his recent move to enable millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S.  But, the furniture-store owner acknowledges, it might be good for his bottom line.

“If these people make more money and feel stability, it will help my business,” said Mr. Carmical, standing in his Dalton Auctions showroom on South Dixie Highway.

Illegal immigration has changed the face of this northern Georgia town.  Mexicans and Central Americans flocked here by the thousands in the 1990s to toil in the mills that earned Dalton the nickname “carpet capital of the world.”  Now, the large concentration of undocumented people in this conservative corner of a conservative state will make it a powerful case study for the impact of Mr. Obama’s program as it rolls out in 2015.

This article raises a number of questions, including how the hinterlands really feels about immigration.  Another question is how the legalization of "undocumented" immigrants change the racial balance in the United States,♠ disturbing political and social balances and perhaps driving changes in employment statistics.  One report claims that all the new jobs created since the recent recession have gone, on balance to immigrants.  At the same time, the number of people dropping out of the labor market has increased.

Here we have the definitions for the larger numbers for unemployment in the United States:

U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
U6: U5 + Part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).

My question is if Blacks in the US, Blacks from Dalton, Georgia, fall into the U4, U5 and U6 categories, with long term adverse implications.

Here is one hopeful comment.

Mr. Carmical quoted a line often used by his father, who started the business about 60 years ago. “Money has one color,” he said.

The author of this article is Ms Miriam Jordan, whose EMail address is miriam.jordan@wsj.com.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Granted that race may be, as some suggest, merely a false construct.