Cheap foreign labor

Regarding the editorial, “Missing Workers,” (BDN, July 10-11), let’s put the whole story in perspective.

The reason we have a shortage of Maine loggers is because the employers were allowed to become dependent on cheap foreign labor, which drove down wages and made it impossible for Mainers to support their families in woods work. In the article, “New legislator seeks review of logging pay/Foreign workers’ deaths spur concerns about safety” (BDN, Nov. 23, 2002), Troy Jackson, a legislator from Fort Kent and former logger, stated that in l986 he was paid $165 an acre as a forestry worker.

Today, those forestry jobs are given to workers from Central America for $75 an acre without benefits. Most Maine loggers have subsequently moved out of state to find jobs with decent wages, and now the employers are crying about the squeeze because they have run out of their annual quota of foreign workers. They deserve no sympathy.

For generations, the Maine woods have supported rural Maine communities and hard working Maine families. Congress, in a breath taking betrayal of American citizens and a mindless infatuation with free trade has deliberately created this dependence on foreign workers. Now that the employers are addicted and have driven off Maine loggers, they whine and clamor for more foreigners.

Feeding this addiction is a huge mistake, and ending it will never be a comfortable process.

A nation that hires from within, extending new opportunities and responsibilities to our poor, our young, and other disadvantaged groups will build livable wages, stable communities, and a strong cohesive and self respecting middle class. These values have guided us wisely in the past. Building our economy on cheap labor is lunacy and moral corruption.

Jonette Christian

Holden