Despite 92 Million Americans Missing from Labor Force, Business Demand More Overseas Labor

By Joe Guzzardi
October 14, 2014

Immigration is back and in big numbers. Not that immigration ever went away, but a Wall Street Journal story last week carried this headline: “Waves of Immigrants to the U.S. Resurges.” The Journal preached the same familiar sermon that the strengthening economy is luring immigrants, many of them illegal, to the U.S. for scarce jobs. Asians are arriving in record numbers, and after a brief slowdown, Hispanics have resumed their pattern of coming north. According to the Census Bureau, the number of foreign-born people who entered last year was 523,000 which pushed the total immigrant population in the U.S. to 41.3 million.

Demand among U.S. employers for so called skilled foreign workers has also rebounded. Businesses reached the federally mandated cap on H-1B visas in less than a week this year as opposed to 2012 when it took three months and 2011 when eight months passed before the 65,000 slots were filled. The construction industry was singled out as an example where foreign-born workers have surged. Cristina Tzintan, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project which advocates for low-wage workers, said she’s seen a “real rise” in Hispanic immigrants.

While immigration may be back, it’s not a cause for celebration—at least as far as American workers are concerned. More than 92 million Americans including 56 million women over age 16 are out of labor force. The arrival of millions of additional job seekers hurts their already slim chances of finding gainful employment. One Guatemalan worker featured in the Journal article held two jobs, both in retail and either of which an American would do.

On the other hand, the availability of more cheap labor is happy news for employers. The mostly suppressed truth about the American job market argues for less immigration. To begin with, about one million work authorized legal immigrants enter the U.S. each year and the federal government issues more than 750,000 guest worker permits annually. Since 1990, 6 million H-1B visas have been approved. As a result of having the world’s most generous immigration policy, since 2000 all the nation’s job gains have, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, gone to immigrants.

Americans losing ground in the job market to immigrants reflects the broad picture. A closer look at the U.S. labor pool exposes even more troubling data. A Pew Hispanic Center report found that about 8 million aliens hold non-farm jobs. Other reports showed that 20 percent of American workers have been laid off in the last five years; 22 percent of them still haven’t been re-employed. Almost half of those who have been hired earn less than they did before being fired. The shrinking American middle class has suffered through wage stagnation for 40 years and is 20 percent poorer than it was in 1984. Looking ahead, a Harvard University analysis warned unemployed Americans to anticipate falling wages, more part-time jobs and firms that prefer robots over people.

In spite of an increasingly glum labor picture, an openly defiant President Obama has promised Hispanic and Chamber of Commerce lobbyists that after the mid-term election he will give lawful status and work authorization permits to at least 5 million illegal immigrants.

Should Obama act, it would be a direct blow to the future of millions of already struggling Americans.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been syndicated since 1987. Contact him at [email protected]