Ryan Garner
Dawn Higgins
HR Capstone
5 March 2016
Case Study # 6
Illegal Immigrants in the Workforce

1. Despite the political controversies, when illegal immigrants com to the US, US employers are ready to hire them. Wage and employment levels here in the US are much higher than in the immigrants’ home country. For example, the average US wage for production workers in manufacturing is about nine times higher than in Mexico (PPIC). Another economic incentive is the lack of well developed access to credit and loans in their home country. For many families, the migration of some household members to the US makes it possible to finance purchases which includes homes within their county of origin. Illegal immigrants also come to the US to join family members already here. These families can provide housing and information about jobs. 2. For the most part, immigrants might work for less undercutting the wage of a native employee. This is generally due to their much lower levels of education. However, they are usually seen as much better employees than native employees. This is because immigrants are seen as faring better in the low wage labor market in that they will do a better job working for a lower wage. They also increase the supply of labor across the labor market. However, since they are usually not educated the destitution is not even. Therefore they are in jobs that require very few skills. 3. The main problem is that illegal immigrants are illegal and although they are illegal. Employers still break the law an hire them because they are cheap unskilled labor that will work at a lower rate and usually faster rate than native employees. While there are laws in place to keep this from happening they still usually gain access to this country and find jobs because they already have ties within the US. In order to deter the illegal immigrant workforce, it needs to start with the US companies that provide illegal immigrants with jobs. If they illegal jobs were not there, then there would be no jobs for the illegal immigrants to come to the US for. Therefore, US companies need incentives to make the policy work. Immigration reform will be successful if and only if and probably only if US companies support the passage and enforcement of immigration reform. This reform would make it harder to hire illegal immigrants and easier to hire native employees. Therefore the company hiring illegal immigrants should be held legally responsible for hiring illegal immigrants. Therefore, the main issue making it difficult to find an acceptable solution to illegal immigration is the current laws or the lack of enforcement of the current laws and holding the companies responsible for hiring illegal immigrants.