Plunder and Deceit (11 page)

Thus, statist immigration policies centered on endless waves of legal and illegal immigration have contributed significantly to the income deterioration of low-income American earners and the “inequality gap” between rich and poor, which the statists claim to abhor.

Although it is also repeatedly alleged that America must open immigration further to accommodate increased numbers of high-skilled and high-tech workers because the country is supposedly failing to produce enough homegrown college graduates with science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) skills to fill the demands of the fast-paced market, this, too, is false. Despite America's mediocre education system, the evidence demonstrates that enough college students in the STEM disciplines are graduating to fill the market's demand. A thorough analysis by scholars Hal Salzman, Daniel Kuehn, and B. Lindsay Lowell from the Economic Policy Institute found that “for every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job.”
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The report further states that “of the computer science graduates not entering the [information technology] workforce, 32 percent say it is because IT jobs are unavailable, and 53 percent say they found better job opportunities outside of IT occupations.”
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The three scholars conclude this indicates “that the supply of graduates (in STEM related fields) is substantially larger than the demand for them in industry.”
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Indeed, while demanding that the federal government substantially increase the number of high-skilled and high-tech immigrants in the country, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, American Express, Procter and Gamble, T-Mobile, and Microsoft recently slashed tens of thousands of employees.
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The Census Bureau reports that “74 percent of those who have a bachelor's degree in science, technology, engineering and math—commonly referred to as STEM—are not employed in STEM occupations.”
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Furthermore, in the STEM-related industries “wages have remained flat” and are “hovering around their late 1990's levels.”
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That means the salaries of professionals in these fields have not increased in the last sixteen years. While salaries have not increased, “the flow of guestworkers has increased over the past decade and continues to rise.”
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“The annual inflows of guestworkers amount to one-third to one-half the number of all new IT job holders.”
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Salzman, Kuehn, and Lowell conclude that “Immigration policies that facilitate large flows of guestworkers will supply labor at wages that are too low to induce significant increases in supply from the domestic workforce.”
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Consequently, immigration policies designed to increase the number of high-tech workers ensure that wages are kept lower than they otherwise might be.

At the other end of the formal education spectrum, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that high school dropouts “face a much higher unemployment rate than the national average.” In 2012–13, dropouts had an unemployment rate of 27.9 percent.
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The Foundation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that dropouts have been identified as the group “who face competition for jobs most directly from illegal aliens.”
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The number of unemployed citizens “without a high school diploma increased by 18.7 percent while the number of unemployed foreign-born persons decreased by 24.8 percent.”
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Despite the supposed economic recovery “following the Great Recession, employers continued to favor illegal alien labor despite millions of less-educated Americans who were unemployed.”
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Clearly, current immigration policies and trends are devastating to America's younger people and future generations.

Andrew Sum and Ishwar Khatiwada, scholars with the Center for Labor Market Statistics at Northeastern University, explain that employment as a teen and young adult is particularly important and has a “wide array of private and social economic and educational benefits.”
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High unemployment among these younger people (like high unemployment generally) “reduces the volume of labor inputs into the production process and the level of real output of the U.S. economy.”
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Without a job, younger people lose the opportunity to gain experience and become more valuable for higher-skilled jobs, which they may seek in the future. In fact, the earnings of teens and younger adults are “used to generate additional consumption expenditures on goods and services, thereby raising aggregate demand throughout the economy and the level of employment of other adult workers.”
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In addition, employment at a young age discourages dropping out of high school. “[A] number of studies of the in high school work experiences of teens have found that youth with some in-school employment experience, especially Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged youths, are less likely to drop out of high school than their peers who do not work during their high school years.”
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Working at a younger age also benefits those who do not continue their education by attending college. Those who work in high school, “especially those who do not go on to enroll in four year colleges and universities, obtain a smoother transition into the labor market in the first few years after graduation from high school, avoiding problems of long-term idleness.”
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“[T]hose who learn new skills on their jobs, obtain significantly higher hourly earnings on their jobs in the first few years following graduation.” In the long term, these individuals “will secure significantly higher annual earning eight to ten years after graduation than their peers who did not work during high school.”
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Sum and Khatiwada found that youth employment is linked to lower rates of teen pregnancy and reductions in crime, particularly among young men. Simply put, “high rates of idleness among men reduce their work experience and their future earnings potential, thus making criminal activity more attractive.”
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Joblessness and underemployment among younger people have also changed the family dynamic, making it more difficult for young adults to leave home. For example, Pew Research reports that from 1968 to 2007 the percentage “of young adults living in their parents' home was relatively constant [at about 32 percent].”
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By 2012, 36 percent of those between the ages of eighteen and thirty-one lived in their parents' home.
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This “is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase.”
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Hence, 21.6 million young adults are now living with their parents (up from 18.5 million in 2007).
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More broadly, the overall employment trend for citizens is troublesome. CIS shows that 5.7 million more immigrants between the ages of 16 and 65 were working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000. Conversely, 127,000 fewer native-born citizens were working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000. This is particularly jarring in that during the same period, the total number of native-born citizens between the ages of 16 and 65 increased by more than 16.8 million. Furthermore, from 2000 to 2014, the population of working-age (16–65) individuals grew by 25.7 million (14 percent). Employment, however, only grew by 4 percent. Incredibly, while native-born citizens accounted for 66 percent of the total population growth from 2000 to 2014, immigrants have accounted for 100 percent of employment growth.
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Therefore, the working-age population in America is growing faster than jobs are being created, and the increasing supply of immigrants makes finding employment far more difficult.

These statistics reflect the larger trend of fewer total native-born workers in the United States. In 2000, there were approximately 41 million native-born, working-age Americans (those between ages 16 and 65) who were not working. By 2007, that number had risen to 48.2 million. In 2014, the number rose to 58 million.
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Seventeen million fewer native-born Americans are working today than were working fourteen years ago. The labor force participation rate of 62.9 percent (July of 2014) is lower than any time since 1979.
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This means that only 62.9 percent, or less than two-thirds of the population, is working.

By all measures, it is more difficult for all citizens, but especially younger people, to find work today than at any time in the last twenty years. Overall job prospects for younger people (in this case, individuals born between 1980 and 2000) are dreadful. In October 2013, FAIR disclosed that half of all unemployed workers were younger people (those between the ages of 16 and 34).
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The BLS reports that the labor participation rate for younger people between the ages of 16 and 19 in 2012 was 34.3 percent. In 2002, labor participation for civilians in this age cohort was 47.4 percent.
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The BLS predicts that by 2022, only 27.3 percent of civilians between the ages of 16 and 19 will be working.
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The labor participation rate for individuals between the ages of 20 and 24 was 70.9 percent in 2012. In 2002, the labor participation rate for civilians in this age group was 76.4 percent; by 2022, the labor participation rate for civilians between these ages will drop to 67.3 percent.
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Pew Research reveals that in 2012, 63 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 31 had jobs, but this is down from 70 percent of “same-aged counterparts who had jobs in 2007.”
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In addition to depressing job prospects and wages for American citizens, particularly the rising generation, unconstrained immigration is a major drain on the immense and already broke welfare state. Dr. Milton Friedman, who was sympathetic to open-ended immigration, was also intellectually honest about its impracticability given the federal government's massive welfare and entitlement programs. As he explained: “[I]t is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.”
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Moreover, as Dr. Huntington observed, there is a pronounced “erosion of the differences between citizens and aliens . . . [which] suggest the central importance of material government benefits for immigrant decisions. Immigrants become citizens not because they are attracted to America's culture and creed, but because they are attracted by government social welfare and affirmative action programs. If these are available to noncitizens, the incentive for citizenship fades.”
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Of course, there are exceptions, including those escaping persecution and tyranny, but increasingly immigrants are drawn to America's social welfare benefits, which the federal government encourages.

The Heritage Foundation's findings underscore the problem. It reports that “On average, unlawful immigrant households received $24,721 per household in government benefits and services in FY 2010. This figure includes direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services received by the household but excludes the cost of public goods, interest on the government debt, and other payments for prior government functions. By contrast, unlawful immigrant households on average paid only $10,334 in taxes. Thus, unlawful immigrant households received $2.40 in benefits and services for each dollar paid in taxes.”
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“All unlawful immigrant households together [in 2010] received $93.7 billion per year in government benefits and services and paid $39.2 billion, yielding an aggregate annual deficit of $54.5 billion.”
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Under Obama's recent unconstitutional executive amnesty, the CBO concluded that should it be implemented, between 2 million and 2.5 million illegal immigrants will “have received approval for deferred action” by 2017. Therefore, many will become eligible for Social Security, Medicare, and the earned income tax credit. “Those who are approved for deferred action are considered lawfully present in the country but do not gain legal status. However, they can, and most do, receive authorization to work. Because they are deemed lawfully present during the period of their deferred status, they are eligible to receive Medicare and Social Security benefits if they meet the programs' requirements.”
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Those granted deferred status and work permits are also eligible for the earned income tax credit.
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Therefore, the drain on already hemorrhaging federal entitlements and programs is further exacerbated.

The worst of the statists and their surrogates seek political opportunism and racial balkanization as a means to holding or acquiring governing power.
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And they are intent on accomplishing these ends through mostly unlawful and unconstitutional means, such as Obama's executive and administrative fiats. Even now, with the expectation that a substantial percentage of newly naturalized aliens would vote for the Democratic Party's 2016 nominee for president, the Department of Homeland Security's Task Force on New Americans is reportedly focusing resources on urging 9 million green card holders (aliens and noncitizens) to become naturalized American citizens as quickly as possible, in hopes of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
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Others perpetuate the myths and outright deceptions about the economic and societal benefits of unrelenting, unassimilated waves of immigration. These are among the forces that are driving the immigration agenda. And they are succeeding. After analyzing current census data, CIS reports that legal and illegal immigration will reach an astounding 51 million in the next eight years, which represents 82 percent of the population growth in America, meaning that the immigrant population is growing four times faster than the native-born population. The Census Bureau projects the 2023 total immigrant population will reach 14.8 percent, the highest level ever reported.
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