The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“With a total of 517,000 new jobs created last month and total employment estimates revised up, the country now has the lowest unemployment rate in more than half a century.
“The numbers cooled recession fears, and while some economists and policymakers fret that the robust labor gains are going to send us into an inflationary tailspin, inflation indicators have actually been trending positively even as hiring has remained robust. Perhaps some of the conventional wisdom about the need to bludgeon wage and job gains to suppress inflation isn’t so common-sense after all. . . .
“More broadly, hundreds of thousands of refugees around the world want nothing more than to come to the United States and reestablish lives here through hard work and entrepreneurship, both filling and creating jobs and growing the economy into a more prosperous one for the country as a whole. Yet a general lack of urgency from the Biden administration has left admissions low and left people in harm’s way instead of the relative safety and prosperity of the U.S.
“There are some recent positive signs, like the State Department’s launch of a program allowing groups of private citizens to directly sponsor refugees. This should be just one of many initiatives to get the refugee pipeline reestablished. On some matters, it must be Congress to intervene, including undoing the silly wait time for asylum seekers to receive work authorization and perhaps, at long last, moving to reform employment immigration pathways.
“We can do the right thing by those fleeing violence and persecution, and do right by our economy. Win-wins are rare in public policy, and this is one worth taking.” – Working Towards Good: Refugees Want Jobs, Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 2/5/23 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: A good thing about this editorial is that it rejects the claim of many immigration advocates that reducing workers’ wages with immigration is a good way to fight inflation. Those wages, particularly the already low wages of unskilled American workers, have little impact on inflation. From this high point, the rest of the editorials goes downhill.
To say that we have low unemployment is to ignore the fact that we have seven million men of working age who have dropped out of the workforce. Consequently, the official unemployment figures do not count them. Many have dropped out because of low wages and poor working conditions. As they are our fellow Americans, we have an obligation to help them, and one way of doing so is to restrain the mass immigration that contributes to their problems.
This is just one reason why we should not open our gates for refugees as job seekers. Refugees do not come on the basis of their talents or abilities, but on the basis of their alleged persecution. This means that they have no particular benefits to offer our job market. At the same time, unlike other immigrants, they can qualify for all of our welfare programs as soon as they arrive. Through their lifetimes, they consume more in taxes than they contribute.
Many “refugees” do not fit the longstanding definition of a refugee, i.e., a person facing personal persecution on grounds of ethnic background, religion, political beliefs and other factors. Immigration advocates have tried to expand the definition to mean anyone who is unhappy about where he is living. Those involved in refugee resettlement have a strong financial incentive for their involvement. They receive federal funding, i.e., taxpayers’ money, for placing the “refugees” in U.S. communities. Then they pull out, and hand those communities the tab for the newcomers’ public services. Among the agencies involved in this questionable activity are Catholic Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
For immigration advocates, more immigration is the solution for every problem. For them the wellbeing of citizens is almost always a secondary concern.