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Americans Lose While Immigrants Gain
American-born workers have had a net loss in jobs since 2000, while all of the job growth since then has gone to immigrants, according to a remarkable new study by the Center for Immigration Studies. This revelation comes as some Republican politicians continue to flirt with amnesty and the disastrous proposal of so-called “immigration reform.”
Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll proves that the American public is increasingly fed up with the high levels of immigration flooding our job market and our nation. By nearly a 2-to-1 margin, Americans want less immigration now, rather than more: 41% would like to see a decrease in immigration, while only 22% want to see immigration increase.
Among the 22% who want to expand immigration are Democrats who view illegal immigrants as a way of expanding their party’s political base. But that short-sighted political motivation is certainly not good for our country, and it is devastating for the dwindling job opportunities available to Americans.
In 2000, 114.8 million Americans who were born in the United States had jobs here. Nearly a decade and a half later, in 2014, that total had decreased to 114.7 million, and millions of Americans have been unemployed for many years.
Millions of new jobs were created during that same period in the United States, but immigrant workers soaked up all that job growth. There was a net gain of 5.7 million in jobs during those 14 years, from 17.1 million in 2000 to 22.8 million in 2014, but the overall net effect was that 100% of the job growth went to immigrants and zero percent went to workers born in the U.S.A.
Steven A. Camarota is research director for the Center for Immigration Studies and the lead author of this startling report. His investigation proves that there are now 58 million Americans born in our country who do not have jobs, and that 34% of working-age Americans are without work, a number far higher than in 2000 when the number of out-of-work Americans born here was 26%.
Despite the scandal of so few jobs for Americans, the legislation pushed by Democrats for so-called immigration “reform” would vastly expand job opportunities for immigrants at the expense of American-born workers. The Senate’s misguided “Gang of Eight” bill would sharply increase the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants in our country, far above the 40 million who are already here, plus adding an incentive for many more to enter our nation illegally.
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama has been a leader against expanding immigration under the guise of the phony “immigration reform,” and he persuasively explains how hurtful unrelenting immigration is for our nation and especially for U.S. workers. He observed that the recent findings in this report by the Center for Immigration Studies “are shocking, and represent a dramatic indictment of immigration policy in Washington, D.C.”
In the last presidential election, Mitt Romney lost because he failed to attract the support of millions of working-class Americans who have been hit the hardest by the harmful consequences of liberal demands for more and more immigration. Senator Sessions wisely advises Republican leadership to “sever themselves from these demands and present themselves to the American public as the one party focused on everyday working people.”
Senator Sessions is obviously right in counseling that “the sensible, conservative, fair thing to do after 40 years of record immigration is to slow down, allow assimilation to occur, allow wages to rise, and to help workers of all backgrounds rise together into the middle class.” Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in a landslide in his own primary after failing to heed this advice; will other Republican leaders finally get the message?
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ and media demands for “immigration reform” have had another devastating effect on our nation: attracting a projected 100,000 children to cross our Mexican border illegally in this year alone, and bringing with them contagious diseases that could “spread like wildfire” according to Jane Orient, M.D. “Legal immigrants have always been required to undergo health screenings,” Dr. Orient explained, “but these kids coming have no medical screenings and no vaccine records.”
The doctor observed that many childhood diseases have been largely and wonderfully eradicated from our country, such as measles and chicken pox, but that leaves Americans without natural immunity against them. If they are brought into this country by unlawful immigration, then they can spread quickly, and young doctors who have never seen some of these diseases may be slow to recognize them.
Noroviruses are highly contagious infections which carry symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting. “All we need is one outbreak of that virus and we would have an overwhelming public health crisis,” Dr. Orient warned.
Furor About Plan for Illegal Kids
Officials of the Obama Administration trekked out to a tiny rural community in southern Virginia to teach the local yokels a thing about immigration policy. Yet the lessons learned were not by the local farmers, but by the bureaucrats who got more than an earful in protests against placing illegal aliens in their small town of Lawrenceville.
“We will not be strong-armed by federal officials,” bellowed one resident at the town hall, a 32-year-old former Marine named Aaron Smith. “We will not be pushed around,” he exclaimed against the federal officials, as the crowd of townspeople gave him rousing applause.
Lawrenceville has only about 1,400 residents, and the town hall was held on June 19th in a spacious auditorium that seats 900. But even that large facility was not big enough to hold the outrage, as more than 1,000 angry people — nearly everyone in the town — showed up to express opposition to the Obama Administration plan to relocate illegal immigrant children there.
The Obama Administration thought it could quietly house 500 children, who had illegally crossed our Mexican border, in a vacant college that had recently closed in this small town, but the politicians badly misread the depth of public opposition. Numerous federal officials were then sent by the Obama Administration to appease the locals, but in the face of the uproar the officials felt compelled to apologize, one after another, for what they had done.
The apologies rang hollow. In typical government-speak, one official attributed the problem to “communication challenges,” and acted like the miscommunication could be overcome with a bunch of talk. But there was no “communication challenge” in the numerous signs brought by town residents which shouted “no illegal immigrants.”
Residents expressed concern about public safety and a possible increase in crime if so many kids were bought into the community without parental supervision. “The No. 1 concern we have is the potential for shenanigans and the potential for crime,” observed townsman Derek Lewis at a local pizza parlor.
Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts was also candid, describing “fear” among locals about the way the government was handling this, adding that “500 kids unaccounted for — illegal alien children in my little sleepy town — I just don’t think it’s the right fit for this community.”
Another harebrained response by the Obama Administration to the massive influx of illegal immigrant kids, roughly 100,000 in this year alone, is to promise to send more money to the Central American nations that are dumping their kids on us. Obama wants to send $161.5 million to the so-called Central American Regional Security Initiative, and nearly $100 million to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, payments that will be additional incentives for them to permit more kids to show up at our southern border.
Instead of the United States rewarding nations for demanding that we provide free daycare and medical care for their kids, shouldn’t we instead be sending those countries a big bill for the cost of return bus tickets to transport the kids back?
Only one person amid the numerous presidential hopefuls seems to be getting the message. That candidate is, lo and behold, Hillary Clinton, who is seizing the day and outflanking Republicans on this issue, by being the first to call for a return of the tens of thousands of children back to their homes in Central America. The only other prominent leader to call for sending them back to where they came from is, surprise, surprise, John McCain.
The anemic reaction by Republican Party leadership is almost as pathetic as the swarming of children across our southern border. Euphemistically called unaccompanied children (UACs) rather than illegal aliens, they are overwhelming Homeland Security and turning border patrol agents into nannies with diaper-changing responsibilities.
Back in Lawrenceville, Virginia, the Obama Administration officials promised that the 500 young illegal aliens would not be dumped on the small community without their approval. Really? Thousands of other young illegal aliens have already been relocated to Arizona and Oklahoma despite criticisms by their governors.
Nobody seems to know who or where the parents of these children are, but we do know what the cause of the surge in illegal border crossings is. Promises of so-called “immigration reform,” with its allure of amnesty, inevitably bring more illegals wanting more of the same.
The tens of thousands of kids surging across our southern border are not unaccompanied; they may be carrying staph infections, chickenpox, and scabies, which is a highly contagious skin disease that causes massive itching due to burrowing mites, plus diseases that the U.S. eradicated in our country years ago, such as tuberculosis, Chagas disease, dengue fever, hepatitis, malaria, and measles.
The Racket of Guest Workers
Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, just hurled a challenge to Republicans. If they don’t pass amnesty for illegal aliens, they “shouldn’t bother to run a candidate in 2016.”
Somebody probably told him that outrageous statement was a gaffe, which means the inconvenient revelation of an embarrassing viewpoint, so Donohue tried to pass off his threat as a joke. But it isn’t funny; Donohue’s big-business members want us to import more low-paid workers and they want them now, suggesting that this fall’s lame-duck session of Congress would be a good time to implement this racket.
And it is a racket. It’s a carefully planned, well-financed scheme to use false arguments to import foreign workers who will keep wages depressed for American college graduates.
Every time the amnesty issue comes up, and we remind the advocates that it will severely disadvantage low-paid and entry-level American workers by swamping the market with a flood of immigrants to compete for their jobs and depress wages, business leaders offer a compromise. They argue that at least we must accept guest workers on H-1B visas because U.S. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) graduates are in short supply.
We are even told we should welcome them because the foreign STEM graduates are the best and the brightest. That’s false and also insulting. In the age of political correctness, American STEM graduates should be invited to cry discrimination and demand apologies.
As Obama was hopping around in May from one high-dollar Democratic fundraiser to another, he used his famous pen of the Imperial Presidency to create a new category of guest workers for which he has no statutory authority. He will unilaterally allow the spouses of H1-B visa holders to take U.S. jobs.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who is the best friend of American workers, says that Obama’s proposal to create 100,000 more guest worker permits for the spouses of H-1B holders is a plan that will keep 100,000 Americans from finding jobs.
The United States already has more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. The Economic Policy Institute, the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute and the National Research Council have all found no evidence that STEM workers are in short supply.
There are more than 5,000,000 native-born Americans with STEM degrees working in non-STEM occupations, and an additional 1.2 million STEM graduates who are unemployed. There is absolutely no STEM worker shortage.
Senator Sessions organized a gathering of real experts on this issue. He included professors who obviously have studied Economics 101 and learned that the law of supply and demand results in wages going up if there is a shortage and down if there is an oversupply.
Rutgers University public policy professor Hal Salzman said that current wages in the high-tech and information technology industries do not indicate that there is any shortage because wages are not going up. In fact, wages are the same as they were when Bill Clinton was president, so Salzman asked, “If there is in fact a shortage, why don’t wages go up?”
Michael Teitelbaum, senior research associate at Harvard Law School and author of a new book on scientific talent, said the high-tech industry has gotten years of a “free ride” from the media about an issue which is really non-debatable because there is no evidence of shortages of scientists and engineers.
Many scholarly studies have refuted the widespread propaganda that there is a shortage of American STEM graduates. Norm Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, asked, was there “a problem to begin with?”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has spent millions on expensive campaigns to get more H-1B visas. Bill Gates is another big advocate of bringing in more guest workers.
Big businesses favor H-1B visa workers because they are cheaper; corporations can pay them less than American engineers. In addition, they are similar to indentured workers because their employers hold their work permits and can prevent the H-1B workers from quitting to take a better job from another employer.
Big corporations not only pay H-1B workers less when they are hired, but use them to replace Americans over age 35 who expect promotions. H-1Bs have destroyed the opportunity of American STEM workers to move up and provide for their families.
The high-tech industries continue to cry about skilled labor shortages, yet they provide no evidence and their statements have been debunked by scholars. But they repeat them and the pro-amnesty media continue to give them coverage.
Amnesty Lost Big in Cantor’s Defeat
Elections have consequences, and the stunning defeat of the heir apparent for leadership of the Republican Party, Eric Cantor, continues to reverberate throughout the political world. Completely caught off guard by this spectacular upset, the liberal media are scrambling to try to spin the story as something other than what it obviously was.
The message of the voters to Eric Cantor and the entire Nation was this: “no amnesty.” This was a slap in the face of the Chamber of Commerce that has been demanding so-called “immigration reform” as a way for big business to get cheap labor from illegal aliens, while able-bodied Americans are left on unemployment and while the rest of us have to deal with the crime and other costs caused by rampant illegal immigration.
Eric Cantor did not merely lose a tight election, but lost by a landslide of 11 percentage points to a virtually unknown challenger in a race that no one thought the Majority Leader could lose. Cantor became the first Majority Leader to lose in his own primary in U.S. history.
The media did not think the race was even worth covering, and they did not bother sending anyone to do exit polls of voters. But they need look no further than what Dave Brat says on his website, what he said while campaigning, and what he has said in the few interviews that he gave after his extraordinary victory.
“Dave believes that we need to secure the border before addressing immigration reform. Dave is opposed to amnesty,” his website boldly declares, while sharply contrasting his position with that of Eric Cantor, who favored amnesty for most illegal aliens up to age 30.
The support of amnesty for kids by Cantor, which Dave Brat sharply criticized shortly before the election, has apparently been heard loud and clear south of the border. Tens of thousands of children from Central America have recently swarmed over our border, giving Homeland Security a colossal problem.
In the past, the number of children crossing our southern border has totaled about 7,000 to 8,000 annually. But that quantity increased to 13,000 in 2012, then to more than 24,000 in 2013, and government estimates for this year of the number of illegal crossings by children was 60,000 before the recent surges indicate it could be even more, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
More, indeed, as the number of illegal crossings by Central American children into our country reached 47,000 by last month, making it likely it will exceed 100,000 in this year alone.
This pathetic tragedy has resulted in placing many children in harm’s way. Even the Obama Administration is obviously unable to fully protect all these children, and lacks proper facilities for housing them.
With all the investigative reporters standing by to try to find some dirt on Republicans like Dave Brat, hovering outside his family home all day to pounce on him whenever he emerges, why hasn’t anyone determined how so many children have made it to our border? They obviously didn’t walk across Mexico alone.
No one seems to know how they got here, or those who do know are not telling us. But it is clear why tens of thousands of children have suddenly shown up at our doorstep: their families want the amnesty and citizenship that Eric Cantor and big business donors were quietly promising them.
One thousand of these poor children are being housed in a facility in Nogales, Arizona, but there are far too many additional children who are crossing the border into Texas even for that large state to accommodate. The Obama Administration is transferring many of these children to Arizona, but officials there are furious at being burdened with this immense responsibility.
Why are we surprised by this avoidable tragedy? If a border fence had been built as promised, then this dangerous wandering by children across our southern border would not be occurring.
Dave Brat, fresh from the biggest political upset in a generation, explained again to the public how wrongheaded amnesty is. “If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you’ve got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries” that are sending children to us.
Liberals do not like that approach because they expect illegal aliens to become Democratic Party voters. The Chamber of Commerce does not like Brat’s approach because big business expects illegal aliens to become cheap, controllable labor for the companies.
But American voters accept the obvious truth against amnesty that Dave Brat articulates. Every Republican should heed the clear message sent by the voters in retiring the Majority Leader of the House.
