In February 2018, foreign-born workers made their gains in the labour market over native-born American workers. Foreign-born workers, for example, enjoyed more than three times as much job growth as native-born Americans.
On a year-to-year comparison, native-born Americans did not increase their labour participation rate at all, while foreign-born workers saw a 1,22 percent increase in their labour participation rate.
Also, the number of foreign-born workers in the civilian labour force increased more than five times the number of new native-born American workers who are currently part of the labour force.
The latest BLS data reveals a half-year trend where immigrants have continuously enjoyed substantially higher levels of job growth over Americans. Since at least September 2018, immigrants have outpaced native-born Americans in job growth, sometimes seeing four times or more the job growth that Americans are experiencing.
In January 2019, immigrants boasted four times the job growth and four times the civilian labour force growth of American workers.
Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve Chairman, testified at a hearing before the Senate Immigration Subcommittee on April 30, 2009 at the behest of Chuck Schumer, the then-chairman of that subcommittee on the need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Greenspan pleaded for the need to drastically increase the number of immigrant H-1B visas to meet the demands of Microsoft’s Bill Gates. His prepared testimony included an outrageous assertion in which middle class workers were referred to as the “privileged elite”.
“Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.”
In other words, the solution to “wage inequality” according to Greenspan, was to destroy middle class wages.
Huge numbers of Americans are losing their jobs or face wage suppression because of immigration. The Wall Street Journal reported that employers who rely on foreign-worker permits are renewing their fight to lift limits on H-2B visas.
They claim that computer problems this year thwarted many applications and highlighted the need to raise the cap of foreigners working in the US.
Congress is being pushed by big business lobbies and open borders NGOs to expand the number of low-skilled workers entering the country every year, but experts say the national unemployment rate coupled with stagnant wages indicate the harm done by the H-2B visa to American workers.
Breitbart Texas reported that the “H-2B Workforce Coalition” is lobbying hard to expand the H-2B visa program, which would potentially allow 264 000 foreign workers into the US.
But the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) believe the influx of foreigners has discouraged older, unemployed American workers because of a weak job market, low wages and deteriorating working conditions.
Young Americans, who in the past easily qualified for low-skilled jobs, continue to have a high unemployment rate, according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. For those between the ages of 16 to 19-years-old, the unemployment is 13,7 percent, which is much higher than the national unemployment rate.
Lobbyists claim that there is a labour shortage in the US, but the EPI has found no evidence of such a shortage. In fact, wage data show that in the low-skilled job market there has been no growth because of too much immigration.
More than half a million jobs in the US have been taken by H-2B visa workers in the last five years, according to analysts.
