Roy Beck |
This Issue: Clinton acceptance speech showed the right concerns about American worker maladies . . . but her immigration prescription would prolong the illness
In
her acceptance speech last night, Hillary Clinton laid out several of
the most important reasons why I work to dramatically reduce overall
immigration:
Classic economic historians would note that Clinton was describing the symptoms of a loose labor market.
Throughout America's history, the presence of large worker surpluses
has been accompanied by depressed wages, rising income inequality and
less social mobility, including a devaluing of those who do the "lower"
jobs.
A
prerequisite for improving worker conditions in our nation's history
has been a tightening of the labor supply. But Clinton proposed the
opposite.
She
was careful to avoid describing what is actually in "comprehensive
immigration reform" (CIR). Most voters probably know it is about an
amnesty that would allow millions of visa-overstayers and illegal border
crossers to remain legally in this country. But the mass
media have largely refrained from informing the public that CIR is also about giving the unlawful foreign migrants lifetime work permits allowing employers to legally hire illegal aliens ahead of jobless Americans.
media have largely refrained from informing the public that CIR is also about giving the unlawful foreign migrants lifetime work permits allowing employers to legally hire illegal aliens ahead of jobless Americans.
Even more important
for preventing a needed tightening of the labor supply, all CIR bills
have proposed massive increases in future legal immigration (with
lifetime work permits) and temporary foreign guest worker programs.
I'm
always on high alert when politicians talk about what immigration does
for the "economy" and not for Americans. Does adding tens of millions
of foreign workers to the country every decade grow the size of the
economy? Yes, of course. But does it improve the lives of individual
Americans?
The
nation's premier labor economist, George Borjas of Harvard, has long
found that high immigration mainly benefits the immigrants themselves
and also moves money out of the pockets of American workers into the
pockets of the country's more affluent.
Clinton
bragged about the increase in jobs during the Obama Administration
after the economic collapse of 2008. But around half of the growth in
jobs went to foreign-born workers under the immigration policies that
Obama continued from the Bush Administration. After nearly 16 years of
the high-immigration policies of Bush and Obama, there are now 14 million more U.S.-born Americans NOT working than there were in the year 2000. Yet, Clinton pledges to accelerate the Bush-Obama immigration policies.
Nobody's
talking about kicking out "immigrants." But it was clear Clinton was
talking about illegal migrants. NumbersUSA has never advocated mass
round-ups and mass deportations of illegal foreign workers. But moving
every single illegal worker out of U.S. jobs would mean millions of
non-employed Americans would have a job. That's how you improve the
incomes and social mobility of Americans at the bottom, if your goal is
actually to help frustrated Americans rather than to give priority to
citizens of other countries.
I
was thrilled to hear Clinton avoid the claim that Americans are too
soft to do hard jobs. Instead, she emphasized that Americans want to
work and are willing to do hard work. Agreed. If employers are denied
easy access to foreign labor and are forced to recruit and train from
among their own fellow citizens, Americans will do almost every job
being filled by an illegal worker. (I believe in the short term, we
would still need legal temporary foreign ag workers, but they make up
less than 5% of the foreign worker stream today.)
In
her speech, she promised in her first 100 days to pass "the biggest
investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II." But she and
her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, have also promised in the first 100 days to open U.S. jobs to more foreign citizens than at any time in the entire history of the United States.
Clinton -- like so many among the opinion elites of mass media, academe, religion and business -- is willing to risk the economic livelihoods of millions of Americans on a reckless economic theory. The
theory, that a country can solve its problems of labor surplus by
adding more workers, is at odds with the reality of our nation's
history.
I was pleased that Clinton noted that the Constitution doesn't give a President the power to act unilaterally:
I
wish that meant that Clinton will back out of her previous promises to
unilaterally expand Obama's executive amnesty efforts if Congress
doesn't pass comprehensive immigration reform. NumbersUSA does not
endorse candidates or take positions on all the other issues that the
presidential candidates may differ on. But whoever is the next
President, we will continue our fight to persuade Congress to block
reckless immigration policies that endanger the citizens of the country
for the benefit of the elites.
And
we will hold any occupant of the White House to the standard that we
are not a nation in which one person has the power to issue masses of
work permits through executive orders to allow foreign workers to be
hired ahead of the citizens of our own nation.
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