The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“President Donald Trump should pay closer attention to his top aide. Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney delivered some words of wisdom about immigration during a recent trip to the United Kingdom.
“ ‘We are desperate—desperate—for more people,’ Mulvaney was recorded as saying at a private dinner. ‘We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.’ Mulvaney added that he was referring to immigrants coming in a ‘legal fashion.’
“Still, the plea for more people is right on point for a country with a tight job market, dropping fertility rates and retiring baby boomers.
“Once, Trump claimed to understand this, saying that he was only against illegal immigration.
“Then, pulled right by the awful Stephen Miller and an animal desire to pander to his base, he endorsed a bill placing major restrictions on legal immigration, including high-skilled workers, while his administration proceeded to make it harder and harder for talented, educated people to settle here legally.
“Then, in his 2019 State of the Union, Trump said he wanted ‘people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.’ . . .
“The nation’s economic growth and health of long-term entitlement programs demand population growth. Mulvaney should deliver his message directly to the president — if, that is, the president is capable of hearing truths he deems uncomfortable. – Mulvaney Is Right on Immigration, The Columbus Dispatch, Editorial, 3/1/20 [Link]
Fact Check on Quote Above: When Mulvaney said that “we” are desperate for more immigration, it is necessary to reflect on just who this “we” is. Most definitely it is not American workers, particularly those in lower income brackets, whose wages are suppressed by mass immigration. Not is this “we” the 11.5 million Americans who are: 1) officially unemployed, 2) unemployed people who are not counted as being jobless, and 3) workers with usually low-paying part-time jobs who can’t find full-time employment.
Casting further doubt on the false narrative that we face a shortage of workers is the fact that the economy is rapidly moving toward automation. Studies reveal that within the next decade or so, 40 percent or more of the jobs now being done by humans will be done by robots. That hardly looks like a future where we will have a labor shortage.
So who is Mulvaney’s “we?” It is the commercial interests that profiteer from cheap foreign labor at the expense of American working people. A study by Harvard economist George Borjas found that immigration, by suppressing wages, brings about an annual transfer of $500 million a year from American workers to business. It’s a policy of Robin Hood in reverse—rob from the poor and give to the rich.
This editorial is wrong to claim that we are starved for “talented and educated people.” One variation of this assertion is that we don’t have native-born Americans to provide enough workers for jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). One of many reasons to doubt this claim is that three-quarters Americans with degrees in STEM work at non-STEM jobs. U.S. companies prefer not to hire them because they can hire foreign workers with temporary visas for lower salaries.
Another error of this editorial is the notion that immigration is significantly lowering the average age of U.S. residents and will thereby contribute to the solvency of “long-term entitlement programs,” i.e., Social Security and Medicare. But data from the Census Bureau show that this age-lowering effect is not that great enough to have a substantial effect on those programs.
The editorialists clearly display raw bias when they refer to the “awful” Mr. Miller and “Trump’s animal desire to pander to his base.” What is so awful about Miller’s desire to reduce the highest sustained level of legal immigration in our nation’s history? And is it really “animalistic” for the president to put the national interest above the vested interests that enrich themselves from unending mass immigration?
Unfortunately, it seems that those interests have persuaded President Trump away from his prior commitment to protect American workers. Perhaps the president, maybe with the help of Mr. Miller, can see the light and again understand the desperate need for reasonable restraint of immigration.