President Donald Trump told Fox News TV host Laura Ingraham on Friday his 2021 plans to welcome more foreign graduates will not flood the labor market for U.S. college graduates.
“I have so many companies coming into this country, you’re not going to have to worry about it,” Trump said in the interview, adding, “It is always going to be a shortage … We have so many companies coming in, from Japan … [and] China now is going to start building a lot of things.”
Trump and Ingraham did not find common ground, likely because they were talking about different parts of the immigration problem. Also, neither mentioned Ivanka Trump’s campaign to prod companies to train their own American employees for high-tech jobs.
Ingraham began
the exchange by noting American graduates’ salaries have been suppressed by the flood of foreign graduates:
We don’t have a tight labor market. If we had a tight labor market, we would be seeing real increases in wages. I hear that your team is planning on advocating more foreign workers coming in for some of these high-tech companies.
Ingraham rejected business claims of shortages: “We’re seeing a plateauing of wages … There’s a never-ending appetite on the part of corporate America to bring in as much cheap labor as possible to drive down wages.”
“I’m not talking about cheap — I’m talking about brainpower,” Trump
responded . “They want to hire smart people. And those people are thrown out of the country — we can’t do that,” he said, referring to foreign graduates of U.S. colleges.
Trump seems to want to help companies import a relatively small number of very clever people, such as Ivy League valedictorians. In contrast, Ingraham is trying to block companies’ effort to cut payrolls by replacing well-paid American professionals with cheap foreign graduates who have just enough skills to get the job done, regardless of quality.
“We have to allow smart people to stay in our country — if you graduate number one in your class at Harvard, [if] you graduate from the Wharton School of Finance,” Trump said. “If we tell smart people to get the hell out, that’s not America first.”
“Yes, that’s a small percentage of what [ccompanies] want,” said Ingraham.
” No, it’s not. It’s a lot,” said Trump.
VIDEO
But business has hired very few valedictorians among the pool of roughly 1.5 million visa workers who now hold jobs sought by American graduates.
In fact, the government does not require U.S companies to hire Americans first, and it does not screen out unskilled foreign workers. The government does not cap foreign hires and does not enforce the loopholed rules which supposedly require foreign workers to be skilled and to be paid market-level wages. Nor does the government even try to curb the large scale nepotism that allows foreign born managers in the United States to import huge numbers of foreign workers who will kick back some of their salaries to their bosses.
For example, the “Optional Practical Training” program was expanded by President G. Bush and President Barack Obama to provide employers with an extra stream of foreign graduates. Foreigners get these OPT work permits by simply enrolling in U.S. colleges, ranging from the elite Stanford University down to the so-called “visa-mill” colleges where many students can speak little English and may do very little study.
In 2017, for example, federal data shows Northeastern University
provided OPT work permits to 4,359 foreign graduates– or far more than the number of valedictorians. Harvard sold access to the OPT work permits to 1,875 foreigners, and Columbia University sold access to 5.59o work permits.
But even more work permits were sold to foreign students by many little known colleges. For example, in 2017, Northwestern Polytechnic University sold access to 6,060 work permits, Silicon Valley University sold 3,127 work permits, and the Illinois Institute of Technology sold 2,678.
Nationwide, universities earned roughly $30 billion a year from this labor-trafficking business, so they have little incentive to exclude low-quality migrants.
New 2018 data provided to Breitbart News by the Department of Homeland Security shows that universities provided 215,000 OPT work permits in 2018. This total consisted of 145,586 one-year OPT work permits and 69,650 three-year OPT-STEM work permits in 2018.
In 2017, the matching “Curricular Practical Training” program provided one-year work permits to roughly 100,000 foreign students at U.S. colleges — including colleges that require little or no attendance.
DHS officials have recently changed how they count the OPT and CPT work permits, so the estimated workforce now ranges from 400,000 to roughly 300,000. The older 2017 methodology was used to produce this DHS chart:
Many of these OPT graduates are hired by
prestigious U.S. firms , — and by foreign managers in those elite firms — so demoting skilled U.S. graduates in lower-tier jobs, in lower-tier cities, at lower-tier wages.
The other major visa-worker program is the H-1B program. This program keeps roughly 750,000 foreign workers in U.S. college-graduate jobs. These foreign workers will often accept very low wages for these jobs — and will underbid American graduates — partly because they are hoping their employers will sponsor them for the hugely valuable prize of a green card.
Federal agencies have never released a full count of the resident H-1B workforce, but federal data shows that a huge percentage are not valedictorians and that many come from no-name universities in India.
The
federal data for 2017, for example, shows that 39 percent of the H-1Bs
sought by New York employers were rated as “entry-level” workers, similar to U.S. graduates. Another 26 percent were rated as just “qualified,” and only 6 percent were rated “competent.” These cheap workers have pushed hundreds of thousands of
American professionals out of jobs.
This is the visa worker program which is used by companies to replace many Americans graduates. In 2016, for example, Disney outsourced Americans’ jobs to an Indian company that imported low-wage H-1B workers to do the Americans’ jobs. The American graduates were forced to train the Indians, torpedoing the claims of a shortage of skilled U.S. workers.
Ingraham reminded Trump of the Disney H-1B scandal. “You ran on people training their foreign replacements, that you ran against that. It’s humiliating for an American worker who works for a company for 30 years … to train your replacement,” Ingraham said.
“No, no, that’s different, I would never do that,” said Trump.
“Why shouldn’t we have American graduates of colleges and universities taking those jobs? Ingraham said.
“We do,” answered Trump. “But we don’t have enough of them … and we have to be competitive with the rest of the world too.”
But Trump’s deputies have done little to shrink the H-1B program. In fact, his deputies are defending the OPT program in court. Officials have also blocked a DHS plan to end the “H4 EAD” program that Obama created to persuade temporary H-1B workers to stay in U.S. jobs. The result is that many Americans are still being forced to train their workers, for example, at an AT&T finance office in North Carolina.
Polls show the public strongly prefers rules which require companies to hire Americans before importing more workers.
Some of Trump’s supporters say his comments are demoralizing. “I gotta say just put myself through one hell of a three year period,” said one Twitter user, titled “
Presto .” “Going to school for IT, working a fulltime meat cutting job all cause of the hope Donald Trump gave me. This clip kinda hurt a bit. This hurt me worse than any hit piece. Give me a spot in the middle class.”
But Trump’s focus on a relatively few valedictorians is a much lesser threat to Americans than the bipartisan push by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to pass his
pending S.386 bill .
The bill would offer foreign OPT and H-1B workers a fast-track to a new status, dubbed “Early Adjustment,” once they can persuade — or pay — their employers to sponsor them for green cards. There is no limit on the number of OPT, CPT, or H-1Bs that can be awarded each year, nor any limit on the number of foreign graduates who can be sponsored for green cards by their employers. The lack of limits ensures that Lee’s bill would allow an unlimited flood of foreign college-graduates into the jobs needed by “Presto” and other Americans to get into or to stay in the middle-class.
Notably, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, has dismissed employers’ demands for more workers and insists they step up their training programs.
“I love what’s happening because it’s forcing employers to get creative,” Trump told
Gary Shapiro , the longtime CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, during a January 7 interview at its annual meeting in Las Vegas. She added:
When I hear employers [who] would come to me and they’d say, ‘We need more skilled workers, we need more skilled workers,’ and then I’d read about them laying off segments of their workforce because they were investing in productivity, and not having spent the time — when they had known three years prior they’d be making that investment and upgrading those systems — not taking the time to take those workers and reskill and then retrain them into their job vacancies, well, I have very little sympathy for that.
Her push seems to be working.
Many U.S. companies are upgrading their training programs, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently showcased a company that uses software to identify and hire ordinary Americans — including truckers — who may have the intellectual skills to succeed in the software business.
Before serving as President, Trump was an employer, and he has repeatedly shown his sympathy for fellow employers who complain about supposed labor shortages that would force them to compete for employees by offering higher wages. But he was elected on a pro-American promise — and he has raised Americans’ wages by repeatedly rejecting business demands for more, and yet more, imported workers.
Business leaders sometimes admit that an extra supply of workers helps them force down wages. “If you have ten people for every job, you’re not going to have a drive [up] in wages,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue told Breitbart News on January 9. But “if you have five people for every ten jobs, wages are going to go up.”
Mike
Bloomberg: Employers Should Hire ‘the Best’ Foreigners Instead of Americans
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
7 Jan 20203,576
8:22
Investor,
CEO, and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would allow investors
and employers to hire the “the best” workers from around the world instead of
Americans.
“This country needs more immigrants
and we should be out looking for immigrants,” Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on
January 5.:
For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the
best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We
want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want
to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.
The reporter did not ask Bloomberg to define “best.” But for
cost-conscious shareholders and executives, “best” is a synonym for ‘cheaper
than Americans.’
“If business were able to hire without restrictions from
anywhere in the world, pretty much every [American’s] occupation would be
foreignized,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration
Studies. He continued:
Americans would have to accept dramatically lower earnings,
whether they object or not. Not just landscapers and tomato pickers, [because]
Indians and Chinese by the millions can do nursing and accounting. There would
not be any job that would not see its earnings fall to the global average.
Bloomberg — who has an estimated wealth of $55 billion — is
trying to exempt investors and shareholders from the nation’s immigration
rules, said Krikorian. For Bloomberg, “immigration laws are not one of those
things that should be allowed to interfere in [the growth of] shareholders’
value,” he said.
“It is obviously unprecedented — but this is not obviously
different from [President] George [W.] Bush’s ideal immigration plan … [and] he
is expressing a pretty standard Republican plutocrat approach to
immigration,” he added.
President Bush described his “any
willing worker” cheap labor plan in 2004, saying :
Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing
workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling.
(Applause.) We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane.
And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American
citizens.
Our reforms should be guided by a few basic principles. First,
America must control its borders …
Second, new immigration laws should serve the economic needs of
our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens
are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will
fill that job.
In December 2018, departing House
Speaker Paul Ryan echoed Bush’s
“any willing worker” goal, saying:
[Immigration reform needs] border security and interior
enforcement for starters, but also a modernization of our visa system so that
it makes sense for our economy and for our people so that anyone who wants to
play by the rules, work hard and be part of American fabric can contribute.
This “any willing worker” idea
encouraged Ryan to work closely — but behind the scenes — with pro-amnesty, pro-migration
groups.
Many GOP legislators echo this “any willing worker” claim when
they declare a “‘legal good, illegal bad,’ approach to migration,” said
Krikorian. That mantra is “piously claiming that illegal immigration is bad,
but is making [pro-American protections] moot by letting huge numbers of people
in legally.”
In contrast, President Donald Trump won his 2016 election on a
promise to shrink immigration. Since then, he has forced down illegal migration
via Mexico and has largely blocked numerous efforts by business to expand the
huge inflow of legal immigrants and visa workers. Trump’s curbs on the supply
of foreign labor have helped to force up wages for blue-collar Americans —
despite determined efforts by business and investment groups to prevent wage
increases.
Bloomberg’s “best worker” pitch is not a problem for the
Democrats’ 2020 base of “woke” progressives, said Krikorian:
He is running in the Democratic primary and there is an overlap
between the plutocrat assault on national borders and the leftist assault on
national borders. They come at the issue from the different starting points but
they have the same enemy, which is Americans’ sovereignty. It is not obvious
that his [pro-employer] immigration stance is going to be a turn-off to
Democratic primary votes.. How different are the specifics of his immigration
proposal from [Joe] Biden, Sen. [Bernie] Sanders or [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren?
Biden, Sanders, and Warren endorse
wide-open borders as a form of charity towards unlucky foreigners fleeing from
home country persecution. For example, a January 5 tweet from Biden said :
Our Statue of Liberty invites in the tired, the poor, the
huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Donald Trump has slammed the door in
the face of families fleeing persecution and violence.
Bloomberg’s pro-employer view is coherent and likely sincere,
said Krikorian.
Bloomberg aspires to a single global labor market, and
everything else follows from that. A concern about improving the lot of
less-skilled American workers is by definition contrary to that view because
there is no such thing as an American labor market. There is only a global
labor market. Domestic employers are not thinking about the consequences for
people from Pennsylvania when they hire people from Tennessee, and Bloomberg
wants that same approach across the entire world.
There is even an altruistic way of viewing that — which I
assume guys like this have — that it improves the lot of Hondurans [and other
migrants] who are coming here.
The issue is not that Bloomberg and his guys are factually
incorrect. It is that their values are contrary to the values that most
Americans hold – which is that we have a greater loyalty and obligation to our
fellow countrymen than to foreigners. Guys like Bloomberg reject that
[obligation] in principle.
But Bloomberg also wraps his economic demand for more immigrants
in a progressive-style cultural message.
Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune that
amnesty “is a no-brainer — you give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million
people.”
In December, Bloomberg said additional immigrants
could “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and
certainly improve our economy” — but without being asked by reporters which
American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues do not meet his
standards.
Bloomberg also echoes the Democrats’ claim that the U.S is a
diverse “nation of immigrants,” instead of a country built by similar-minded
settlers from Europe. “This country was built by immigrants,” Bloomberg said,
without noting the role played by Americans and their children.
Bloomberg has long supported greater
immigration. In 2013, he joined with the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, to
create the Project for a New American Economy. The group of investors and
politicians then pushed for
passage of the failed Gang of Eight amnesty in 2013.
The Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) predicted the planned “Gang of Eight” amnesty would shift more of the
nation’s new wealth from workers to investors.
The flood of roughly 30 million
immigrants in ten years would cause Americans’ wages to shrink, the report
said. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force,
average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” the CBO
report said .
But all that cheap labor would boost the profits and the stock
market, the report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than
on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two
decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
For Bloomberg, Krikorian said, U.S.
“employers have no greater obligation to fellow Americans than to Hondurans [or
other foreign workers] … what Bloomberg is saying is that immigration laws
should not interfere with the pursuit of shareholder value [because] employers
can hire anyone from anywhere at any wage, period.”
No
Labor Shortage: 11M Americans Out of Work, but All Want Full-Time Jobs
Scott
Olson/Getty Images
10 Jan 20201,070
2:53
There remain more than 11 million
Americans who are out of work but want full-time jobs, despite claims by
corporate interests and the big business lobby of a so-called “labor shortage.”
The latest
unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals there is still
slack in the labor market for disenfranchised Americans to enter the workforce
rather than business bringing foreign workers to the U.S. to take jobs.
Overall,
about 5.8 million Americans are unemployed — 12.6 percent of whom are teenagers
who generally seek entry-level jobs and 5.9 percent of whom are black
Americans. These nearly six million unemployed also include about 1.2 million
Americans who are considered “long-term unemployed” because they have been out
of work for more than six months.
Another 4.1
million Americans are working part-time jobs but want full-time employment.
Additionally, 1.2 million Americans are out of the labor force entirely after
looking for a job sometime within the last year. These marginally attached
Americans are available for work and want full-time jobs.
Roughly
277,000 of the 1.2 million Americans out of the labor force completely are
considered “discouraged workers” because they do not believe there are jobs in
the labor market for them.
In total,
about 11.1 million Americans are either unemployed, out of the labor force, or
underemployed; however, all have said they want good-paying, full-time jobs.
The constant cry from corporate lobbyist @USChamber
and "newsplainer" @voxdotcom
is that America is "running out of workers." If that were true there
wouldn't be people to come off the sidelines and take jobs.
While
Americans have enjoyed significant wage growth in
Trump’s economy for blue-collar and working-class Americans, corporate
interests have increasingly suggested that the U.S. must continue importing
millions of foreign workers every year to fill jobs.
In
April 2019, former Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said the
U.S. needed more legal immigration because the country is “out of people.”
Extensive
research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota has found
that the country’s current legal immigration system — wherein 1.2 million
mostly low-skilled workers are admitted annually — burdens U.S. taxpayers and
America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in
wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants.
Camarota,
director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, has found that
every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’
occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent. This means the
average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by
perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
CBO:
Immigration Has ‘Negative Effect on Wages’
NEIL MUNRO
9 Jan 2020230
7:01
Immigration
makes all of America richer, but it can make some Americans poorer, the
non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says in a report issued January 9.
“Immigration,
whether legal or illegal, expands the labor force and changes its composition,
leading to increases in total economic output,” said the non-partisan
report, titled “The Foreign-Born Population and
Its Effects on the U.S. Economy and the Federal Budget—An Overview.”
But this
national expansion does “not necessarily [deliver] to increases in output per
capita,” or income per person, the report said:
For
example, business leaders say the nation’s enormous population of immigrants
has expanded the nation’s workforce, increased consumption, and driven up
housing prices. But that inflow has also shrunk the wages of less-educated
Americans, the report said:
Among
people with less education, a large percentage are foreign born. Consequently,
immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively
low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their
birthplace.
The CBO
report contradicts business claims that a bigger economy ensures bigger wages
for everyone.
More
ominously, the report also suggests that the American middle-class — including
millions of young college graduates — may suffer a similar economic disaster if
immigration policy is shifted to raise the inflow of foreign college graduates.
The report says:
The
effects of immigration on wages depend on the characteristics of the
immigrants. To the extent that newly arrived workers have abilities similar to
those of workers already in the country, immigration would have a negative
effect on wages.
Many
business advocates in Washington are calling for a dramatic increase in
“high-skilled immigration” — meaning foreign college graduates who would
compete for the same jobs as American college graduates. For example, Sen.
Mike Lee (R-UT) is trying to pass his S.386 bill that offers the prize of renewable
work-permits — and eventual citizenship — to an unlimited number of foreign
graduates.
Each
year, up to 120,000 foreign graduates — and their spouses and children — can
get green cards via their employer’s sponsorship, even as perhaps 800,000 Americans
graduate from college with skilled degrees.
But Lee’s
bill creates a new legal status called “Early Adjustment.” This status would
allow an uncapped number of college graduate migrants to apply for renewable
work permits long before they can get a green card to become a legal immigrant
and citizen.
Existing
law allows an uncapped number of foreigners to legally get short-term work
permits and jobs after enrolling in U.S. colleges. The migrants can get
jobs by first paying tuition to a university, and then getting short-term work
permits via the uncapped “Curricular Practical Training” and the “Optional
Practical Training” programs. These workers must leave the United States after
a few years until they enroll themselves in work permit programs.
But Lee’s
bill would remove any caps on this foreign worker population by allowing an
unlimited number of foreign workers to get “Early Adjustment” status from their
employers.
DHS posts videos of
Indian migrants buying fake documents from ICE's Farmington U. sting
operation.
The #OPT Optional Practical Training program is an estb.-run
labor-trafficking scheme to sideline American graduates.
It will expand if #S386 becomes
law http://bit.ly/39H2Zqh
Many
migrants already use the CPT and OPT work permits to get jobs and to also
compete for entry into the H-1B visa worker program. Once in the H-1B program —
which accepts 85,000 new workers each year — many of the migrants also ask
their employers to sponsor them for green cards.
The
sponsorship allows them to stay working in the United States until they
eventually get their valuable green card, long after their temporary visas have
expired. Congress has not set an annual limit on the number of visa workers who
can be sponsored for green cards, so the resident population of permanent
“temporary workers” is growing fast — and is helping to suppress wages for
American graduates.
Roughly
1.5 million foreign visa workers hold white-collar jobs throughout the U.S.
economy. This number includes at least 750,000 Indians who are allowed to work
via the supposedly temporary CPT, OPT, L-1, and H-1B visa programs. Roughly
300,000 of these Indians — plus 300,000 family members — are being allowed to
stay in the United States because they asked their employers to sponsor them
for green cards.
The CBO
report shows that immigrants comprise roughly 40 percent of the population of
people who did not graduate from high school — and that immigrants
already comprise roughly 20 percent of all people with a “graduate degree.”
Congressional Budget Office
The 20
percent share likely would quickly rise if the Senate approves Lee’s S.386 plan
— and that rise could sharply reduce salaries for American college graduates.
“Wage
trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the
number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of
that group by at least 3 percent” as the extra workers compete for jobs, says
George Borjas, a labor economist at Harvard. That extra labor does expand the
economy — but that expansion is dwarfed by the transfer of the wage reductions
to investors, he wrote in 2016:
I
estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth
of the native population—to be about $50 billion annually. But behind that
calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The
total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners
[mostly employers] is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year.
“In
low-skilled occupations, a one percent increase in the immigrant composition of
an individual’s occupation reduces wages by [0].8 percent,” said a
1998 report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
A 2013
CBO report predicted that the 2013 “Gang of Eight”
amnesty and immigration bill would reduce the share of income that goes to wage
earners and increase the share that goes to investors. “Because the bill
would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be
held down in the first decade after enactment,” the CBO report said .
But all
that cheap labor would boost corporate profits and spike the stock market, the
report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor]
under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,”
says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
Business
leaders sometimes admit that an extra supply of workers forces down wages. “If
you have ten people for every job, you’re not going to have a drive [up] in
wages,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue told Breitbart News on January
9. But “if you have five people for every ten jobs, wages are going to go up.”
Are rising wages good
for national politics?
“You’re damn right they are,” US Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue said,
adding: "They are good for national politics if you’re a politician, for
sure." http://bit.ly/2FwwCg7
Claims
of a Labor Shortage Are Just Not True
America's
September unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, the lowest level since 1969, according
to the most recent Department of Labor report .
The tight
labor market is forcing companies to hire disadvantaged Americans. For
example, New
Seasons Market , a
West Coast grocery chain, is actively recruiting people with disabilities and
prior criminal records. Similarly, Custom
Equipment , a
Wisconsin manufacturing firm, recently hired several prison inmates through a
work-release program and intends to employ them full-time upon their release.
For the
first time in decades, these disadvantaged Americans are finally winning
significant pay increases. Over the past year , the lowest-paid 25 percent of
workers enjoyed faster wage growth than their higher-paid peers.
Unfortunately,
this positive trend could be short-lived. Corporate special interests are
whining about a labor shortage -- and are spending millions to lobby for higher
levels of immigration, which would supply companies with cheap, pliable
workers.
Hardworking
Americans need their leaders in Washington to see through this influence
campaign and stand up for their interests. Scaling back immigration would
further tighten the labor market, boosting wages and helping the most
disadvantaged Americans find jobs.
The U.S.
economy is the strongest it has been in years. Employers added 136,000 new jobs
in September , marking 108 months of consecutive
job growth.
But
there's still more progress to be made. Approximately 6
million Americans
are currently looking for jobs but remain unemployed. Another 4
million desire
full-time positions but are underemployed as part-time workers. Millions
more , feeling
discouraged about their bleak prospects, have abandoned the job search
altogether. Indeed, among 18 through 65-year-olds, 55
million people
aren't working.
Many of
these folks have limited or outdated skills. Others have criminal records or
disabilities. So they might require a bit more training than traditional job
applicants.
Rather
than put in this extra effort, some big businesses want to eliminate their
recruiting challenges by importing cheap foreign workers. These firms have
instructed their lobbyists to push for more immigration, which would introduce
more slack into the labor market.
The CEO
of the Chamber of Commerce recently claimed that America needs a massive
increase in immigration because we're "out of people." Chamber
officials said their lobbying efforts would center on sizeable increases to
rates of legal immigration.
The
National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile, recently released a proposal which would effectively double
the number of H-1B tech worker visas, import more seasonal low-skilled laborers
on H-2A and H-2B visas, and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
And the
agriculture industry is lobbying for a path to legalization for
illegal laborers and is seeking to expand "temporary" guest-worker
programs to include stable, year-round positions on dairy farms and meatpacking
plants -- jobs that Americans will happily fill for the right wage. The
Association of Builders and Contractors, Koch Industries, and dozens more
companies have called for similar measures.
There are
already 45
million immigrants
in the United States -- 28 million of which are employed -- and counting. More
than 650,000
people crossed
into the United States illegally in the past eight months alone, already
exceeding last fiscal year's totals. And the U.S. government grants an
additional 1 million lifetime work permits to immigrants every year.
Those
figures will skyrocket even higher if business groups get their way. Such an
expansion would hurt hardworking Americans.
The
majority of foreigners who cross the border illegally or arrive on guest worker
visas lack substantial education. Naturally, they seek out less-skilled jobs in
construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and service -- and directly compete
with the most economically vulnerable Americans. The labor surplus created by
immigration depresses the wages of native-born high school dropouts up to $1,500 each year.
Several
proposals under consideration in Washington could alleviate American workers'
woes.
A
recent bill from Senator Chuck Grassley
(R-IA) would mandate all businesses use a free, online system called E-Verify,
which determines an individual's work eligibility in mere seconds.
The
system would make it extremely difficult for employers to hire illegal
immigrants, roughly 40
percent of whom
have been paid subminimum wages at some point. Without a pool of easily abused
illegal laborers, businesses would raise pay for Americans.
Several
senators also recently introduced the Raise
Act , a bill that
would reduce future levels of legal immigration.
It's time
for our leaders in Washington to scale back both legal and illegal immigration.
By doing so, they can further tighten the labor market and force businesses to
bring less-advantaged Americans back into the workforce.
OPEN BORDERS: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES
DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the
financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful
blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working
class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic
hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented
levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net
worth of the poorest half of the US population."
PELOSI,
FEINSTEIN, KAMALA HARRIS AND GAVIN NEWOMS’S MEXIFORNIA
Report:
California’s Middle-Class Wages Rise by 1 Percent in 40 Years
Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images
3 Sep 2019172
6:24
Middle-class wages in
progressive California have risen by 1 percent in the last 40 years, says a
study by the establishment California Budget and Policy Center.
“Earnings for California’s
workers at the low end and middle of the wage scale have generally declined or
stagnated for decades,” says the report, titled “California’s Workers Are
Increasingly Locked Out of the State’s Prosperity.” The report continued:
In
2018, the median hourly earnings for workers ages 25 to 64 was $21.79, just 1%
higher than in 1979, after adjusting for inflation ($21.50, in 2018 dollars)
(Figure 1). Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings for low-wage workers, those at the
10th percentile, increased only slightly more, by 4%, from $10.71 in 1979
to $11.12 in 2018.
The report admits that the
state’s progressive economy is delivering more to investors and less to
wage-earners. “Since 2001, the share of state private-sector [annual new
income] that has gone to worker compensation has fallen by 5.6 percentage
points — from 52.9% to 47.3%.”
In 2016, California’s Gross
Domestic Product was $2.6 trillion, so the 5.6 percent drop shifted $146
billion away from wages. That is roughly $3,625 per person in 2016.
The report notes that wages
finally exceeded 1979 levels around 2017, and it splits the credit between the
Democrats’ minimum-wage boosts and President Donald Trump’s go-go economy.
The 40 years of flat wages are
partly hidden by a wave of new products and services. They include almost-free
entertainment and information on the Internet, cheap imported coffee in
supermarkets, and reliable, low-pollution autos in garages.
But the impact of California’s
flat wages is made worse by California’s rising housing costs, the report says,
even though it also ignores the rent-spiking impact of the establishment’s
pro-immigration policies:
In just the last decade
alone, the increase in the typical household’s rent far outpaced the rise in
the typical full-time worker’s annual earnings, suggesting that working
families and individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends
meet. In fact, the basic cost of living in many parts of the state is more
than many single individuals or families can expect to earn, even if all adults
are working full-time.
…
Specifically, inflation-adjusted
median household rent rose by 16% between 2006 and 2017, while
inflation-adjusted median annual earnings for individuals working at least 35
hours per week and 50 weeks per year rose by just 2%, according to a Budget
Center analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data.
The wage and housing problems are made worse —
especially for families — by the loss of
employment benefits as companies and investors spike stock prices by cutting
costs. The report says:
Many workers are being paid
little more today than workers were in 1979 even as worker productivity has
risen. Fewer employees have access to retirement plans sponsored by their
employers, leaving individual workers on their own to stretch limited dollars
and resources to plan how they’ll spend their later years affording the high
cost of living and health care in California. And as union representation has
declined, most workers today cannot negotiate collectively for better working
conditions, higher pay, and benefits, such as retirement and health care, like
their parents and grandparents did. On top of all this, workers who take on
contingent and independent work (often referred to as “gig work”), which in
many cases appears to be motivated by the need to supplement their primary job
or fill gaps in their employment, are rarely granted the same rights and legal
protections as traditional employees.
The center’s report tries to
blame the four-decade stretch of flat wages on the declining clout of unions.
But unions’ decline was impacted by the bipartisan elites’ policy of
mass-migration and imposed diversity.
In
2018, Breitbart reported how Progressives for
Immigration Reform interviewed Blaine Taylor, a union carpenter, about the
economic impact of migration:
TAYLOR: If I hired a framer to do
a small addition [in 1988], his wage would have been $45 an hour. That was
the minimum for a framing contractor, a good carpenter. For a helper, it was
about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a complete job, it was about $45
an hour. That was the going wage for plumbers as well. His helpers typically
got $25 an hour.
…
Now, the average wage in Los
Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour. They can’t go lower
than the minimum wage. And much of that, if they’re not being paid by the hour
at less than $11 an hour, they’re being paid per piece — per piece of plywood
that’s installed, per piece of drywall that’s installed. Now, the subcontractor
can circumvent paying them as an hourly wage and are now being paid by 1099,
which means that no taxes are being taken out. [Emphasis added]
Diversity
also damaged the unions by shredding California’s civic solidarity. In 2007,
the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center posted a report with the title
“Latino Gang Members in Southern California are Terrorizing and Killing
Blacks.” In the same year, an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times described another murder by Latino
gangs as “a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic
cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods.”
The center’s board members
include the executive director of the state’s SEIU union, a professor from the
Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and
the research director at the “Program for Environmental and Regional Equity” at
the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Outside
California, President Donald Trump’s low-immigration policies are pressuring
employers to raise Americans’ wages in a hot economy. The Wall Street Journal reported August 29:
Overall, median weekly earnings
rose 5% from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the same quarter in 2018, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For workers between the ages of 25 and 34,
that increase was 7.6%.
.
Please let us know if you're having issues with
commenting.S
Free
Trader Paul Krugman Admits Failure of Globalization for American Workers:
‘Major Mistake’
Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
13 Oct
2019780
3:21
Economist
Paul Krugman, the longtime defender of global free trade and a member of the
failed “Never Trump” movement, now admits that globalization has failed
American workers.
In a column for Bloomberg titled “What
Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization,” Krugman admits that
the economic consensus for free trade that has prevailed for decades has failed
to recognize how globalization has skyrocketed inequality for America’s working
and middle class workers.
Krugman writes:
In the past few years, however,
worries about globalization have shot back to the top of the agenda , partly due to new research and partly due to the political
shocks of Brexit and U.S. President Donald Trump. And as one of the
people who helped shape the 1990s consensus — that the contribution of rising
trade to rising inequality was real but modest — it seems appropriate for me to
ask now what we missed . [Emphasis added]
…
The pro-globalization consensus of
the 1990s , which concluded that trade contributed little
to rising inequality, relied on models that asked how the growth of
trade had affected the incomes of broad classes of workers, such as those who
didn’t go to college . It’s possible, and probably even correct, to think of
these models as accurate in the long run. Consensus economists didn’t turn
much to analytic methods that focus on workers in particular industries and
communities , which would have given a better picture of short-run
trends. This was, I now believe, a major mistake — one in which I
shared a hand . [Emphasis added]
Krugman, though, writes that he and
his fellow free trade economists “had no way to know” that globalization of the
American economy or a surge in trade deficits “were going to happen,” though
the anti-globalization movement had warned for years of the harmful impact free
trade would have on U.S. workers — including Donald Trump.
In an interview with SiriusXM
Patriot’s Breitbart News
Tonight , economist Alan Tonelson said that
Krugman’s acknowledging that he and the free trade economic consensus has been
wrong is “better later than never,” but “the damage has already been done.”
LISTEN :
“There’s been an even more
startling, in fact jaw-dropping, development on that front. Paul Krugman, the
famous Never Trumper, the famous pro-free trade economist, the Nobel Prize
winner just published an article … saying that for the past 20 years, he and
his other globalist, free trade economist friends have been substantially wrong
about the effect of globalization, particularly more trade with low income, low
wage countries like China,” Tonelson said.
“They’ve been substantially wrong
about its effects on the American economy and American workers in particular,”
Tonelson said.
Meanwhile, decades of free trade
have spurred mass layoffs, unemployment, and offshoring of high-paying American
jobs while surging trade deficits. Since China entered the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China has eliminated at least 3.5
million American jobs from the American economy. Millions of American workers
in all 50 states have been displaced from their
jobs, which have been lost due to U.S.-China trade relations.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
WEST HOLLYWOOD WELCOME MAT FOR ILLEGALS...
Not a single employer of illegals ever prosecuted in this LA
RAZA SANCTUARY CITY where they print voting ballots in Spanish so illegals can
vote for more!
Foreign Workers See Nearly 5X Job Growth of Americans
Foreign workers saw nearly five times as much
job growth as native-born American workers did last month, Bureau of Labor
Statistics data reveals.
In November 2018, foreign-born worker employment increased 5.1
percent compared to the same time last year. Meanwhile, native-born Americans
saw an employment increase of only about 1.2 percent year-to-year, almost five
times less job growth as their foreign worker competitors.
The foreign-born workforce — those who are employed and looking
for work — also had significantly higher gains than native-born Americans. Last
month, the number of foreign-born workers in the labor force increased almost
five percent. At the same time, native-born Americans in the labor force
increased only 0.66 percent.
The labor force participation rate among foreign-born workers
increased 1.2 percent, while the labor force participation rate for native-born
Americans increased only 0.2 percent from year-to-year.
Though foreign-born workers have had
significant gains in the last three months of
President Trump’s economy, native-born Americans’ unemployment dropped by an
impressive 12.5 percent while their foreign competitors’ unemployment decreased
by 5.9 percent.
The fast-growing employment of foreign-born workers over
American citizens is exacerbated by the country’s wage-crushing national
immigration policy whereby about 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants are
added to the U.S. population every year.
While legal immigrants continued being admitted to the U.S. to
take blue-collar working-class jobs and many white-collar, high-paying jobs,
there remain about six million Americans who are unemployed, 12 percent of whom
are teenagers and nearly six percent of whom are black Americans.
There remain about 1.3 million workers who have been jobless for
more than two years, 4.8 million workers who are working part time but who want
full time jobs, and 1.7 million workers who want a job, including more than
450,000 workers who are discouraged by their job prospects.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Mike
Bloomberg: Employers Should Hire ‘the Best’ Foreigners Instead of Americans
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
7 Jan 20203,560
8:22
Investor,
CEO, and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would allow investors
and employers to hire the “the best” workers from around the world instead of
Americans.
“This country
needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,”
Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on
January 5.:
For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the
best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We
want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want
to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.
The reporter did not ask Bloomberg to define “best.” But for
cost-conscious shareholders and executives, “best” is a synonym for ‘cheaper
than Americans.’
“If business were able to hire without restrictions from
anywhere in the world, pretty much every [American’s] occupation would be
foreignized,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration
Studies. He continued:
Americans would have to accept dramatically lower earnings,
whether they object or not. Not just landscapers and tomato pickers, [because]
Indians and Chinese by the millions can do nursing and accounting. There would
not be any job that would not see its earnings fall to the global average.
Bloomberg — who has an estimated wealth of $55 billion — is
trying to exempt investors and shareholders from the nation’s immigration
rules, said Krikorian. For Bloomberg, “immigration laws are not one of those
things that should be allowed to interfere in [the growth of] shareholders’
value,” he said.
“It is obviously unprecedented — but this is not obviously
different from [President] George [W.] Bush’s ideal immigration plan … [and] he
is expressing a pretty standard Republican plutocrat approach to
immigration,” he added.
President
Bush described his “any willing worker” cheap labor plan in 2004, saying :
Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing
workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling.
(Applause.) We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane.
And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American
citizens.
Our reforms should be guided by a few basic principles. First,
America must control its borders …
Second, new immigration laws should serve the economic needs of
our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens
are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will
fill that job.
In December
2018, departing House Speaker Paul Ryan echoed Bush’s “any willing
worker” goal, saying:
[Immigration reform needs] border security and interior
enforcement for starters, but also a modernization of our visa system so that
it makes sense for our economy and for our people so that anyone who wants to
play by the rules, work hard and be part of American fabric can contribute.
This “any
willing worker” idea encouraged Ryan to work
closely —
but behind the scenes — with pro-amnesty, pro-migration groups.
Many GOP legislators echo this “any willing worker” claim when
they declare a “‘legal good, illegal bad,’ approach to migration,” said
Krikorian. That mantra is “piously claiming that illegal immigration is bad,
but is making [pro-American protections] moot by letting huge numbers of people
in legally.”
In contrast, President Donald Trump won his 2016 election on a
promise to shrink immigration. Since then, he has forced down illegal migration
via Mexico and has largely blocked numerous efforts by business to expand the
huge inflow of legal immigrants and visa workers. Trump’s curbs on the supply
of foreign labor have helped to force up wages for blue-collar Americans —
despite determined efforts by business and investment groups to prevent wage
increases.
Bloomberg’s “best worker” pitch is not a problem for the
Democrats’ 2020 base of “woke” progressives, said Krikorian:
He is running in the Democratic primary and there is an overlap
between the plutocrat assault on national borders and the leftist assault on
national borders. They come at the issue from the different starting points but
they have the same enemy, which is Americans’ sovereignty. It is not obvious
that his [pro-employer] immigration stance is going to be a turn-off to
Democratic primary votes.. How different are the specifics of his immigration
proposal from [Joe] Biden, Sen. [Bernie] Sanders or [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren?
Biden,
Sanders, and Warren endorse wide-open borders as a form of charity towards
unlucky foreigners fleeing from home country persecution. For example,
a January 5 tweet from Biden said :
Our Statue of Liberty invites in the tired, the poor, the
huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Donald Trump has slammed the door in
the face of families fleeing persecution and violence.
Bloomberg’s pro-employer view is coherent and likely sincere,
said Krikorian.
Bloomberg aspires to a single global labor market, and
everything else follows from that. A concern about improving the lot of
less-skilled American workers is by definition contrary to that view because
there is no such thing as an American labor market. There is only a global
labor market. Domestic employers are not thinking about the consequences for
people from Pennsylvania when they hire people from Tennessee, and Bloomberg
wants that same approach across the entire world.
There is even an altruistic way of viewing that — which I
assume guys like this have — that it improves the lot of Hondurans [and other
migrants] who are coming here.
The issue is not that Bloomberg and his guys are factually
incorrect. It is that their values are contrary to the values that most
Americans hold – which is that we have a greater loyalty and obligation to our
fellow countrymen than to foreigners. Guys like Bloomberg reject that
[obligation] in principle.
But Bloomberg also wraps his economic demand for more immigrants
in a progressive-style cultural message.
Bloomberg
told the San Diego Union-Tribune that
amnesty “is a no-brainer — you give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million
people.”
In December,
Bloomberg said additional immigrants
could “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and
certainly improve our economy” — but without being asked by reporters which
American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues do not meet his
standards.
Bloomberg also echoes the Democrats’ claim that the U.S is a
diverse “nation of immigrants,” instead of a country built by similar-minded
settlers from Europe. “This country was built by immigrants,” Bloomberg said,
without noting the role played by Americans and their children.
Bloomberg has
long supported greater immigration. In 2013, he joined with the owner of Fox
News, Rupert Murdoch, to create the Project for a New American Economy. The
group of investors and politicians then pushed for passage of the
failed Gang of Eight amnesty in 2013.
The
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted the planned “Gang of
Eight” amnesty would shift more of the nation’s new wealth from workers to
investors.
The flood of
roughly 30 million immigrants in ten years would cause Americans’ wages to
shrink, the report said. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of
the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after
enactment,” the CBO report said .
But all that cheap labor would boost the profits and the stock
market, the report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than
on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two
decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
For
Bloomberg, Krikorian said, U.S. “employers have no greater obligation to fellow
Americans than to Hondurans [or other foreign workers] … what Bloomberg is
saying is that immigration
laws should not interfere with the pursuit of shareholder value [because]
employers can hire anyone from anywhere at any wage, period.”
Americans over 40 are half as likely to
get hired — and it’s worse for workers over 50
Published: Jan 7, 2020 10:18 a.m. ET
Federal law makes it illegal to ask someone’s age in a job
interview or to discriminate against anyone based on their age
Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
Tom Brady, 42, and the New England Patriots
did not reach a deal over his contract. The NFL football player is now a free
agent.
By
Tom
Brady is
a now free agent , but the NFL player doesn’t have the same worries as millions
of Americans over 40.
Workers
over 40 are only about half as likely, or less, to get a job offer than younger
workers if employers know their age, according to research released this
week conducted
by economics professor David Neumark at the University of California, Irvine.
The data was adjusted for differences in skills, fit and availability.
Key to the study was a major change that the
company made to its hiring systems. Previously all applicants had filled out an
initial application form in a face-to-face meeting with a restaurant manager.
So their age was apparent from the get-go.
Under the new system, applications began first
with a standardized, online, electronic screen. This included over 100
questions designed to find out a candidate’s skills, experience, employability
and other attributes related to the job. But it contained no age screen.
When managers could determine an applicant’s age group, those
over 40 were between 46% and 65% less likely to get a job offer than those
under 40.
When managers could determine an applicant’s
age group, those over 40 were between 46% and 65% less likely to get a job
offer than those under 40.
Under the new system, older workers were
actually more likely to pass the initial, age-blind application process than
younger ones, typically because they had more experience.
UC’s Professor Neumark crunched the numbers
from a proprietary hiring database maintained by an unnamed national restaurant
chain. (The database of 1,600 job applications emerged from an
age-discrimination lawsuit). The hiring decisions covered jobs from “front of
house,” such as servers, to “back of house,” such as chefs.
“This set of results is strongly consistent
with age discrimination,” notes professor Neumark, ‘older applicants are more
qualified [than younger ones] in terms of applicant characteristics and
evaluations used by the company in their online application system,” he says.
He further found that the discrimination was
greater for “front of house” jobs than for “back of house,” though it was
significant for both. The implication: Managers are more reluctant to employ
older servers, because they think the customers won’t like them.
Researchers found that the discrimination was greater for ‘front
of house’ jobs than for ‘back of house,’ though it was significant for both.
Older
workers and those over 50 are more likely to work as independent
contractors, separate
research from the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a labor
policy think tank, concluded. The share of people working as independent
contractors, freelancers and other categories of on-call workers who were ages
55 to 64 increased to 22.9% in 2017 from 18.8% in 2005. For people aged 65 and
older, the figure rose to 14.1% from 8.5%.
“For
some older people, independent contracting and on-call positions are attractive
ways to ease into retirement or earn income after they have left the full-time
workforce,” according
to the AARP , a public-interest group focused on older workers. “The
contracting option can offer an appealing combination of flexibility and extra
money, as long as the worker can get health care coverage or save for
retirement in other ways. (The AARP receives
funding from private health insurers .)
Federal law makes it illegal to ask someone’s
age in a job interview, or to discriminate against anyone over 40 based on
their age. But as the latest study shows, there are many ways round these
rules.
Meanwhile, data from a recent Gallup nationally
representative survey program found that formal employment rates plunge once
people enter their 50s, but self-employment and, particularly, “independent
contractor” rates skyrocket. That’s based on surveys with 61,000 people
conducted between May 2018 and March 2019 as part of the Gallup Education
Consumer Pulse Survey. About two-thirds of those surveyed were over 50.
About a
quarter of those still working age 55 to 59 are self-employed, most of them independent
contractors, according
to a separate analysis conducted by researchers Katharine Abraham, an
economics professor at the University of Maryland, and Brad Hershbein and Susan
Houseman at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
“Roughly one-quarter of independent contractors
age 50 and older work for a former employer,” they added. This raises the issue
that they have been shuffled out of the door as a result of their age — or simply
to get them off the company health plan before they start costing too much
money. Among those over 50 working as “independent contractors,” most told
Gallup they were doing it mainly because they need the money.
Being self-employed can go both ways, experts
agree. Most of those who own their own businesses like being their own boss,
the researchers said, and many who work as independent contractors prefer it to
full-time employment, especially because of the flexibility it may give them.
Mike
Bloomberg: Employers Should Hire ‘the Best’ Foreigners Instead of Americans
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
7 Jan 20203,560
8:22
Investor,
CEO, and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would allow investors
and employers to hire the “the best” workers from around the world instead of
Americans.
“This country
needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,”
Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on
January 5.:
For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the
best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We
want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want
to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.
The reporter did not ask Bloomberg to define “best.” But for
cost-conscious shareholders and executives, “best” is a synonym for ‘cheaper
than Americans.’
“If business were able to hire without restrictions from
anywhere in the world, pretty much every [American’s] occupation would be
foreignized,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration
Studies. He continued:
Americans would have to accept dramatically lower earnings,
whether they object or not. Not just landscapers and tomato pickers, [because]
Indians and Chinese by the millions can do nursing and accounting. There would
not be any job that would not see its earnings fall to the global average.
Bloomberg — who has an estimated wealth of $55 billion — is
trying to exempt investors and shareholders from the nation’s immigration
rules, said Krikorian. For Bloomberg, “immigration laws are not one of those
things that should be allowed to interfere in [the growth of] shareholders’
value,” he said.
“It is obviously unprecedented — but this is not obviously
different from [President] George [W.] Bush’s ideal immigration plan … [and] he
is expressing a pretty standard Republican plutocrat approach to
immigration,” he added.
President
Bush described his “any willing worker” cheap labor plan in 2004, saying :
Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing
workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling.
(Applause.) We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane.
And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American
citizens.
Our reforms should be guided by a few basic principles. First,
America must control its borders …
Second, new immigration laws should serve the economic needs of
our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens
are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will
fill that job.
In December
2018, departing House Speaker Paul Ryan echoed Bush’s “any willing
worker” goal, saying:
[Immigration reform needs] border security and interior
enforcement for starters, but also a modernization of our visa system so that
it makes sense for our economy and for our people so that anyone who wants to
play by the rules, work hard and be part of American fabric can contribute.
This “any
willing worker” idea encouraged Ryan to work
closely —
but behind the scenes — with pro-amnesty, pro-migration groups.
Many GOP legislators echo this “any willing worker” claim when
they declare a “‘legal good, illegal bad,’ approach to migration,” said
Krikorian. That mantra is “piously claiming that illegal immigration is bad,
but is making [pro-American protections] moot by letting huge numbers of people
in legally.”
In contrast, President Donald Trump won his 2016 election on a
promise to shrink immigration. Since then, he has forced down illegal migration
via Mexico and has largely blocked numerous efforts by business to expand the
huge inflow of legal immigrants and visa workers. Trump’s curbs on the supply
of foreign labor have helped to force up wages for blue-collar Americans —
despite determined efforts by business and investment groups to prevent wage
increases.
Bloomberg’s “best worker” pitch is not a problem for the
Democrats’ 2020 base of “woke” progressives, said Krikorian:
He is running in the Democratic primary and there is an overlap
between the plutocrat assault on national borders and the leftist assault on
national borders. They come at the issue from the different starting points but
they have the same enemy, which is Americans’ sovereignty. It is not obvious
that his [pro-employer] immigration stance is going to be a turn-off to Democratic
primary votes.. How different are the specifics of his immigration proposal
from [Joe] Biden, Sen. [Bernie] Sanders or [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren?
Biden,
Sanders, and Warren endorse wide-open borders as a form of charity towards
unlucky foreigners fleeing from home country persecution. For example,
a January 5 tweet from Biden said :
Our Statue of Liberty invites in the tired, the poor, the
huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Donald Trump has slammed the door in
the face of families fleeing persecution and violence.
Bloomberg’s pro-employer view is coherent and likely sincere,
said Krikorian.
Bloomberg aspires to a single global labor market, and
everything else follows from that. A concern about improving the lot of
less-skilled American workers is by definition contrary to that view because
there is no such thing as an American labor market. There is only a global
labor market. Domestic employers are not thinking about the consequences for
people from Pennsylvania when they hire people from Tennessee, and Bloomberg
wants that same approach across the entire world.
There is even an altruistic way of viewing that — which I
assume guys like this have — that it improves the lot of Hondurans [and other
migrants] who are coming here.
The issue is not that Bloomberg and his guys are factually
incorrect. It is that their values are contrary to the values that most
Americans hold – which is that we have a greater loyalty and obligation to our
fellow countrymen than to foreigners. Guys like Bloomberg reject that
[obligation] in principle.
But Bloomberg also wraps his economic demand for more immigrants
in a progressive-style cultural message.
Bloomberg
told the San Diego Union-Tribune that
amnesty “is a no-brainer — you give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million
people.”
In December,
Bloomberg said additional immigrants
could “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and
certainly improve our economy” — but without being asked by reporters which
American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues do not meet his
standards.
Bloomberg also echoes the Democrats’ claim that the U.S is a
diverse “nation of immigrants,” instead of a country built by similar-minded
settlers from Europe. “This country was built by immigrants,” Bloomberg said,
without noting the role played by Americans and their children.
Bloomberg has
long supported greater immigration. In 2013, he joined with the owner of Fox
News, Rupert Murdoch, to create the Project for a New American Economy. The
group of investors and politicians then pushed for passage of the
failed Gang of Eight amnesty in 2013.
The
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted the planned “Gang of
Eight” amnesty would shift more of the nation’s new wealth from workers to
investors.
The flood of
roughly 30 million immigrants in ten years would cause Americans’ wages to
shrink, the report said. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of
the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after
enactment,” the CBO report said .
But all that cheap labor would boost the profits and the stock
market, the report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than
on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two
decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
For
Bloomberg, Krikorian said, U.S. “employers have no greater obligation to fellow
Americans than to Hondurans [or other foreign workers] … what Bloomberg is
saying is that immigration
laws should not interfere with the pursuit of shareholder value [because]
employers can hire anyone from anywhere at any wage, period.”
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