The Quote Below—More Misinformation form the Media
“This border crisis has come to dominate media coverage and political debate about immigration in America. All the while, another crisis of the opposite sort is brewing: a broader decline in immigration. The resulting shortfall in the population is already making it harder for companies to find workers and threatens to do more damage to the economy. But whereas unauthorised border crossings are a perennial controversy, the drop in overall immigration has barely registered in Congress. . . .
“The shortfall is visible in the labour market. Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour of the University of California, Davis, estimate that by February America was missing roughly 1.8m working-age foreign migrants relative to its post-2010 trend (see chart). Industries with higher shares of migrant workers tend to have higher vacancy rates now. Strikingly, that is true across the skills spectrum. . . .
“The fact that a decline in immigration could have such an impact is, on the one hand, unsurprising. New immigrants accounted for nearly 70% of the growth in the American labour force in the 2010s. Over the next two decades, immigrants are likely to be the only source of growth. The Pew Research Centre calculates that without new arrivals America’s labour force would decline to 163m in 2040 from 166m in 2020. If net immigration were to return to pre-pandemic levels, the labour force would instead grow to 178m by 2040. . . .
“Some delays are absurd. David Bier of the Cato Institute, a think-tank, estimates that Indians with degrees face a notional 90-year wait for green cards. From farm groups to theme-park associations, lobbyists have been asking the government to make it easier for American firms to hire from abroad. Silicon Valley’s tech giants have long clamoured for the same, arguing that they need foreign tech talent to stay at the global leading edge.
“There is, however, little prospect of real change. The last concerted attempt at comprehensive immigration reform fizzled out in 2013, blocked by Republicans. The idea then, still seen by many advocates as the holy grail, was to combine greater openings for foreigners to work in America with some legalisation of unauthorised migrants plus tighter border security. . . .” – A Shortfall in Immigration Has Become an Economic Problem for America, The Economist, 7/28/22 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: The Economist, a British publication, is a notorious mouthpiece for economic globalism and its agenda of cheap labor through immigration. In this article it repeats the tired old mantra of mass immigration chicken littles: We are facing a labor shortage (one that never ends), and the economic sky will fall if we don’t flood our labor markets with foreigners. This hysteria ignores some important facts. A labor shortage is not a bad thing for workers because it forces employers to pay them higher wages. Immigration keeps wages low while increasing profits for business. In effect, immigration enriches rich people at the expense of the poor.
Many American workers, particularly those with limited skills, are so demoralized by low wages that they drop out of the workforce completely. In 2008, 86.4 percent of American men between the ages of 16 and 64 were employed. This year the figure is 82.5 percent, which signifies a loss of four million working men—who are not included in the official unemployment figure. If employers want more workers to fill jobs, they might look to these fellow Americans and try to entice them back into the workforce with improved wages and working conditions.
Another reason not to worry so much about “labor shortages” is today’s increasing pace of automation. Within a decade or so, computers and other machines may be doing as many as 40 percent of the jobs now done by people.
This article repeats the tiresome claim that companies can’t find enough Americans to fill job openings in technology. That’s despite the fact that two-thirds of U.S.-born college graduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) have had to find employment in other fields. The companies prefer foreigners because they can get away with paying them less than U.S. natives.
The labor shortage sky isn’t falling. But opportunities and wages for American workers continue to fall as mass immigration proceeds.