Increased Immigration Subjects 13M Americans to More Foreign Competition
Article publisher:
Breitbart
Article date:
8 February 2019
Article category:
Our American Future
High
Article Body:
Increasing legal immigration levels beyond the already roughly 1.2 million legal immigrants who are admitted to the United States every year would subject the remaining unemployed population, discouraged U.S. workers, and those not yet in the labor force to more foreign competition in their efforts to find jobs.
This week, President Trump endorsed the notion that the big business lobby and outsourcing firms have continuously claimed for decades, that there are not nearly enough Americans for the number of jobs in the country or that Americans are unwilling to do manual labor and blue-collar jobs.
The claim was Trump’s evidence for his sudden endorsement of increasing legal immigration levels, a break from his 2015, 2016, and 2017 “America First” commitment wherein he noted how mass legal immigration hurts the wages and job prospects of American workers....
The U.S. unemployment rate edged up in January to about four percent. This translates to about 6.5 million Americans who are unemployed across the nation and who want a job. About 12.9 percent of these unemployed Americans are teenagers who generally are forced to compete against imported low-skilled foreign workers for entry level jobs.
Additionally, there remain about 6.8 percent of black Americans — also more likely to compete for jobs against legal immigrants and foreign workers — who are unemployed and who want a job. This is nearly double what the total national unemployment rate was in November 2018....
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 concludes. This means the average native-born American worker today has their wage reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
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 Washington, DC-imposed mass legal immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation.