More Misinformation from the Media:
Despite the heightened political rhetoric on the topic, higher rates of immigration are not tied to higher unemployment rates, according to an immigration policy analyst.
David Bier of the Cato Institute wrote in a blog post that the opposite is true—unemployment is lowest when immigration is highest. During years when immigration was greater than the historical average, unemployment averaged 5.7 percent, when in all other years employment was at 7.2 percent, he wrote. — Busting Election-Season Myths about Immigration, deseretnews.com, Sarah Anderson, 8/18/16
Fact Check: No matter how preposterous it seems, the libertarian Cato Institute will always claim that mass immigration is a magic elixir, guaranteed to cure all economic aliments. Some analysis of this snake oil is in order. Can we be sure that measurement of unemployment was as accurate in the past—say 120 years ago—as it is now? And what assurance do we have that unemployment statistics are always making the same measurements. To illustrate, in 1994 when immigration was surging, the Clinton Administration decided to change the definition of unemployment—a change which resulted in the reported unemployment rate being lower than it would have been under the previous standards.
And even if overall unemployment—consistently measured—is relatively low with high immigration, one might note that this is not necessarily a benefit for American workers. The jobless rate for immigrants may indeed be low because employers prefer them as a source of cheap labor. But this leaves lots of native-born American without jobs. During the Obama years, as shown by analyst Ed Rubenstein, immigrants made much greater gains in the U.S. job market than natives.
And even when U.S. workers have jobs, mass immigration means that they will earn less for doing them, something Bier may not want to consider. After Congress cut mass immigration in 1924, workers’ wages rose during the following decades. That progress ceased around 1970 as the present wave of mass immigration was beginning to take off. Since 1970, U.S. wage levels in constant dollars have stagnated, despite significant increases in productivity.
High immigration and wage suppression coming together are not just a coincidence. They are the consequence of the economic law of supply and demand. As the supply of workers increases, their marketplace value in wages goes down. The Cato Institute and its media handmaidens don’t want us to notice as they peddle their mass immigration elixir.