2003 Carolinas poll finds too many immigrants, too few jobs
September 11, 2003
That's what Melinda Griggs of Davidson worries about. Griggs, 53, lost her furniture-manufacturing job in May and hasn't found work since.
While she doesn't blame the region's influx of immigrants for her layoff -- her company moved a third of its jobs overseas -- she believes these newcomers are flooding the weak job market and making it harder for U.S.-born citizens to find work.
Griggs is in good company. Nearly 80 percent of respondents to the 2003 Carolinas Poll said they believe it's too easy to immigrate to the United States.
And 61 percent of the poll's 908 respondents said U.S. immigration laws are ineffective. The poll was taken in August for The Observer and NBC6.
In follow-up interviews, most respondents said the weak economy -- not terrorism -- is the main reason they want immigration laws toughened.
"I have nothing against people coming in here wanting a better way of life, but with the shape the economy is in, I think they ought to make (immigration laws) real strict," Griggs said. "There are not enough jobs for the people who are already here."
Immigration experts say such opinions are to be expected, given the nation's economic slump and the Carolinas' recent steady stream of layoffs.
"In a down economy, many native Americans feel that immigrants are taking their jobs," said Walter Farrell, professor of social work, public health and public policy at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel Hill.
"This is at all levels of the class system, but especially in the manufacturing sector, which has lost tens of thousands of jobs."
But the reality, Farrell and immigration advocates say, is that jobs are scarcer because more industries are sending work overseas, where labor is cheaper. And in cities like Charlotte, which has a high number of white-collar jobs, immigrants tend to take lower-wage jobs that U.S. natives don't want.
"Go into the kitchen of your local diner, or go get your car washed," said the Rev. Ralph Fogg, 71, who splits his time between Topsail Beach and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
"It's exactly the way the Germans did in 1860s, and the Italians did in the 1880s. Immigrants always took the jobs no one else wanted to do."
Greensboro resident Brenda Chaney said she believes the United States needs to toughen its immigration policies so the country is not such a magnet for people from poor countries who may not be able to support themselves here.
"Our country cannot continue to take care of its people economically while taking care of everyone else's," she said.
African Americans are more likely to compete with immigrants for lower-wage jobs, but blacks polled were less likely than whites to view current immigration laws as ineffective, and were also less likely to want to make it harder for immigrants to enter the States.
"African Americans feel they have not always been courted with equal respect in the economy and they can identify with some of the barriers facing immigrants," Farrell said. "At the same time, they're torn because they see these individuals competing and getting their jobs."
If anything, the poll results show that what's needed is more public discussion about immigration, said John Keeley, director of communications for the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.
"People are terrifically concerned with this issue," Keeley said. "North Carolina's experience with illegal immigration is something dramatic and new.
"The respondents are acknowledging what they've seen with their own eyes, the challenges and disaffections. That's an irrefutable reflection of how swift the change has been."