One of the most unreported but obvious consequences of the selfish and profligate economic leadership provided by the current administration is that in an economy that does not grow jobs, immigrants by definition take jobs away from natives. After all immigrants tend (on average) to be more assertive, harder working and most importantly willing to do the same job for far less. The last time we had such poor economic management and high unemployment was during the Great Depression (of course it was only called "Great" in America) and immigration collapsed.
Here's
evidence from the economists at the Pew Center:
In the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Labor data by the Pew Hispanic Center.
As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrant workers fell 0.6 percentage points during this period (from 9.3% to 8.7%) while for native-born workers it rose 0.5 percentage points (from 9.2% to 9.7%).
For immigration to occur (and we need the new blood) the economy has to generate lots of jobs. And if the cost of each of those jobs is raised substantially by new mandates and regulations as has happened in Obama's dash to Social Democracy, that means there will be less of them. The result, I fear, is almost inevitably xenophobia and racism.
Somewhere Frederic Bastiat is smiling....
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