No Labor Shortage: 11M Americans Out of Work, but All Want Full-Time Jobs
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.
There is #NoLaborShortage twitter.com/bencasselman/s…
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’
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
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
Watch: ICE Lure and Sting
Indian Illegal Labor 'OPT' Traffickers
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
“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
U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
Rising Wages Are Good for Politicians
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.
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.
Almost 50% of U.S. employees got higher wages in 2019, up from almost 40%
in 2018.
That's useful progress - but wage growth will likely rise faster if Congress stopped inflating the labor supply for the benefit of business. http://bit.ly/2SyaLg7
That's useful progress - but wage growth will likely rise faster if Congress stopped inflating the labor supply for the benefit of business. http://bit.ly/2SyaLg7
Pay Raises and Training
Expand in Donald Trump's Tight Labor Market
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.
A Rasmussen survey shows likely voters by 2:1 want Congress to make
companies hire & train US grads & workers instead of importing more
foreign workers.
The survey also shows this $/class-based view co-exists w/ much sympathy for illegal migrants. #S386http://bit.ly/2ZA6WIE
The survey also shows this $/class-based view co-exists w/ much sympathy for illegal migrants. #S386http://bit.ly/2ZA6WIE
Rasmussen Shows 2:1
Opposition to Cheap Labor Legal Immigration
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.”
Estb. media and esp. WashPo journos cannot, or dare not, follow the $$$ in
immigration politics.
For example, the WashPo article on @SenMikeLee's @S368 bill to expand the outsourcing of U.S. grads' jobs.
Maybe b/c the money ends up in Jeff Bezos' pocket. http://bit.ly/2tChhYt
For example, the WashPo article on @SenMikeLee's @S368 bill to expand the outsourcing of U.S. grads' jobs.
Maybe b/c the money ends up in Jeff Bezos' pocket. http://bit.ly/2tChhYt
Munro: WashPost Message to
U.S. Graduates -- Drop Dead
EconomyImmigrationPoliticsAmnestyDonald TrumpGeorge W. BushH-1BimmigrationMichael BloombergMigrantsmigrationNation of
Immigrantsvisa workerswages
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.
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 reportedAugust 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%.
The New York Times laments that reduced immigration does force wages
upwards and also does force companies to buy labor-saving, wage-boosting
machinery. Instead, NYT prioritizes "ideas about America’s identity and
culture.” http://bit.ly/2Zp2u2J
NYT Admits Fewer Immigrants Means Higher Wages, More
Labor-Saving Machines
.
Ann Coulter: Surprise! That 'cheap'
immigrant labor costs us a lot
BY ANN COULTER,
OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
We could pay for
every idiotic boondoggle proposed by the 300 Democratic presidential candidates
if the current president would simply keep his central campaign promise to
build a border wall and deport illegal aliens. (Back off — “illegal alien”
is the term used in federal law.)
BLOG: JUDICIAL WATCH ESTIMATES THAT THE INVASION COST US $135 BILLION JUST IN WELFARE. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE OR $50 BILLION IN REMITTANCES.
A 2017 study by
the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that illegal aliens
cost the American taxpayer — on net — $116 billion a year.
That’s pretty
high, but the actual number is more likely triple that.
Straight out of
the chute, FAIR assumes that there are only 12.5 million illegal
immigrants in the country, approximately the same number we’ve been told
for the last 15 years as we impotently watched hundreds of thousands more
stream across our border, year after year after year.
The 12 million
figure is based on the self-reports of illegal aliens to U.S. census
questionnaires. (Hello! I’m from the federal government. Did
you break the law to enter our country? Now tell the truth! We have
no way of knowing the answer, and if you say yes, you could be subjecting
yourself to immediate deportation.)
BLOG: NOW DO THE MATH!
More serious
studies put the number considerably higher. At the low end, a Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Yale study last year put the number of illegals
at 22 million. Yet Bear Stearns investment bank had
it at 20 million back in 2005, and Pulitzer Prize-winning
investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
reported in 2004 that 3 million illegals were crossing each
year — so
simple math would put it at well over 60 million today.
So, right there,
the FAIR study underestimates the tab for illegal immigration by at least a
factor of three, meaning the real cost is about $350 billion a
year. That’s triple what Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) free college tuition plan
will cost in a decade.
I don’t mean to
bash FAIR. It’s sweet how immigration restrictionists always bend over
backward to be impartial. But their circumspection doesn’t mean the rest of us
have to ignore reality.
Journalists’
usual method of determining the cost of “unauthorized entries” — as they
say — is to phone some fanatically pro-illegal immigration group, such as
Cato or CASA, and get a quote sneering at anyone else’s estimate of the costs.
In a deeply
investigated 2017 Washington Post article, for example, the Post cited the
“belief” that illegal aliens “drain government resources.” Without looking
at any facts or figures, the reporter disputed that “belief” with a quote from
Cathryn Ann Paul of CASA: "It's a myth that people who are undocumented
don't pay taxes."
So there you
have it! Cathryn Ann Paul says it’s a “myth.” Now let’s move on to
the vibrant diversity being gifted to us by illegal aliens.
Earlier this
year, The New York Times mocked President Trump’s tweet saying illegal immigration costs "250 Billion
Dollars a year" by quoting big-business shill Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato
Institute: "There's no basis to any of those numbers about the
fiscal cost." Am I doing OK, Mr. Koch?
The Times
further explained that Trump’s figure “did not take into account the economic
benefits of undocumented immigrants” — for example, the surprisingly affordable
maids of some reporters.
Randy Capps of
the Migration Policy Institute told the Times that studies of the cost of
illegal immigration count only the costs or only the benefits. “They tend to
talk past each other, unfortunately,” he said.
BLOG: THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1 BILLION YEARLY IN WELFARE.
Well, the FAIR
study counted both. For every dollar illegal immigrants pay in taxes —
fees, Social Security withholding taxes, fuel surcharges, sales and property
taxes — they collect $7 in government benefits: schooling, English as a second
language classes, hospital costs, school lunch programs, Medicaid births,
police resources and so on.
A few years ago,
the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector looked at the winners and losers under
our government redistribution system and found that in 2010, households headed
by illegal immigrants received $14,387 more in government
services than they paid in taxes.
Legal immigrant
households also were big winners, receiving $4,344 more in government services
than they paid in taxes. (Our government does a fantastic job
deciding who can immigrate here.)
Only with
nonimmigrant households does the government almost break even, doling out a
mere $310 more in benefits than those households pay in taxes. (Surprise!
The deficit is on track to hit $1 trillion next year.)
Like FAIR
estimates, Rector’s study accepted the U.S. Census Bureau’s allegation that
we’ve had the same number of illegal aliens in this country since the beginning
of the Bush administration. Also like the FAIR study, Rector’s examination
counted only the obvious costs imposed on us by illegal immigrants —
things such as health care, education, fire and police protection, parks,
roads, and bridges.
But there are all sorts of costs that no one ever
counts. What about Americans’ lost wages to
illegal immigrants who are willing to work for
$7 an hour? Even if they don’t apply for
unemployment insurance, how do we count the
cost of suicide, opioid addiction or other anti-
social behavior?
counts. What about Americans’ lost wages to
illegal immigrants who are willing to work for
$7 an hour? Even if they don’t apply for
unemployment insurance, how do we count the
cost of suicide, opioid addiction or other anti-
social behavior?
Why not count
the lost wages themselves? We want to know the cost-benefit ratio to those
already here, not to the new total that includes the illegal immigrants.
If it's a net negative to those already here — well, that's the point.
And what was the
tab of illegal immigration to the family of Kate Steinle, the young woman shot
dead by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco in 2015? There were obvious,
tragic costs, of course — but there also are hidden costs, such as the lost
productivity of the people close to Kate for years to come, the additional
police presence around the San Francisco pier where she was killed and the
reduction in tourist dollars.
We hear about
the great largesse bestowed upon us by illegal immigrants all day
long. The only hidden benefits are the warm feelings of self-righteousness
that the CASA spokesman gets when bleating about illegals and the happiness
that cheap servants bring to the top 10 percent.
In Maine,
overdose deaths from opioids, mostly Mexican heroin, have skyrocketed in the last
decade, up from an already catastrophic 100 to 200 deaths per year to more than
double that — 418 in 2018. What is the cost of the state legislature
spending weeks debating a bill to provide heroin addicts with Narcan? The cost
of more crime and more police?
This isn’t to
gratuitously mention the fact that completely unvetted,
self-chosen illegal immigrants can, in fact, be rapists, drug dealers and
cop-killers. It is to say that no analysis of illegal immigration’s cost
can ever capture the full price.
Ann Coulter is a lawyer, a syndicated columnist and
conservative commentator, and the author of 13 New York Times bestsellers. The
most recent, “Resistance Is Futile! How the
Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind,” was published in 2018.
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