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    Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth
    Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth
    Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth
    Audiobook7 hours

    Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth

    Written by Roy Beck

    Narrated by Roy Beck

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    150 years after the end of slavery and nearly 60 years after passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, average Black household wealth in the 21st century remains a fraction of the median assets of other racial, ethnic, and immigrant populations.

    There are many reasons, but this book is about one: two centuries of governmental encouragement of periodic sustained surges in immigration.

    Governmental policies and actions have enabled employers to depress Black wages and to avoid hiring African Americans altogether.

    Here is a grand sweep of the little-told stories of the struggles of freed slaves and their descendants to climb job ladders in the eras of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Barbara Jordan, and other African American leaders who advocated tight-labor migration policies. It is a history of bitter disappointments and, occasionally, of great hope:

    • Setback: The first European immigration surge after 1820 and the ensuing sometimes-violent labor competition.

    • Hope: The post-Civil War opening of the "golden door" to northern and western jobs.

    • Setback: The Ellis Island-era, Great Wave of immigration.

    • Hope: Major reductions in immigration in the mid-20th century creates a labor demand among northern and western industrialists so great that they aggressively recruited descendants of slavery and precipitated the Great Migration of Black southerners.

    • Setback: In 1965, Congress accidentally restarts mass immigration.

    Looking to the future, the author finds in the past assurance that any immigration policy that helps move more Black workers into the labor force and increases their wealth accumulation will also assist struggling Hispanics and other populations of recent immigration.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation
    Release dateOct 13, 2021
    ISBN9781737954729
    Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth

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    • 5/5
      An excellent resource to learn the effects that unfettered legal and illegal immigration has historically had and is currently having on the black population. The author tracks major immigration laws and subsequent effects on driving down black employment, as well as eliminating higher-paying jobs in the United States for many others. Not only does the unlimited number of immigrants push US citizens out of jobs, the latest immigrants push prior immigrants of the same ethnicity out of the jobs they have.The author is very careful in trying to not demonize individuals that are entering the US, whether legally or illegally, which is a very fine tightrope to walk. He regularly re-emphasizes this in the book in order to not encourage any hatred or discrimination towards anyone. He portrays the real problem as the US Congress and Presidents in promoting the fallacy that there are insufficient workers to fill jobs in the US, and therefore an endless stream of immigrants is needed to “take on those jobs that US citizens are not willing to do.” How many times have we heard that mantra? This philosophy also permeates the high-tech industry that regularly says the USA does not have enough high-tech workers and therefore more work visas are required to fill those roles as well.What the author is saying is that “big business” is in constant pursuit of workers who will not demand higher wages, unionization or any other significant employee benefits, and has used the “lack of citizens to fill the jobs” mantra to get Congress to allow more immigrant employees into the US every year to fill supposed unfillable job positions. The author states that instead of allowing such high levels of immigration, the number limits should be reduced to lower the supply of cheap labor, thereby forcing employers to look to unemployed citizens, provide training and better benefits and figure out how to bring them into the work force.As an example, the author points to the meat industry in the US, which has seen higher paying jobs with benefits that were previously filled with a high percentage of black workers. Cheaper labor has filled those positions, and when those individuals start to demand better working conditions, wages, benefits or unionization, the meat industry just hires replacements at lower wages again.I do not agree with everything the author states in the book, some of which is based on anecdotal commentary. However, his correlation analyses between time periods when immigration has been unfettered and the levels of black employment do appear to be valid.