Biden’s Deputies Use ICE Agents to Raise Pay for Illegal Workers

President Joe Biden is directing the nation’s deportation agents to raise pay for the millions of illegal migrants who are pushing many older, slower, and sicker Americans out of the workforce.

The new policy from border chief Alejandro Mayorkas dangles the promise of temporary residency permits to illegals who report workplace abuse by employers. The abuse includes wage theft, discrimination, and dangerous conditions, much of which is enabled by Mayorkas‘s easy migration policies.

Even the million-plus illegals who are now facing deportation can win benefits for reporting workplace abuse, said a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS):

Requests from noncitizens who are in removal proceedings [for deportation] or have a final order of removal [deportation], upon reviewing the submission for completeness [will be sent] to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a final determination on a case-by-case basis.

The policy spotlights Mayorkas’s successful abolishment of ICE’s legal role as defender of American workers. Instead of deporting illegal workers and arresting employers who cheat Americans, Mayorkas is using ICE agents to enforce an equal-results equity ideology that helps illegals.

“DHS is promoting a fair, equitable work environment for all, regardless of [legal] status, while protecting workplace integrity,” DHS said.

Progressives and union leaders insist Mayorkas’s equity policy will also help American workers by reducing CEOs’ incentive to hire exploitable illegals.

“This aligns the interests of migrants and American workers, [so] blowing up a big MAGA argument” that migrants impose pocketbook damage on ordinary Americans, claimed Greg Sargent, a pro-migration op-ed progressive at The Washington Post. He continued:

A central MAGA trope [cliche] is that the interests of undocumented migrants and US workers are irrevocably in conflict. But protecting migrants who testify against exploitative employers could help US workers, too.

“That’s absurd,” responded Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

When progressives are “flooding the labor market [with migrants], it doesn’t matter if [progressives ensure] immigrants and natives are being treated the same — because they’ll all be treated badly [by employers] whenever there’s a loose labor market,” he said.

In President Donald Trump’s low-migration economy, wages rose faster for low-status Americans, including disabled people, blacks, and blue-collars.

Mayorkas’s benefits-for-illegals policy would be good if it was intended to deter the hiring of illegal workers, Krikorian said. “If they included illegal employment in the things you can rat people out for, then that actually would potentially serve to tighten up the labor market,” so boosting wages and investment for Americans, he said.

The Cuban-born Mayorkas could protect Americans from illegal migration by offering green cards to illegal-migrant whistleblowers, said Jay Palmer, an Alabama-based immigration and human trafficking expert, and a former advisor to President Donald Trump. “You could create a whistleblower program, with a cap on it, and instead of offering money, you offer green cards” to white-collar and blue-collar migrants, Palmer told Breitbart News on January 13.

But, Palmer said, “immigration [policy] is all about cheap labor.”

Progressives  Ally with Business

From 1924 to around 1970, the U.S. government required employers to hire Americans. That law forced companies to compete for workers with offers of higher wages and better conditions. The competition also forced companies to train their workers, develop labor-saving devices, and invest in foreign markets.

But since around 1986, the government’s quiet welcome for millions of legal and illegal migrant workers has loosened U.S. labor markets. That loosening makes it difficult for Americans to negotiate for higher wages, find a better jobs, or afford decent housing.

From 1990 to 2020, the federal government’s massive inflow of migrants loosened the labor market and suppressed Americans’ wages. The inflow of labor was so great that investors created many new low-wage, low-tech, companies to exploit the labor, often via subcontractors.

That cheap labor bubble burst in 2020 when President Donald Trump blocked migration amid the coronavirus crash. His decision enraged investors because it shut down many cheap labor companies and allowed huge numbers of Americans — and migrants — to get decent wages and better conditions while working in restaurants, hotels, trucking, stoop-labor farms, and retail outlets.

But since early 2021, Mayorkas has been rebuilding the cheap labor bubble by flooding the labor market with job-seeking migrants. “I want a work permit so I can make a living — that’s why we came here,” migrant Hernesto Villafranca told the New York Post in January 2023.

In December 2022, for example, Mayorkas added roughly one low-wage, work-ready Latino or Asian migrant for every American who enters the workforce.

Predictably, the Wall Street Journal reported in January a downward turn for Latino wages in 2022, amid housing rises, inflation, and the southern inflow of roughly 1.5 million work-ready adults.

“Inflation-adjusted wages for Latino wage earners declined 2.4% for the fourth quarter of 2022, with the percentage of Latino workers seeking, but unable to find, living-wage jobs rising from 25.5% to 26.4%,”  the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity announced January 19.

The flood of migrants is also pushing many Americans out of the labor market.

“Young and middle-aged American men are less likely to be working now than at any time in U.S. history,” says a January 2023 study authored by Jonathan Rothwell.

“The official labor force participation rate for prime-aged men fell from 97.1% in 1960 to 88.6% in 2022 (averaged through November), using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey,” said Rothwell, the top economist at the Gallup polling firm.

Progressives recognize the economic damage caused by their high-migration policies — and are trying to hide that damage under more regulation of companies.

Americans have long relied on a government-monitored, free and level national labor market to help balance the power and wealth of investors and workers.

The free market rewards Americans who work hard, and rewards companies that provide decent wages and conditions, and companies that invest in wealth-generating machinery.

But progressives strongly prefer that labor market be managed by the Democratic Party’s networks of activists, officials, laws and regulations, Krikorian said:

They see the proper way of policing workplaces as leaning mainly on enforcement of these [civil right] laws rather than tightening the labor market, [so] ensuring that employers treat workers better because they have no choice … The left is always going to look at using state power and the right is going to lean more heavily on markets. So [the new policy] is completely on-brand for [Democrats].

Progressives justify their demand for political power by arguing that their elite-run policies will produce better outcome for Americans. But progressives also need to maintain a conflicted alliance with business groups.

Mayorkas exemplifies the merger of progressives and business interests in the Democratic Party.

The program to help illegals in jobs “is an extraordinarily important announcement … My hope is that we create a fair and equitable work environment for individuals, regardless of their [legal] stature,” Mayorkas told ABC News.

“With our labor agency partners, we will effectively protect the American labor market, the conditions of the American worksite, and the dignity of the [legal or illegal] workers who power our economy,” Mayorkas announced January 13.

The view dominates Biden’s cabinet.  “These efforts will make workplaces safer and more equitable for more [foreign] workers,” said a tweet by Marty Walsh, a former union leader who is working as Biden’s pro-migration labor secretary.

Even the progressives who control unions are backing the Democrats’ support for the illegal workers that drive down wages.

“Today’s announcement by Secretary Mayorkas is welcome news, said Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. He added:

Immigrant [illegal] workers are critical to the success of our economy, yet they are among those who suffer the most exploitation and abuse at work, and then suffer further from intimidation and retaliation when they stand up for their rights. These procedures … will allow workers to help with agency investigations without fear of threats and retaliation.

Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO union group, celebrated Biden’s support for the illegal foreign migrants who were allowed to cross the 50-state union line and to take jobs from Americans:

Workers rely on each other to take action to help enforce our labor laws, so we are all at risk when employers can use immigration threats to scare workers into silence.

The underfunding of our labor agencies combined with our unjust immigration system have created an environment in which employers violate worker rights with impunity.

We applaud [DHS] for taking this much-needed step to support the effective enforcement of labor laws. We will work to ensure these important new protections help as many workers as possible win justice.

Amid the economic damage caused by migration, progressives really want to believe that their policies are better for Americans than the free market — even when their policies clearly sideline Americans.

“By shielding immigrant victims of labor exploitation from deportation, the Biden admin[istration] is aligning the interests of native and immigrant workers against exploitative employers,” tweeted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the pro-migration American Immigration Council advocacy group. “This undermines a key GOP talking point” that migration hurts Americans employees, he added.

But  progressives also hate the reality that Americans are better off than foreigners because prior generations of Americans made the country wealthy and democratic.

This reality pushes them to celebrate migrants over Americans, and to level the border barriers that protect Americans from imported cheap labor.

For example, Mayorkas has stopped deporting illegals who do not commit crimes. “Unlawful presence in the United States, alone, will not be a basis for immigration enforcement action … it is a matter of justice and equity as well,” he told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington in January 2022.

U.S. immigration policy “is all about achieving equity” between Americans and foreigners, Mayorkas declared at an April 2022 meeting hosted by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Equity “is really the core founding principle of our country,” Mayorkas declared.

“We are building an immigration system that is designed to ensure due process, respect human dignity, and promote equity,” Mayorkas tweeted in August 2021, as he sketched out his plans for easya sylum rules that would encourage a mass migration of poor job-seekers into Americans’ homeland.

Extraction Migration

The federal government has long operated an economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors, and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because it allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.

A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.