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Feds Piling On US Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

The establishment media has mostly ignored one of the most devastating, avoidable developments in modern U.S. economic history. Since 2019, according to federal data, almost all job growth has gone to legal and illegal immigrants. The government’s Household Survey shows that there were only 971,000 more U.S.-born employees in May 2024 compared to pre-pandemic May 2019, while the number of employed immigrants during the same period increased by 3.2 million. Adding to working families’ pain, most of the jobs created in recent months are part-time, offer no health, no 401k, and no paid vacation benefits. Retail prices are at an all-time peak, and real wages are declining, a devastating one-two punch. Part-time workers are subject to immediate layoffs, their jobs offer few protections. For the marginally employed, marketplace conditions are tough. The news that Americans have been largely displaced by foreign nationals should be a clarion call for reforms to bring U.S. workers back to their proper place atop the employment queue. Instead, the major force that suppresses American workers—namely, the federal government —keeps piling on.

The obvious culprit that pushes American workers to the sidelines are the millions of illegal aliens that have surged the border and, in some cases, received parole from the Biden administration. Parole, as defined in immigration law, allows individuals to enter the U.S. temporarily to provide “significant public benefit,” requirements that the White House routinely ignores. Illegal immigrants who don’t receive work authorization often enter the underground economy, or the so called under-the-table or off-the-books economy. Estimates vary widely, but some put the underground economy between 6.4% and 12% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In the second quarter of 2024, U.S. GDP was estimated at $28.06 trillion, which would put the underground economy somewhere between $1.8 trillion and $3.4 trillion.

Not only is the federal government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security, allowing millions of employment-aged males to enter the interior, but an agency with DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has moved aggressively to assure that illegal aliens can still get jobs. Last year, USCIS extended the valid period for some non-citizens from two years to five years. USCIS’ generosity extends even to illegal aliens in deportation proceedings. The complete list of five-year work authorized aliens: refugees, non-citizens paroled as refugees, asylees, asylee applicants, recipients of withholding of removal, applicants for adjustment of status, and applicants for suspension of deportation or cancellation of removal. Amazing but true; being in deportation proceedings is not a deterrent to qualifying for employment.

Beginning in October 2023 and continuing through July 2024, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended for 18-month periods Temporary Protected Status that includes work permission for the following nations, some hostile to the U.S.: Syria, Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Yemen and Somalia. Other countries whose TPS is still current but that will assuredly get renewals when their authorizations expire are Afghanistan, Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and Venezuela. Most of the work permits extend into 2025 so the percentage of foreign-born in the labor market will remain high for, at a minimum, more than a year. Another danger looms for prospective U.S. workers that could further depress their job prospects. Governors and mayors from the approximately 300 sanctuary states and cities are lobbying the federal government to issue work permits to the illegal aliens that have overwhelmed them. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has partnered with employers to find asylum seekers jobs, a generous gesture she never made to unemployed citizens.

These recently arrived illegal immigrants are shutting out of the job market a key sector; specifically, young men without a college degree. The decades-long decline in U.S.-born men’s labor force participation emphasizes the problem. Today, the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born men without a bachelor’s degree, ages 18 to 64, is 75.6%. — still below the fourth quarter of 2019’s 76.3% rate. And both those percentages are far below the 2006 and 2000 rates, 80.6% and 82.6%, respectively. Back in the 1960s, an era before unchecked immigration, 90% of prime employment aged men were in the labor force. Adopting policies like mass immigration that prevent young U.S. workers from employment is national suicide, a path that the Biden administration is determined to follow even in the waning days of his presidency.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Feds Piling On US Workers Feds Piling On US Workers