LF: Two people have emigrated to the US for every new job since 2000, including at least 4.5 MILLION illegal immigrants, as Capitol Hill battle gathers steam

Title: Two people have emigrated to the US for every new job since 2000, including at least 4.5 MILLION illegal immigrants, as Capitol Hill battle gathers steam
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... Hill-battle-gathers-steam.html
Published: Feb 11, 2015
Author: David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor
Post Date: 2015-02-11 19:42:00 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 350

Two new immigrants have arrived in the United States for every new job created nationwide, during the years stretching from 2000 and 2014, according to government statistics.

The pressures on America's labor market could be extreme in coming years as wave after wave of immigrants – both legal and illegal – crowd into the U.S. and compete for increasingly scarce paying positions.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a center-right group that opposes expanding opportunities for illegal immigrants, compiled numbers that show the massive disparity between an influx of human capital and the employment opportunities availabe to them.

About 18 million people moved to the United States from other countries between 2000 and 2014. But only 9.3 million new jobs were created during that same period.

President Barack Obama met in the Oval Office of the White House on February 4 with illegal immigrants wh owere brought to the US as children; his 'Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals' (DACA) program, implemented without Congress, allows them to stay and receive work permits without fear of deportation

Protesters gathered last June near the Mexican Consulate in Austin, Texas represent a growing number of Americans who believe immigration overload is costing native-born Americans jobs

The total number of new immigrants since 2000 (2nd bar) and the net gain in working-age Americans who are in the country legally (4th bar) together dwarf the number of new jobs (1st bar)

Adding greater concern for Americans who are looking for work, the pool of eligible workers who were born in the U.S. is also expanding at a record pace.

The native-born population age 16 and older grew by 25.2 million in the same 15 years.

'There is no labor shortage,' CIS research director Dr. Steven Camorata writes in a brief report issued Wednesday.

'Despite this, Congress is considering proposals to increase legal immigration even further. ... Congress's disregard for the absorption capacity of the U.S. labor market has profound consequences for American workers.'

Republicans on Capitol Hill are already brandishing the report as new firepower in this week's slugfest over President Barack Obama's plan to mainstream millions of illegal immigrants and give them work permits.

The White House's plan is Exhibit A in a contentious squabble over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. immigration.

'The president's policies are systematically displacing Americans from the workforce,' Stephen Miller, spokesman for Sen. Jeff Sessions on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, told Daily Mail Online.

JOBS AMERICANS WON'T DO? Missing in the Center for Immigration Studies report is a sense of what kind of jobs new immigrants – including illegals – are taking in the US

Illegal immigrant entries in the US have trended up since the beginning of the century, adding millions more to their numbers since 2000

IMPACT: SInce 2006 the percentage of immigrants in the US who have jobs has been larger than the same percentage of native-born Americans

'A record influx of low-paid labor is holding pay down and making jobs harder to come by,' he added.

'Real weekly earnings are lower now than they were in 1979. The American wage-earner is on the losing end of a policy designed by and for the special interests.'

Sessions chairs the subcommittee and has emerged as one of the Senate's leading immigration hawks.

'We must be taking steps to curb the flow of unskilled labor,' Sessions said on Tuesday. 'and help families already living here – whether past immigrants or U.S.-born – find good jobs, good schools, and thriving communities.'

Varying estimates from the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center indicate that of the 18 million immigrants who entered the U.S. between 2000 and 2014, between 4.5 million and 6.0 million did so illegally.

One result, CIS said Wednesday, is that 'the number of working-age natives not in the labor force (neither working nor looking for work) increased by 13 million.'