Chamber of Commerce: Fill 11.3M Open American Jobs with Foreign Workers

Executives at the United States Chamber of Commerce are urging President Joe Biden and Congress to double legal immigration levels so that the nation’s 11.3 million job openings can be filled by foreign workers rather than jobless Americans on the sidelines of the labor market.

This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that employers across the U.S. had about 11.3 million job openings in the month of January. In February, there were 11.7 million Americans who were unemployed or out of the labor force altogether but who want full-time work.

Another 4.1 million Americans are underemployed, accepting part-time jobs but wanting full-time employment.

In a statement, the Chamber’s Executive Vice President, Neil Bradley, said lawmakers ought to prioritize imported, foreign workers for job openings — suggesting that there are more job openings than Americans looking for work.

“One reason for the shortfall is decreased legal immigration,” Bradley said in a statement. “It is past time for Congress to act to modernize our broken immigration system … we can’t get inflation under control, unclog our supply chains, or fully grow our economy and remain competitive unless we welcome more people into our country to fill these jobs.”

The Chamber, which lobbies on behalf of multinational corporations, consistently fights against tight labor markets which boost U.S. wages and tilts the economy toward employees over employers. A Pew Research Center survey this week found that 63 percent of employees who quit their jobs last year did so because the pay was too low — an indication of a flooded labor market.

Such flooded labor markets from mass legal immigration to the U.S. have had a devastating impact on the nation’s working and middle class, while redistributing billions in wealth to the highest earners, big businesses, real estate investors, and Wall Street, as well as driving capital out of small communities to the coasts.

While creating an economy that tilts in favor of employers, the economic model helped keep wages stagnant for decades. From 1979 to 2013, wage growth for the bottom 90 percent of Americans grew just 15 percent. Meanwhile, wage growth for the top one percent of Americans was nearly 140 percent higher.

Researchers have found that a flooded labor market can easily diminish job opportunities and wages for Americans.

One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of an American workers’ occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent as more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

Already, the U.S. gives out 1.2 million green cards to foreign nationals annually. In addition, about 1.5 million temporary work visas are rewarded to foreign nationals to take American jobs. Moreover, the U.S. saw more than two million border crossers and illegal aliens arrive at its southern border last year.

Legal immigration levels have driven the U.S. population to a record 331.9 million, including the largest foreign-born population in the nation’s history at 46.6 million.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.