From CNN: Meatpacker’s wages are going down because of illegal immigration.

“The meat packers are confirming what we know,” says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, “and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training.”

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That’s entirely consistent with what we’ve been reporting — that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.