“It is proven that you tighten the labor market and wages go up. It always happens. The fact that we had one year of less immigration…It’s one of the most positive things that could happen for tackling the economic inequality.” – Roy Beck
“Beck is thorough. The book draws heavily on academic research into economic history, publications run by Black people, statements of black leaders beginning with Frederick Douglass, and the determinations of multiple gov’t commissions on immigration, all of which warned that mass immigration would take jobs from low/no-skilled Americans…”
“Beck’s core message is that a tight labor market is the most practical means to improve the conditions of all marginalized Americans, non-college-educated black workers most of all.”
“A good parent, for instance, wouldn’t allow their strongest child to exploit his younger, weaker siblings or neighbors. Yet that’s exactly what corporate executives have done to vulnerable workers.”
“…it’s hard to argue with Beck’s assessment: “No congressional action in the last 60 years has been more destructive to Black Americans’ employment, income growth, and wealth accumulation than the Hart-Celler immigration act.”
Roy Beck visits with Mark Krikorian, Parsing Immigration Policy
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BACK of the HIRING LINE
While most Americans justifiably celebrate Ellis Island ancestors, here are the stories of what the long period of mass immigration after the Civil War meant to freed slaves, their children and grandchildren in the hiring lines of America: decades of delays in gaining industrial job experience, skills and career connections, and constant setbacks in accumulating and transferring wealth.
Average Black household wealth in the 21st century is only a fraction of the wealth of other racial ethnic groups, including recent immigrants. There are many reasons. This book is about one of them: periodic sustained immigration surges over the last two centuries.
This is a little-told story of the struggles of freed slaves and their descendants to climb job ladders in the eras of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Barbara Jordan, and other African American Leaders who advocated tight-labor migration policies. It is a great history of bitter disappointment and, occasionally, of great hope.
COVER DESIGN
Linda Beck
