Illegal immigration hurts Black Americans. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.

Port Townsend’s liberal elite wanted to jump on the sanctuary city bandwagon. In March 2017 City Council declared the city to be a “welcoming city” and directed local government and law enforcement to deny cooperation to federal immigration and border security agencies. They also prohibited police from cooperating with the federal authorities who battle human trafficking–an abhorrent form of modern-day slavery that sadly exists even here on the Olympic Peninsula.

Liberal elites embracing policies that hurt Blacks while also hampering the fight against modern-day slavery–these are yet more manifestations of the systemic racism that runs through Port Townsend’s ruling elites. In the first installment of this series we examined how Port Townsend’s liberals have celebrated Black Genocide. In the second we examined how they have embraced slavery in the cobalt mines of the Congo in order to power their green cars.

“Black Lives Matter” is painted in fading letters on the street outside City Hall. Those words may be worth less to the self-described liberal, progressive politicians behind the old brick walls than the $500 they allocated to buy the paint and declare themselves virtuous for a day.

        “The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man.”                                                                                   Malcolm X

Illegal Immigration Hurts Black Americans

There is “little doubt” that illegal immigration hurts Black Americans. That was the testimony in 2008 of Vernon Briggs, Professor Emeritus of Labor Economics at Cornell University before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Black Americans are the “major loser” to illegal immigration. Because most Black Americans seek to enter the workforce through lower paying and lower skilled jobs, they find themselves having to compete with illegal aliens who depress wages and compete unfairly.  While Black citizens work subject to state and federal wage and occupational safety laws and regulations, illegal aliens commonly work under the radar of those same laws.

The influx of millions of illegal immigrants has worsened the economic standing of Black Americans, a conclusion reached through research conducted by Dr. Augustine Kposowa (1995) of the University of Delaware and David Howell and Elizabeth J. Mueller of the New School for Social Research (1998).

Recent research has confirmed the findings of decades ago. The economic displacement of Black workers, particularly Black men, contributes to disproportionately high incarceration rates for lower income Black Americans. Dr. George Borjas and his team of researchers from Harvard’s Kennedy School, after examining four decades of data, concluded:

These adverse impacts on Blacks are exacerbated by illegal immigration.

The top six sectors for illegal immigrant labor–farming, maintenance, construction, food service, production and material moving–are also sectors that each employ hundreds of thousands of Black Americans. “Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled, low-wage workers of all races,” says Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt Law School in Debating Immigration.“The greatest competition occurs among people at the margins of society; a multi-racial group that includes poorly educated blacks, whites and Hispanics who compete against each other and against new immigrants for low-wage, low-skill jobs.”

“But Blacks,” Swain concludes, “are hurt the most because they are disproportionately low-skilled.”

Dr. Carol Swain

Swain, who has withstood reprisals for her research, adds that any parallel between the Black civil rights movement and immigrant interests is weak. “Most illegal immigrants have willingly left their homelands to seek their fortunes in a more prosperous nation. They were not brought in chains.”

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, who has also served on the National Labor Relations Board, for years has highlighted the disproportionately adverse impacts of illegal immigration on Black Americans, particularly young Black men who suffer the highest unemployment and incarceration rates of any demographic.

Peter Kirsanow

Blacktradesman.com documented how, using data focusing on Texas, illegal immigration has destroyed high-wage jobs for Black construction workers. “Texas black tradesmen have had it worst off as tradesmen of other states, due to more than half of the state’s construction industry being made up of illegal aliens.”

The Anti-Black Racism of Port Townsend’s City Council

On March 27, 2017, the Port Townsend City Council unanimously declared the city to be a sanctuary city. They chose, for PR purposes, the phrase “welcoming” instead of “sanctuary,” but the intent and result were the same. The Port Townsend City Council embraced and directed that the city and all its employees, including police, condone, protect and promote illegal immigration.

During the debate councilors professed to be thoroughly informed on the issue of illegal immigration. No one engaged in the debate about illegal immigration can claim to be unaware of the harmful impact of illegal immigration on Black workers.

The Port Townsend City Council just didn’t care. It was more important to them to burnish their liberal, progressive cred than to stand with Black workers against lawlessness that keeps them chronically un- and under-employed and confined to urban plantations of hopelessness and despair.

Not bothering to pause to consider the impact of their actions on Black Americans is a manifestation of systemic racism. It means Black Americans did not matter enough for their concerns to even enter the Councilors’ deliberations. Black workers and their interests were invisible and meaningless to these liberal, progressive politicians.

A goal of the Black Lives Matter movement is increasing economic opportunity for Black Americans. The Port Townsend City Council lined itself up squarely with one of the major forces  that has been suffocating Black economic aspirations for decades. Those words on the street outside City Hall are indeed just fading paint.

Welcome Human Traffickers!

The resolution adopted by Port Townsend City Council instructs police not to cooperate with the Customs and Border Protection agencies of the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It also asks the Sheriff not only to deny those agencies information, but also to advise persons in its custody that they do not have to talk with those agencies.

The agencies whose jobs City Council wants to frustrate are the agencies that lead the fight against human trafficking.

Immigration enforcement is one of the strongest and most effective tools against human trafficking. Indeed the essential key to combating human trafficking is border security and enforcement of immigration laws. Slavers and smugglers are, after all, importing human beings illegally into this country for sex work and forced labor. Port Townsend City Council does not want those federal legal weapons against human trafficking being used here.

The first question asked in a human trafficking investigation is whether the slave–a child, woman or man–is here legally. Traffickers and smugglers bring their merchandise into this country by violating our immigration and border security laws. Port Townsend City Council believes that line of inquiry should not be permitted. They are substantially aiding and abetting any human trafficker who chooses to operate or pass through here.

Don’t think for one minute that our community is far removed from the horrors of human trafficking. The victims of that trade in human life are not members of the white elite. Human trafficking is a terrible problem in Seattle and surrounding areas. Human trafficking cases prosecuted by federal authorities in Washington have more than doubled in recent years. This surge in forced sex work and manual labor has fueled extensive sex and forced labor rings. Closer to home, the very agencies Port Townsend’s City Council detests and want to cripple saved a man and woman from forced labor and sex slavery in neighboring Clallam County. Local law enforcement asked about the woman’s immigration status, leading to the involvement of federal immigration authorities and the end of their bondage.  And it was immigration enforcement that tripped up a Jefferson County man who had imported a young Filipino girl so he could rape and hold her as his sex slave. (We wrote about that case in a series of articles that can be picked up at this link).

For a town that wants to see itself as cutting-edge progressive, we have a strange contradiction with activists insisting that we all buy cars dependent on cobalt mined by African slaves, local officials  endorsing Black Genocide and a local government providing sanctuary for those who profit from human trafficking. Welcome to Port Townsend, Victorian seaport and arts community.

Jim Scarantino

Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our “About” page for more information.