The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos who is also the CEO of Amazon, claims in a new editorial that a “rational” national immigration policy would deliver an endless stream of welfare-dependent immigrants to American corporations and businesses.
Despite rising wages for America’s blue-collar and working-class thanks to a tightened labor market, the Post editors write that importing low-income foreign workers is “the obvious antidote to chronic and predictable labor deficits.” To date, there remains about 12 million Americans out of the labor market who are unemployed, under-employed, or discouraged by their job prospects but all of whom want full-time jobs.
The Post editors explain:
A rational immigration system, one that meets the labor market’s demands for workers in an array of skill categories and income levels, is the obvious antidote to chronic and predictable labor deficits. Unfortunately, the Trump administration, heedless of the pleas of employers, has implemented and proposed measures whose effect will deepen existing and future shortages. And it has done so even as the unemployment rate, now 3.7 percent, continues to bump along at near-historic lows. [Emphasis added]
A policy announced by the administration this month would impede large numbers of low-income legal immigrants from remaining in the United States, or coming in the first place, if they are judged likely to use public benefits to which they are entitled, including noncash ones such as housing subsidies and health care. The impact would be a dramatic reduction in newcomers, and in existing immigrants eligible to become legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, the final step before full citizenship. By targeting low-income and low-skilled migrants, the rule would perpetuate severe worker shortages in a variety of sectors. [Emphasis added]
…
President Trump has leveraged nativist policies to his political advantage. He has been indifferent to their corrosive long-term economic impact. Far from making America great again, the president’s policies are likely to transform the United States into a second Japan, where an aging population and barriers to immigration have sapped the dynamism and prospects of what was once one of the world’s most dynamic economies. [Emphasis added]
The editorial comes after the Trump administration announced that it would enforce a Clinton-era regulation which effectively prevents welfare-dependent legal immigrants from permanently resettling in the U.S. by obtaining a green card.
The regulation will be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economic model has proven the strongest for blue-collar workers and their wages, which had previously stagnated for decades due to an annual inflow of more than a million low-skilled legal immigrants.
In USA Today, contributor Gad Levanon recently noted how America’s working class is making large gains and helping to close the wage gap between the working-middle class and the wealthy.
“At this point, the reversal in wage inequality is modest,” Levanon writes. “But it is real, and the trends underlying it look likely to last for at least another decade. A continuation would provide extended and welcome relief to America’s working class, after years of wage stagnation in sectors that were shedding jobs.”
The Post publishes pro-mass immigration editorials almost annually. Last year, the Post editors wrote that Trump’s tight labor market for American workers was “reaching crisis proportions” after previously acknowledging that a labor shortage means higher wages and more job opportunities for Americans.
A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported how the tightened labor market has given American workers power over corporations and businesses where they negotiate their terms of employment rather than the other way around.
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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