Since Americans have started waking up to the reality of our country’s illegal immigration problem, politicians, activists and cable news pundits have tried to quell the masses with slogans like “Immigration makes us stronger,” and “Illegal immigration is a victimless crime.” While these Orwellian messages may have worked in the past, they are failing hard now as people contrast them with their daily experiences and see a nation’s culture, opportunities and security slipping away.
If the last three-plus years have proven anything, it is that uncontrolled mass migration does not make us stronger and is most definitely not a victimless crime. Despite a dedicated corporate media reframing of the crisis, millions of U.S. citizens and legal residents have lost jobs, property, security and even their lives as a result of our ruling class’s agenda to import the world’s poverty problem here.
While stories of outrageous criminal activity by illegal aliens dominate the headlines in alternative media, far less attention is paid to the impact on Americans’ job prospects caused by adding roughly 10 million foreign nationals to the population in just a few years.
The problem was brought into focus recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report which showed that native-born Americans lost more than 1.3 million jobs over the last 12 months, while foreign-born workers gained more than 1.2 million jobs.
Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on December 07, 2023, in Lukeville, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
This comes as the Biden administration touts modest overall positive job growth while ignoring the glaring distinction in the labor report. No alarm bells went off, no members of the administration vowed to address it. The data confirms what many people have suspected: this White House and many of our other elected leaders strongly prioritize the interests of illegal aliens over American citizens.
It does not require a doctorate in economics to see how runaway illegal immigration hurts U.S. workers. When the pool of laborers is smaller, employers must compete for workers and wages rise. When the labor pool is flooded with cheap foreign labor, the cost of labor goes down and employers can pay their workers less. Unscrupulous employers are also more likely to hire illegal laborers and exploit them.
It is not just a case of politicians looking the other way at the problem; they are actively taking actions to worsen the situation in the name of pandering to a potential new voting bloc. New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul earlier this year announced that her statewould allowillegal aliens to obtain government jobs, becoming the first in the nation to do so.
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To facilitate this, Hochul is relaxing the typical requirements that jobseekers must meet to become eligible for these jobs, including proficiency in English and possession of a high school diploma. A similar effort is under way in Denver, where government jobs arebeing eliminatedfor Americans as the city seeks to hire illegal aliens in brazen violation of federal law.
VideoThese policies also result in huge amounts of U.S. dollars leaving the country. A 2019 study found that both legal and illegal aliens send, on average, $150 billion a year inuntaxed remittancesback to their home countries. This is a major part of the economic incentive of illegal immigration, since American wages will go much farther in these aliens’ home countries than they do in the United States.
The real goal of anti-borders politicians pushing work authorizations for illegal aliens is amnesty. By allowing illegal aliens to hold American jobs, they are ultimately setting the stage for legalization even if the aliens’ asylum claims are denied.
These leaders will argue that it would be heartless to deport aliens who have worked in the United States and become part of their communities. Nowhere in this calculus is the impact on U.S. citizens as more competition for jobs arrives across the border daily.
The U.S. economy was ravaged from the COVID-19 pandemic, as many small business owners closed their doors and millions of employees were left jobless. As our country still fights to regain lost prosperity, the last thing we need is an unrelenting flow of cheap foreign labor that creates more job competition, drives down wages and ships U.S. currency overseas.
This may serve the interests of big business and Wall Street, but it is poison to American families. Until elected leaders begin prioritizing our citizens’ interests, we will continue to witness America’s slow, steady decline.
Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of illegal migration. He is also co-host of the group’s “No Border, No Country” podcast.
