Opportunity Cost?
A Message from the Editor, Victoria L. Valentine...

     Three years ago when the U.S. Census Bureau released its findings of 2002 population estimates, the figures showed that for the first time the Hispanic population (an ethnic classification that includes some people who identify racially as Black) outnumbered the Black population in the United States.

     At the time, speculation abounded in the press as to what this development would portend. Would the political power African Americans had accumulated since the civil rights era be eroded? Would the news foment tension between the Hispanic and Black communities?

     “At the street level, there has traditionally been a tension between African-Americans and Latinos,” Harry P. Pachon, president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, said at the time. “But at the leadership level, in the Hispanic or Black (Congressional) Caucus or in state legislatures, there [have] been more cooperative working relationships.”

     Now, the furor over immigration has renewed talk of tension between Blacks and Latinos. At one extreme, Black members of the Minutemen say that illegal immigration is the greatest threat to African Americans since slavery and that a wall should be erected at the Mexican border, which the group has appointed itself to patrol.

     At the leadership level, Blacks sympathize with the plight of immigrants, a position that dates back to coalitions formed with legendary organizer Cesar Chavez to win labor rights for farm workers in the 1960s and ’70s.

    Bruce S. Gordon, president and CEO of the NAACP, recently spoke at the national convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He notes on page 24 of this issue: “[Blacks] have dealt with and faced employment disparities in this country for years. Those disparities, whether they are unemployment rates or household income disparities, have preceded the current discussion around immigration.“

    Research on the socioeconomic impact the presence of legal and illegal immigrants has on the African American population draws mixed conclusions. “The New Latino South,” a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study, found that Black employment didn’t suffer in six Southern states — including Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina — where Hispanic immigration is growing fastest. The report noted, “The nationwide employment of black workers increased 14 percent between 1990 and 2000, but it grew by 20.7 percent in the new South states.”

    Yet George Borjas, a Harvard University professor of economics and social policy, found that the influx of immigrant workers between 1980 and 2000 drove down wages of native workers 3.7 percent overall. His 2004 report found Black workers suffered even more; Their wages fell by 4.5 percent.

    Should the Black community be worried about immigration? Do efforts to expand opportunities for immigrants to live, work, go to school and eventually become citizens of this country pose a significant cost to African Americans?

    In a series of interviews with The Crisis, five Black leaders — the NAACP’s Gordon, Constance Rice of the Advancement Project, Gerald Hudson of the Service Employees International Union, Ron Walters of the University of Maryland and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas — finally address immigration issues.

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