For the first time, non-union immigrants are building Manhattan's high-rise towers

The Village Voice reports:

There's a nasty little chapter in the national immigration debate playing out along the side streets in the West Twenties in Manhattan these days. There, construction union members, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants themselves, are squared off against a contractor using just-off-the-boat employees willing to work long hours at substandard wages with no benefits.

The protests have already produced seven arrests and at least one badly bloodied head. But those wounds are minor compared to the issues at stake here, which include the increasing success of non-union builders in the city, fed by a seemingly boundless supply of immigrant workers—most of them undocumented—willing to work for much less than their union brethren.

While non-union builders have long nibbled at the peripheries of the city's construction trade, they've generally been confined to smaller jobs in the outer boroughs. But in the past few years, such contractors and developers have grown increasingly bold, venturing into Manhattan to do bigger and bigger jobs, including some of the huge high-rise projects that have traditionally been the bread and butter of the union construction trades.

It appears that the Democratic Party coalition is coming unglued.Illegals vs. union members.It appears that Mickey Kaus is going to be right on this one:the Democratic Party isn't going to win on the issue of immigration.