American Immigration Control Foundation

More Misinformation from the Media:

President-elect Donald Trump says he will double the nation’s growth rate during his time in office. That promise will be difficult to keep. . . . But right now, getting more people into the labor force is a challenge. For one thing, it means fighting a demographic tide. “We have a huge wave of baby-boom era people retiring,“ says Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University. . . . “Right now, we’ve got a shortage of construction workers. We’ve got a shortage of long-distance truck drivers. We got a shortage of many kinds of skilled workers. . . .” Gordon says bringing immigrants into the workforce is the best way to deal with this mass retirement of baby boomers. But, Gordon points out, Trump says he will deport millions of immigrants. – Trump’s Immigration Plan Could Undermine Promise to Boost Economy, NPR, John Ydstie, 12/20/16.

Fact Check:  Here again is the old “worker shortage” line that mass immigration promoters so  tirelessly repeat. By doing so they ignore that America has a huge number of unemployed and semi-employed workers—a total significantly more than twice the official unemployment figure. A low-wage economy—one result of mass immigration—burdens American workers and causes many to drop out of the workforce altogether. This is particularly the case with blue collar occupations such as construction, where wages have declined since large numbers of illegal aliens entered that field, and in many instances displaced American workers.

Skilled Americans also face displacement and wage depression due to foreign workers. This is particularly true in tech fields where companies have recruited large numbers of foreign workers in order to pay lower wages than they would to Americans. The companies claim they can’t find qualified Americans for the jobs—a claim belied by the fact that a majority of Americans with degrees in tech and related fields don’t have jobs in those occupations.

If American employers need more workers, they should follow the principles of free enterprise and raise wages to attract sufficient numbers of American workers. Instead, they prefer to the policy of government intervention called mass immigration to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor.      

The large-scale retirement of older Americans may not be as large as Gordon envisions because many American seniors—in our present economic environment have no choice but to keep on working. In 2000, 13 percent of Americans of retirement age were employed. Today the total is nearly 20 percent. They, as other Americans, must compete with foreign workers.

Aside from the basic adequacy of an American workforce, another reason to dismiss the labor shortage pleading is that our economy now stands on the threshold of large-scale automation. Studies now predict that within twenty years or less as many as half of existing jobs may be done by robots and computers. The NPT article mentions a need for long-distance truck drivers. That need might well be met by driverless vehicles.      

Rather than facing a worker shortage in the near future, we may face a challenge of how to employ just our native-born workers.   

More Misinformation from the Media:

Rather that [sic] hurting the United States, immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere are a boon to it. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine. . . . Francine D. Blau, professor of economics at Cornell University and chair of the 14-member panel of professors and researchers that conducted the study, says, “the panel’s comprehensive examination revealed many important benefits of immigration – including on economic growth . . . with little to no negative effects on overall wages or employment of native-born workers in the long term.” – Trump’s Wrong on Immigration, Editorials, Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, 10/1/16.

Fact Check: This is one of a number of editorials which has put a pro-immigration spin on that study. But the spin is significantly deceptive. Yes, the study supports the idea that immigration makes the economy larger. Indeed, we could add the population of Bangladesh tomorrow and have a bigger economy in terms of GDP. But would that make average Americans better off? A larger economy is not necessarily a better economy.

The study also found that immigration may benefit native-born Americans by as much as $54.2 billion a year. The problem with this benefit is its source is not so beneficial. It derives, as statistics from the report reveal, from the gain business accrue from using immigrants to keep workers’ wages low. They gain $548.1 billion a year in this fashion, while workers lose $493.9 billion in wages. Thus, immigration enables what might be described as Robin Hood-in-reverse: it takes from the poor and gives to the rich.

At the same time immigration brings a significant fiscal loss as immigrants receive a great deal more in tax-paid benefits than they pay in taxes. The report estimates that this deficit could be as high as $299 billion a year.

So, in terms what the report could measure, current immigration is not a paying proposition. But the spin doctors say not to worry because it will work out just fine in the “long-term.” Supposedly in the course of the next 75 years or so the descendants of present immigrants will rise up the economic ladder and will not be a burden in terms of wages, jobs, and fiscal impact.

The problem with this projection is that it rests mainly on what the Center for Immigration Studies describes as “assumption driven speculation.” Among the assumptions is that the federal government will control its spending and that our immigration policy will admit more immigrants on the basis of skills than it currently does.

Also, the report seems to assume—no matter what—that present immigrants will follow the same trajectory and timeline as past immigrants for entering the economic mainstream. But the report’s own findings suggest that present immigrants are not doing as well. Specifically, it noted that they are taking longer to reach the income levels of natives, and that they are slower to learn English.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept the idea that immigration in the “long-run” will pan out. That won’t make the immediate pain and loss to native workers and taxpayers any less unpleasant. And their distress will last as long as our current level of mass immigration continues.

A reasonable solution would be to cut immigration sharply to alleviate their pain. That also would benefit the immigrants already here and the smaller number who arrive by hastening their assimilation. It would be a win-win situation—and even the best spin doctors would have difficulty spinning it any other way.