My emphasis.
The overwhelming majority of immigration to the United States is
- the result of our visa policies.
- Each year, millions of visas are issued to
- temporary workers,
- foreign students,
- refugees,
- asylees, and
- permanent immigrants
- for admission into the United States.
- The lions share of these visas are for
- lesser-skilled and
- lower-paid workers and
- who,
- because they are here on work-authorized visas,
- are added directly to the same labor pool occupied by current unemployed jobseekers.
- Expressly because they are admitted into the U.S. on legal immigrant visas,
- most will be able to draw a wide range of taxpayer-funded benefits, and
- corporations will be allowed to directly substitute these workers for Americans.
- Improved border security would have no effect on the continued arrival of these
- new foreign workers,
- refugees, and
- permanent immigrants
because they are all invited here by the federal government.
The most significant of all immigration documents issued by the U.S. is, by far, the green card. When a foreign citizen is issued a green card it guarantees them the following benefits inside the United States:
- lifetime work authorization,
- access to federal welfare,
- access to Social Security and Medicare,
- the ability to obtain citizenship and voting privileges, and
- the immigration of
- their family members and
- elderly relatives
.
Under current federal policy, the U.S. issues green cards to approximately 1 million new Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) every single year. For instance,
- Department of Homeland Security statistics show that the U.S. issued 5.25 million green cards in the last five years,
- for an average of 1.05 million new legal permanent immigrant annually.
These ongoing visa issuances are
- the result of federal law, and
- their number can be adjusted at any time with a new federal law.
- However, unlike other autopilot policies
- such as tax rates or
- spending programs
- there is virtually no national discussion or
- media coverage over how many visas we issue,
- to whom we issue them and
- on what basis,
- or how the issuance of these visas to individuals living in foreign countries impacts the interests of people already living in this country.
If Congress does not pass a new federal law to reduce the number of green cards issued each year,
- the U.S. will legally add 10 million or more new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years
- a bloc of new permanent residents larger than populations of
- Iowa,
- New Hampshire, and
- South Carolina
- combined.
- All of these new permanent immigrants will be added on top of the current population of permanent immigrants in the United States.
This has substantial economic implications.
The post-World War II boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s
- averaged together less than 3 million green cards per decade
- or about 285,000 annually.
- Due to lower immigration rates,
- the total foreign-born population in the United States dropped from about
- 10.8 million in 1945 to
- 9.7 million in 1960 and
- 9.6 million in 1970.
These lower midcentury immigration levels were the product of a federal policy change:
- after the last period of large-scale immigration that had begun in roughly 1880,
- immigration rates were lowered to reduce admissions.
- The foreign-born share of the U.S. population fell for six consecutive decades,
- from 1910 through 1960.
Legislation enacted in 1965, among other factors,
- substantially increased low-skilled immigration.
- Since 1970,
- the foreign-born population in the United States
- has increased more than four-foldto a record 42.1 million today.
- The foreign-born share of the population has risen
- from fewer than 1 in 21 in 1970,
- to presently approaching 1 in 7.
- As the supply of available labor has increased,
- so too has downward pressure on wages.
- Georgetown and Hebrew University economics professor Eric Gould has observed that
- the last four decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the wage and employment structure in the United States
- The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors,
- while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs.
- Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.
During the low-immigration period from 1948-1973,
- real median compensation for U.S. workers increased more than 90 percent.
- By contrast, real average hourly wages were lower in 2014 than they were in 1973, four decades earlier.
- Harvard Economist George Borjas also documented the effects of high immigration rates on African-American workers, writing that
- a 10% immigration-induced increase in the supply of workers in a particular skill group reduced the black wage of that group by 2.5%.
- Past immigrants are additionally among those most economically impacted by
- the arrival of large numbers of new workers brought in to
- compete for the same jobs.
- In Los Angeles County, for example,
- 1 in 3 recent immigrants are living below the poverty line.
- And this federal policy of new large-scale admissions continues unaltered at a time when
- automation is reducing hiring, and
- when a record share of our own workers here in America are not employed.
President Coolidge articulated how a slowing of immigration would benefit both U.S.-born and immigrant-workers:
We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here. As a nation, our first duty must be to those who are already our inhabitants, whether native or immigrants. To them we owe an especial and a weighty obligation.
It is worth observing that
- the 10 million grants of new permanent residency under current law
- is not an estimate of total new immigration over the next decade.
- In fact, the increased distribution of legal immigrant visas
- tend to correlate with increased flows of immigration illegally:
- the former helps provide networks and
- pull factors for the latter.
- Most of the countries who send the largest numbers of citizens with green cards are
- also the countries who send the most citizens illegally.
- The Census Bureau estimates
- 13 million new immigrants will arrive, on net,
- between now and 2024
- hurtling the U.S.
- past all recorded figures in terms of the foreign-born share of total population,
- quickly eclipsing the watermark recorded 105 years ago during the 18801920 immigration wave before
- immigration rates were lowered.
- Absent new legislation to lower green card allotments
- and the unprecedented level of future immigration,
- the Census Bureau projects immigration as a share of population will
- continue setting new records each year, for all time.
Yet the immigration reform considered by Congress most recently
- the 2013 Senate Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration bill
- would have tripled the number of green cards issued over the next 10 years.
- Instead of issuing [the usual] 10 million green cards,
- the Gang of Eight proposal would have
- issued at least 30 million green cards during the next decade
- (or more than 11 times the population of the City of Chicago).
Polling from
- Gallup and Fox shows that Americans want lawmakers to reduce, not increase, immigration rates by a stark 2:1 margin.
- Reuters puts it at nearly a 3:1 margin.
- And polling from GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway shows that
- by the huge margin of nearly 10:1
- people of all backgrounds are united in their belief that
- U.S. companies seeking workers should
- raise wages for those already living here
- instead of bringing in new labor from abroad.
Try to get a white POlish, German, or Czech engineer in to the country. Not only “NO” from the goobermint, but “HELL NO.”
Change your name to Maria Gomez with 8 kids and come on in.