MARK MECKLER: Job Program for Americans: No Jobs For Illegal Aliens, Period

I am weary of hearing the trope that we need more illegal aliens because “Americans won’t work those jobs.” My bet is that most Americans share this sentiment as well.

Amidst a myriad of concerns about illegal immigration, one prominent worry among Americans is the potential adverse effects on the U.S. workforce. There is apprehension that undocumented migrants could potentially displace native-born workers, leading to job loss and further exacerbating the nation’s tax burden. The media and the left love to dismiss such considerations as fearful, xenophobic, and bigoted, arguing instead that alien workers fill a vital gap in the American workforce. But these concerns, nevertheless, are valid.

To argue that the American people refuse to work jobs that must alternatively be filled by undocumented workers is nothing less than a slanderous attack against the natives of this country. Americans will work these jobs… when the pay rates go to market rates and are not depressed by illegal-alien rates.

In 2016, the year that President Donald Trump took office, the Heritage Foundation published a study showing that, “other than small number of scientifically educated immigrants, immigration produces little or no overall economic gain for non-immigrants but may cause a substantial shift in income from workers to business and capital owners. Also, immigrants overall produce a fiscal deficit due to the very large inflow of legal and illegal immigrants with low education levels in recent decades.”

The argument, according to Heritage, contends that “a disproportionate inflow of immigrant laborers at a particular education or skill level will reduce the wage of workers in that group relative to others. For example, adult immigrants are almost four times as likely as non-immigrants to lack a high school diploma. This will result in persistently lower relative wages for less skilled workers, whether immigrant or not.”