It was a period when the U.S. took in millions of unskilled, often uneducated individuals and put them to work in manufacturing and building. During this period making it in the U.S. was largely sink or swim, no welfare, food stamps, etc.
Today sees opportunity for unskilled immigrants quite circumscribed.
Automation and offshoring to Third World countries have seriously eroded the number of blue-collar jobs. Manufacturing positions plummeted from 19.4 million in 1979 to 11.5 million in 2010. (snip) Today’s immigrants are more likely to be hotel workers, agricultural hands, bussers, janitors, and hospital orderlies.Actually we already have a “multi-generational proletariat class“ who are the Democrats’ most loyal voters. Adding immigrant millions to that dependent class is the functional equivalent of finding yourself in a hole and not being smart enough to stop digging.
They may be earning more than they could have in their home countries, but their wages—assuming they work full-time—are enough only to keep them a notch or two above the poverty line in the United States. Adding to their troubles is frequently a lack of benefits, unreliable hours, and little chance for moving up the income ladder.
The U.S. may want to welcome low-skilled workers to do the jobs “Americans won’t do” and to help them in the early years of assimilation. But the prospect of a multi-generational proletariat class, hovering near the poverty line and dependent on government help, is probably not what most Americans had in mind.
