Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says “Socialist Democrats” are advocating a $15 minimum wage while supporting a “tsunami of illegal alien labor” that crushes the wages of American workers.
During a speech on the House floor, Brooks blasted Democrat proponents of a $15 minimum wage for their support of wage suppression via the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy that brings more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled foreign nationals to the U.S. every year to compete for jobs and lower wages for America’s working and middle class.
Brooks said:
Socialist Democrats support open borders. Open borders mean a literal tsunami of illegal alien labor that artificially inflates the labor supply and suppresses American wages. This is Economics 101. [Emphasis added]
If the supply goes up, everything else being constant, the price goes down. The way to raise wages is simple. America must stop importing cheap foreign labor that takes American jobs from American workers and suppresses the wages of hard-working Americans who need that money for their families. [Emphasis added]
The question is, do we care enough about American family incomes to secure our borders and stop the flood of illegal alien labor that suppresses American wages? Of course not. Instead, there are those who seek an imperial decree for a $15/hour minimum wage. [Emphasis added]
Brooks noted Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis which estimates that nearly four million American workers will lose their jobs due to an increase of the minimum wage to $15.
“The policies being advocated today really are advocating the firing of as many as 3.7 million American workers from their jobs,” Brooks said. “That’s like firing the entire population of the State of Oklahoma … If the advocates of this legislation really cared about American workers, they would not fire them.”
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.
Today, about 17.5 percent of the American workforce is made up of foreign born workers. About 7.8 million of these foreign born workers are illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to the latest analysis by Pew Research Center.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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