The CEO of Domino’s Pizza, Ritch Allison, says the United States needs more immigration to drive up the nation’s population.
In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Allison urged an increase in legal immigration levels to the U.S. so as to drive up population growth and provide business with an endless flow of foreign workers.
“In the U.S., with minimal population growth organically … we need immigration in our industry to continue to have enough team members,” Allison said.
At current legal immigration levels, where more than 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards annually, about one-in-six U.S. residents will have been born outside of the country by 2060, the Census Bureau has found. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is expected to reach 69 million in the next four decades.
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, from September, shows that nearly 20 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed but all want full-time jobs with good wages and competitive benefits.
The joblessness rate includes 7.7 million Americans who are unemployed, including an unemployment rate for teenagers that exceeds 11 percent. Likewise, another six million Americans are jobless but want full-time work, including 450,000 Americans who do not believe there are any jobs in the workforce for them.
An additional 4.5 million Americans are forced into taking part-time work for economic reasons but want full-time employment.
The U.S. population grew 7.4 percent from 2010 to 2020, the latest Census Bureau data shows. The resident population is now at 331.5 million — the largest population in American history. Over the last decade, the U.S. added 22.7 million residents, much of which is due to legal immigration levels.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.