Kamala Harris: ‘America’s Economy Is Not Working for Working People’
5:09
LOS ANGELES, California — Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) received a raucous welcome on home turf on Sunday, as her campaign held its first organizing rally of the 2020 Democratic primary at Los Angeles Southwest College.
Roughly 2,000 supporters and curious Democratic voters attended, filling one half of the gymnasium on a windy weekend afternoon. Harris was preceded by several local politicians who have endorsed her, including Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson; California Secretary of State Alex Padilla; and first-term Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA).
“We are at an inflection moment in the history of our country,” Harris told the crowd. It is a time, she said, for Americans to ask: “Who are we?”
The answer, she said, had to be: “We are better than this.”
Signs throughout the audience riffed on the campaign’s “For the People” slogan, including “Justice for the people” and “Fearless for the people.”
There were some hiccups at the event — a sign of the trouble the campaign has had finding its stride.
The crowd was placed to the side of the stage, meaning that Harris’s supporters were out of most camera angles during her speech. Speakers kept urging supporters to text “fight” to a devoted campaign number, but a sign on the podium told supporters to text the word “fearless.” And after several lively warmup speeches, the action paused for several minutes while Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” played over the PA system.
Harris referred to the Charlottesville riots, and the recent synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, in calling on her supporters to “speak out” against hate.
“Let’s speak truth: America’s economy is not working for working people,” she added, reprising her message from Nevada last week. She mocked the idea that the economy is “great,” saying it was “fine if you own stocks.” She also claimed that unemployment numbers were good because people were “working two or three jobs to put food on the table.” She added that women earn “80 cents on the dollar” compared to men, and vowed to force companies to close the gap.
Harris also promised to repeal President Donald Trump’s tax cuts on “day one” in office, and said health care was a “right.” She added: “Women’s access to reproductive health care is under attack.
“And we will not stand for it,” she declared, to loud cheers and stomps in the bleachers.
She also talked up gun control, saying that children should not have to ask, “Why, Mommy and Daddy,” when faced with the prospect of school shootings.
She drew cheers by interjecting: “Or — ‘Why, Mommy and Mommy?’ or ‘Daddy and Daddy’?”
If elected, she said, she would give Congress “one hundred days to pull their act together” on gun control. And if it did not, she would use an executive action to impose background check requirements on anyone selling more than five guns a year.
She added that America needed criminal justice reform because people could be shot “because of the color of [their] skin.”
She also addressed immigration policy — “Separating babies from their parents at the border is not border security” — and declared that “climate change is real.”
She added, to cheers, that “Russia interfered in the election” in 2016, and slammed President Trump for accepting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word over that of U.S. intelligence agencies.
And Harris closed with a call to national unity that has become her refrain on the campaign trail, noting that “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”
California’s primary will be more important in 2020 than in previous years, after the state moved it from June to March. It will be held on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020 — the fifth primary contest of the election cycle.
Some in the audience were committed Harris voters; others were unsure.
Rame Shor, a professor at the college, told Breitbart News that he was supporting Harris because “she has better experience” than other candidates. He added that he believes she can catch former vice president Joe Biden, who currently leads in the polls by double-digit margins, because of what he called her strong level of grassroots support.
Gaby Mohaupt of Los Angeles was unsure if she would vote for Harris, but told Breitbart News that she would back any candidate that stood for pro-choice policies against the recent spate of pro-life legislation in Republican states.
“I’m open-minded,” she said, “but leaning toward a woman.”
Emmett Keith-Jones, a PTA official from Riverside County, drove to L.A. from Temecula to attend the event. He said he would support Harris because he had met her personally, and because “she understands the diversity of California.”
Asked about Biden’s lead, he said, “I don’t think that matters much.
“It’s just like with Obama. We just need Oprah to say something,” he joked.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Native Born Americans Lag Behind Foreigners in U.S. Workforce Growth
3:37
Native born Americans have continued lagging behind foreign born workers in the United States’ workforce over the last decade, federal data finds.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveals that while the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy hits the highest level since 1996 because of the country’s mass legal immigration policy, foreign born workers also are far exceeding native born Americans in terms of labor market growth.
Over the last 10 years, the number of foreign born workers who entered the labor market increased 17.2 percent. At the same time, the number of native born Americans who entered the labor market increased by less than three percent. This indicates that in the last decade, the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy grew more than six times the rate of the native born workforce.
As Breitbart News reported, legal immigration levels, where 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreign visa workers are admitted to the country annually, have driven the number of foreign born workers in the U.S. to its highest level in more than two decades.
Today, foreign born workers make up 17.5 percent of the U.S. workforce and remain undercutting the wages of America’s native born working and middle class.
In 2018, foreign-born workers were cheaper to hire for employers, earning a median weekly salary of less than $760. At the same time, native born American workers’ median weekly salary was $910. The data, though, found that while native-born Americans’ wages have been largely stagnant, foreign-born workers have seen their wages rise.
Though there continue to be nearly 12 million Americans who want a full-time job but are unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force entirely, the U.S. has continued admitting more than a million legal immigrants a year to compete for working and middle class jobs against these sidelined Americans.
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system 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. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.
For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
At current legal immigration rates, about one-in-six U.S. residents will have been born outside of the country by 2060, the Census Bureau has found. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is expected to reach 69 million in the next four decades — a boon to Wall Street investors, real estate developers, and big business executives who increasingly profit from more consumers and cheaper workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Trump Abandons ‘America First’ Reforms:
‘We Need’ More Immigration to
Grow Business Profits
Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, President Trump is abandoning
his prior “America First” legal immigration reforms to support increases of
legal immigration levels in order to expand profits for businesses and
corporations.
For the fourth time in
about a month, Trump suggested increasing legal immigration levels. With Apple
CEO Tim Cook sitting next to him at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said he
not only wanted more legal immigration but that companies needed an expansion
of new arrivals to grow their business.
“We’re going to have a lot of people
coming into the country. We want a lot of people coming in. And we need it,”
Trump said:
It’s not a question of do we
want [more immigration], these folks are going to have to
sort of not expand too much. And if we tell them … these are very ambitious
people around this table. They don’t like the concept of not expanding. We want to have the companies grow and the
only way they’re going to grow is if we give them the workers and
the only way we’re going to have the workers is to do exactly what we’re doing.
[Emphasis added]
The comments are a direct rebuttal
of the president’s commitments in 2015, 2016, and 2017, where he vowed to reduce overall
legal immigration levels to boost the wages of U.S. workers and reduce the
displacement of America’s working and middle class.
In 2017, for instance, Trump touted
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue’s (R-GA) RAISE Act legislation,
which would have cut legal immigration down to about 500,000 arrivals a year
rather than the current admission of more than one million legal immigrants
annually who compete against working-class Americans for jobs.
Trump, at the time, said legal
immigration levels needed to be trimmed to “reduce poverty, increase wages, and
save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars,” arguing that the current
importation of more than a million legal immigrants every year “has placed
substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers, and community resources.”
“Among those hit the hardest in
recent years have been immigrants, and very importantly, minority workers
competing for jobs against brand new arrivals,” Trump said in 2017 of current
legal immigration levels. “And it has not been fair to our people, to our
citizens, to our workers.”
NumbersUSA’s Rosemary Jenks said
Trump supporters must remind the White House of the commitment that the
president made on the campaign trail when it comes to legal immigration
reforms.
“We need to remember all of the
promises that candidate Trump made on immigration. Which included, most
importantly, putting Americans first,” Jenks told Breitbart News.
“I would certainly hope, that in
order to keep his campaign promises that before even talking about expanding
legal immigration, he would work with employers to recruit the 50 million
working-age Americans who are outside the labor market,” Jenks said. “Or work
with these companies to hire laid-off GM workers. They’re Americans, they
should come first.”
Trump’s newfound support for
increasing legal immigration levels has become part of his stump speech on the
issue, repeating the same sentiment
most recently at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
There, Trump said the country needs
more foreign workers to help corporations.
“We need an immigration policy
that’s going to be great for our corporations and our great companies … we
need workers to come in but they’ve got to come in legally and they’ve got to
come in through merit,” Trump said.
Trump’s shift in legal immigration
views has coincided with the White House giving accessto a myriad
of globalist business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
George W. Bush Center, and a number of libertarian organizations funded by the
pro-mass immigration billionaire Koch brothers.
Spokespeople
for the Chamber of Commerce, LULAC, George W. Bush Center, and Koch Industries
dominate the immigration talks in White House currently.
Globalist Business Groups Dominate
Immigration Talks at White House
Increasing legal immigration beyond
their already historically high levels would crush the wage and
job gains that Trump’s “Hire American” economy has made possible thus far. Nationwide,
wages rose 3.0 percent in 2018. For Americans who switched jobs, wages rose by
4.6 percent and by 5.2 percent in Minnesota where few migrant workers choose to
live.
Though unemployment has remained
low, there continues to be at least 13 million working-age Americans
who are either unemployed, not in the labor force but want a job, or who are
working part-time jobs but want a good-paying full-time job.
“Increasing immigration is the one
thing that can wipe out all the wage gains, all the employment gains for those
blue-collar workers who switched parties to vote for him,” Jenks said. “I hope
someone in the White House has his interest in mind who is telling him this.”
Out of those 13 million Americans
who are available for U.S. jobs, about 6.5 million are unemployed. Of those
unemployed, close to 13 percent are American teenagers who are ready for
entry-level U.S. jobs — the exact jobs that low-skilled foreign workers
generally tend to take.
About 1.6 million Americans are not
in the labor force at all, but they want a job, including about 426,000
discouraged American workers who are demoralized by their job prospects. Also,
there are 5.1 million Americans who are working part-time jobs but who want
full-time jobs. More than 1.4 million of these U.S. part-time workers said they
had looked for full-time jobs but could not find any.
Mass immigration, whether legal or illegal,
puts downward pressure on Americans’ wages, researchers have repeatedly noted.
Every one percent increase in the
immigrant composition of an American workers’ occupation reduces their weekly
wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta has found. This means
the average native-born American worker today has their weekly wages reduced by
perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
In a state like Florida, where
immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force,
American workers have their weekly wages reduced by perhaps more than 12.5 percent. In
American workers have their weekly wages reduced by perhaps more than 12.5 percent. In
California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’
weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one percent increase
in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by
about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by
foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers
by perhaps 12 percent.
The mass importation of legal
immigrants — mostly due to President George H.W. Bush’s Immigration Act of
1990, which expanded legal
immigration levels — diminishes job opportunities for the roughly four
million young American graduates who enter the workforce every year wanting
good-paying jobs.
In the last decade alone, the
U.S. admitted ten million legal
immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of
low-wage foreign workers. Meanwhile, if legal immigration continues, there will
be 69 million foreign-born residents
living in the U.S. by 2060. This would represent an unprecedented electoral
gain for the Left, as Democrats win about 90 percent of
congressional districts where the foreign-born population exceeds the national
average.
12M
Americans Out of Workforce as DHS Approves 30K More Foreign Workers
JOHN BINDER
7 May 2019390
3:09
Nearly 12 million Americans remain out of the United States labor force
as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approved 30,000 more foreign
workers businesses can bring to the country to take blue-collar U.S.
jobs.
As Breitbart
News reported, Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said this week that he
would approve an additional 30,000 H-2B foreign visa workers to be brought
to the U.S. by businesses to take blue-collar, non-agricultural jobs. This
comes as former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen approved an
additional 30,000 H-2B foreign workers in March.
Every
year, U.S. companies are allowed to import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign
workers to take blue-collar, non-agricultural jobs. For some time,
the H-2B visa program has been used by
businesses to bring in cheaper foreign workers and has contributed to
blue-collar Americans having their wages undercut.
Meanwhile, the latest Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) data notes that there are nearly 12 million Americans
who are either unemployed, underemployed, or out of the workforce but wanting a
job.
About 5.8 million Americans remain
unemployed. Those most likely to compete against cheaper foreign workers in
blue-collar and entry-level industries — U.S. teenagers and black Americans —
continue to have significantly higher unemployment rates than other demographic
groups.
For example, of the 5.8 million
Americans unemployed, about 754,000 are teenagers with an unemployment rate of
13 percent. Likewise, there are 388,600 black Americans who are unemployed, for
an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent which is more than double the white
American unemployment rate and more than triple the Asian American unemployment
rate.
About 2.7 million of the unemployed
population either lost their job or completed a temporary job, while 1.2
million, or 21 percent of the total unemployed, said they have been unemployed
for at least 27 weeks.
Similarly, 4.7 million Americans are
underemployed, that is U.S. part-time workers who want full-time jobs but are
unable to find them. Another 1.4 million Americans are marginally attached to
the labor force. These are U.S. workers who are ready and willing to work if
they could fine a full-time job.
Of those 1.4 million Americans who
are marginally attached to the labor force, 454,000 say they are “discouraged”
by their job prospects and do not believe there is work for them in the current
labor market.
While
millions remain on the sidelines of the workforce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has
suggested that the U.S. is “out of people” in their efforts to lobby
Washington, D.C. lawmakers to support an expansion of the country’s legal
immigration system.
For
weeks, landscaping companies and lawn care businesses complained to DHS
officials that there are not enough workers to fill blue collar and entry-level
jobs, Breitbart News has been told. Experts, though, have warned that
wage hikes that have
benefited blue-collar and working-class Americans will not continue
should more foreign workers saturate the labor market, decreasing the price of
labor while subjecting Americans to increased competition for jobs.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Fixing America’s
Unemployment Crisis
Trump was elected in part on the promise of creating jobs, but
how about those who stopped looking for work?
What has been called a
“quiet catastrophe” has been unfolding in America: the collapse of work for millions of America’s men, and, more recently, for America’s women as well.
Nicholas Eberstadt, the
Henry Wendt Chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute,
estimates there are 10 million men who are jobless and no longer looking for
work. According to calculations using 2014 data, an estimated 3.6 million women
are in the same situation.
President-elect Donald Trump
has announced a raft of policies meant to spur economic growth and create jobs,
but thought needs to be given to what specific measures might help this urgent
situation.
How to address this crisis
depends on what one understands the problem to be. A graph showing the
prime-age employment rate for men provides a kind of Rorschach test for
possible responses.
Jared Bernstein, senior
fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former economic adviser
to Vice President Joe Biden, and author of, most recently, “The Reconnection
Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity,” focuses on the cyclical upturns in
the jagged line, on those periods of prosperity when workers regain jobs that
had been lost.
Eberstadt focuses on the
straight trend line, which has been going inexorably and disastrously downward
for decades.
Bernstein and Eberstadt
represent two typical and contrasting approaches to the unemployment
problem.
If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers,
they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the great
recession.
— JARED BERNSTEIN
Bernstein published the
graph in a chapter he contributed to Eberstadt’s book “Men Without Work,” in
which he critiques Eberstadt’s diagnosis of the employment crisis.
For Bernstein, the key is a
missing demand for labor.
“If you look at the
employment rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back
two-thirds of their losses since the Great Recession,” Bernstein said in an
interview. “That doesn’t sound to me like a group that has given up. It sounds
to me like a group that is not facing ample opportunity.”
For Eberstadt, the problem
is a detachment from work.
Using various government
databases, Eberstadt gives a composite portrait of those men who are out of the
workforce and not looking for work.
They don’t read newspapers,
seem to have few familial responsibilities, and tend not to be involved in a
church or their communities. They spend most of their time entertaining
themselves with TV or hand-held devices; 31 percent admitted to survey takers
that they used illegal drugs.
Bernstein counters this
portrait by noting that the causal connection may go from a lack of employment
opportunities to suffering from depression, which then leads to these men
planting themselves on the couch.
As to the individual motives
of the non-working, Bernstein said, “We just don’t know.” His advice to Trump
is to aggressively pursue full employment, which involves the federal
government using a number of different tools.
An officer waits to escort Harvey Lesser, an unemployed
software developer, from his apartment after serving him with a court order for
eviction in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 11, 2009.
Stimulus and Subsidies
Bernstein believes the key
to the downward trend his graph shows is the disappearance of manufacturing
jobs. He favors trade policies that will reduce America’s chronic trade
imbalances, which will create more demand for domestic manufacturing.
Bernstein also favors an
infrastructure program, with the caveat that “you have to do it right,” he
said.
He would like to see the
federal government get involved in communities that “don’t have enough
businesses, child care slots, supermarkets, and stores—these are a classic
market failure.”
The federal government could
subsidize private employers in these neighborhoods, giving them an incentive to
move their businesses there.
Bernstein also favors
special efforts to help those with a criminal record, and Eberstadt agrees
finding ways to help this population is key to addressing the problem of
non-working adults. He estimates that, by the end of 2016, there will be 20
million with a felony conviction in their past.
*
Only a complete fool would believe that
Trump is any more for American Legal workers than the Democrat Party for
Billionaires and Banksters!
*
“Trump Administration Betrays Low-Skilled
American Workers.”
*
The
latest ad from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asks Trump
to reject the mass illegal and legal immigration policies supported by Wall
Street, corporate executives, and most specifically, the GOP mega-donor Koch
brothers.
*
Efforts
by the big business lobby, Chamber of Commerce, Koch brothers, and George W.
Bush Center include increasing employment-based legal immigration that would
likely crush the historic wage gains that
Trump has delivered for America’s blue collar and working class citizens.
*
Mark Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley investors
are uniting with the Koch network’s consumer and industrial investors to demand
a huge DACA amnesty
*
A handful of Republican and Democrat
lawmakers are continuing to tout a plan that gives amnesty to nearly a million
illegal aliens in exchange for some amount of funding for President Trump’s
proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
MAGA vs. the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The
general public typically equates the Chamber of Commerce with local
Mom and Pop businesses in their area which meet for networking and mutual
support in local chapters across the country. This is erroneous. According to theHill:
While local chambers cater to the needs of car dealers
and restaurant owners, the national Chamber operates as the lobbying arm of
large corporations that have never met a big government program they did not
like.
They are weapons dealers pushing billion-dollar
battleships and telecommunication lobbyists protecting slow Internet at the
world's highest prices. They are lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies, big
banks, and Wall street traders who treat the American people as gullibles to be
fleeced without mercy.
Even
seasoned politicians are susceptible to having misconceptions about the
Chamber. Former U.S. senator Jim Demint admits he naively thought it was
lobbying for free enterprise and creating a better business environment for
everybody. Now he says, "I pronounce them part of the swamp." Rep.
Justin Amash (R-Mich), a conservative, adds, "I believe in free markets
and am against cronyism and corporate welfare, and they [the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce] support those things."
The
Chamber of Commerce and its president Thomas Donohue came into conflict with
Donald Trump and his America First platform very early on. For 18 months during
the runup to the 2016 election, the Chamber spared no effort to demonize Trump.
In doing so, the Chamber was carrying water for the Hillary Clinton
campaign. Donohue and company figured they could better deal with Hillary than
Trump in the Oval Office. In this, the Chamber was exactly right.
The
big hangups the Chamber and its client base had against Donald Trump involved
immigration, trade, and tariffs. Adhering
to its corporate masters’ call for a continuous supply of cheap labor, the
Chamber lobbies for more immigration and resists tight border controls. Trade
is much the same. Past trade pacts have allowed Wall Street to grow obscenely
rich in the outsourcing of American jobs to third-world countries for sake of
the bottom line of the multinationals. In the process, over a million ordinary
Americans were left holding the bag.
All
this is still playing out today. The president is striving to adjust the unfair
trading arrangements that the political class, in cahoots with the big money
interests on Wall Street, have saddled the U.S. with. But Trump and his
trade team of Robert Lighthizer, Wilbur Ross, Steven Mnuchin, and Larry Kudlow
are fighting not just China, but what is effectively a Fifth Column here at
home. It's composed of the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and a sizable
portion of the political establishment, which is used to dipping its beak in
special-interest money.
As
to this latter point, just look at the breaking news of the dealings of Joe
Biden's son, Hunter, with the Chinese government. Writing in the New YorkPost, Peter Schweizer outlines in detail the $1.5 private
equity deal the younger Biden made with the Chinese while Biden was
vice-president. And now, Joe Biden is out on the stump soft-peddling the damage
China has done to the U.S. economy and downplaying its threat to us and
pretending to be for the working man. You can't make this up.
It's
important not to conflate Big Business (Wall Street) with small business (Main
Street). Wall Street is the financial economy. It pushes paper around. For
example, they write derivatives on real assets, say stocks, to the point where
the value of derivatives traded is far greater than the assets they are based
on.Investopedia says this:
"The derivatives market is, in a word, gigantic -- often estimated at more
than $1.2 quadrillion on the high end."
A
quadrillion is 1,000 trillion. In dollar terms, a quadrillion is 15-times the
GDP of the entire world.
Main
Street actually makes and sells things. For over a generation or more, Big Biz
has dominated Main Street. This is why the Midwest and other places across the
U.S. are littered with closed factories and why middle-class wages stagnated.
In many ways, the financial economy is parasitic on the real economy. In the
2016 election, Donald Trump represented Main Street while Clinton was in
the pocket of the big money interests on Wall Street.
What
this means is that what is good for Main Street will not be good for Wall
Street and Big Biz, at least not in the short run. What benefits the American
worker -- fair trade policy and tight immigration control -- will initially
hurt Big Biz and Wall Street. And
the hurt will continue until the financial economy is scaled back to its proper
size and is no longer allowed to the tail that wags the American economic dog.
Until then, MAGA is at war with Big Biz and the bought-and-paid-for political
establishment. And this explains much of the resistance to Trump's tariffs and
trade position.
A closing observation says a lot. Thomas Donohue, the president of
the Chamber of Commerce, is 80 years old. His board is pushing him to
retire. The replacement
they are looking at is former Congressman Paul Ryan. A perfect fit given the
Chamber's agenda.
Chamber
of Commerce Demands More Immigration: ‘U.S. Is Out of People’
The United States Chamber of Commerce is vowing to continue fighting
President Trump’s shaping of the Republican Party into a pro-U.S. worker party
of blue collar working and middle class Americans.
In
an interview with
the Washington Post,
numerous Chamber of Commerce officials said the organization’s corporate
lobbying efforts would soon attempt to court more elected Democrats to support
their economic libertarian agenda of more free trade and increased legal
immigration.
“The
GOP’s drift toward protectionism, nativism, and isolationism since Donald Trump
took over the party in 2016 is also at odds with the Chamber’s longtime support
for expanding free trade, growing legal immigration and investing in
infrastructure,” the Poststory
details.
Specifically,
Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donahue said the U.S. needed more
legal immigration so that corporations and business secure a never-ending flow
of cheaper labor, claiming the country is “out of people.”
And
they’re still looking to work with Trump even on areas where they’re not really
in agreement, such as immigration. The Chamber advocates for protecting
the “dreamers” from deportation and expanding rates of legal immigration. “The
fundamental issue is that the United States of America is out of people,” said
Donohue. “We have the lowest unemployment we’ve had in 65 years. We have
brought more people back into the workforce and still have the lowest
unemployment.” [Emphasis added]
Despite
Donahue’s claims, at least 12 million Americans
who want full-time jobs remain on the sidelines of the workforce. This includes
6.2 million Americans who are unemployed that want a job, 4.5 million Americans
who are underemployed working part-time jobs, and 1.4 million Americans who
continue to be entirely out of the workforce though they want full-time
employment.
More
than 12 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor
force but wanting a job. Tight labor market still has some slack.
Feds: More Than 12M
Americans Remain Sidelined Out of the Workforce
While
millions remain on the sidelines of the workforce, the Chamber of Commerce has
routinely advocated for increasing legal immigration levels as a boon to
corporations while depressing job prospects and wages for America’s working and
middle class. Already, about 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants are
admitted to the country every year, to the detriment of U.S. wages.
The
Chamber of Commerce’s push to increase legal immigration levels is vastly out
of step with Republican voters and American voters as a whole. Last year, nearly
two-out-threeU.S. voters said they supported reducing legal immigration,
while most recently about 43
percent of Republican voters said immigration hurts the country.
Extensive
research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota has found
that the country’s current mass 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.
Borjas
has previously called the
country’s legal immigration system the “largest anti-poverty program” in the
world at the expense of blue-collar Americans and middle-class taxpayers.
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.
In
a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor
force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent.
In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American
workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise,
every one-percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S.
occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of
low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of
native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
Though
corporate interests and the open borders lobby have sought to
sway Trump from his “America First” illegal and legal
immigration agenda, senior advisor Jared Kushner
recently said the president’s top priority in terms of the White House’s
reform efforts is protecting Americans’ wages.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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