Federal Report Confirms More than 20 Million Work Authorized Immigrants Added to Labor Force since 2000

By Joe Guzzardi
May 23, 2014

Americans wondering why they can’t find a job, why they’re stuck in part-time, low-paying work or what their children’s employment prospects may be down the road now know the answer. According to a Congressional Research Service report, between 2000 and 2013 the federal government issued nearly 10 million temporary work permits to foreign-born nationals. Contrary to the popular misconception that most temporary visas go to farm labor, agricultural workers received only about 6.5 percent or 650,000 of them.

The “temporary” tag is grossly misleading. More than 3 million university-trained overseas workers received employment authorization in the professional sector—in other words, the federal government approved them to work in high paying jobs like medicine, accounting, and management. Including visas given to spouses and children, the total number of visas issued over 13 years is a staggering 12.5 million. Some spouses work; children qualify for free, taxpayer funded education.  In his investigative journalism story that reported on the CRS analysis, the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro wrote that the average 1.2 million annual influx of visa holders compete directly with the 800,000 Americans who graduate each year with professional degrees.

When about 13 million legal permanent and immediately work authorized immigrants who entered during the same period are added to the 10 million guest workers, little wonder that Americans have and will continue to struggle to find gainful employment.  They’ve been displaced, in large part, by foreign-born workers.

For Americans who have been hearing for decades that the nation faces an acute labor shortage, the CRS statistics may come as a surprise. Since last year when the Senate began its determined effort to pass a bill that would more than double legal immigration and further undermine American workers, all types of businesses have testified before Congress that they need more immigration. 

Recently, for example, the National Association of Manufacturers Chief Executive Officer Jay Timmons said that his members are desperately trying to fill 600,000 jobs and will need more immigration to do it. But the facts don’t support Timmons or his allied mouthpieces like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Mark Zuckerberg. 

At job fairs throughout the country, thousands show up hoping to land one of the few available positions. The U-6 unemployment rate that includes people who have given up looking for jobs or are working part-time but want full-time is 12.3 percent. Through April, 6.2 million workers are missing from the labor market.

Worse, the long-term unemployment rate is between 2.9 and 4.3 times higher today for all age, education, occupation, industry, gender, and racial and ethnic groups than it was before the recession began six years ago. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that nearly 8 million jobs are needed to dig out of the recession’s deep hole, that full employment is “years away,” and that three of five job seekers are turned away. Of the 50 United States, only North Dakota creates enough jobs to keep up with population growth alone.

The explanation for Congress’s refusal to stand up for American workers and develop a sensible immigration policy that would protect citizens is depressingly familiar. The Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency and accountability organization that studied 8,000 lobbying reports found that between 2008 and 2012, advocates for more immigration spent $1.5 billion.

The huge sums backing open borders and loose labor markets represent a huge challenge to patriotic Americans. Some comfort can be taken in the knowledge that the billions spent to flood the U.S. with cheap labor has neither succeeded nor convinced Americans that immigration is the solution to the nation’s economic woes. But the battle to convince Congress is constant and always uphill.

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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].