WE DO HAVE ENOUGH WORKERS AND DO NOT NEED MORE IMMIGRANTS!

Submitted by: Larry Jordan

Three Cheers for a Tight Labor Market Let's not screw it up by importing more foreign workers Washington, D.C. (May 25, 2018) - Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, addresses the tight labor markets impact on less-skilled workers in an article today at National Review. Rejecting businesses’ claims that the U.S. does not have sufficient potential workers, Krikorian argues “the most powerful way to pull people into jobs is to make the jobs more attractive. And the key to that is keeping the labor market tight by not increasing immigration – or even better, stepping up worksite enforcement and cutting back on guestworker programs.” Krikorian cites the recent work of the Center's director of research, Steven Camarota, which shows that in the first quarter of this year there were more than 50 million working-age people in the U.S. who were not even in the labor force. The best social policy to help this population is a tight labor market. “America wins when employers have to exert themselves to recruit and retain workers. The result is higher wages for less-skilled workers and more people drawn into the productive world of work.” View full article at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/tight-labor-market-good-for-american-workers-best-social-policy/ The article highlights some of the positive fallout of the tight labor market: A freight railroad is addressing its staffing issues by offering "signing bonuses up to $25,000 for hourly workers, including electricians, boilermakers and pipefitters." A Denver firm "has removed requirements, such as a bachelor’s degree and a decade of experience, from some job descriptions to tap new pools of workers." A trade publication reports that "[t]he increases in pay appear to be attracting more people with prior construction experience back into the workforce." An electrical firm in Virginia "is scouring high schools, jails and refugee processing centers for trainees." Employers are taking chances on prisoners and ex-cons. Teenagers are being snapped up. The disability rolls are shrinking. Instead of the signing bonuses and prison work-release we see resulting from a tight domestic labor market, the "market-driven" work-visa system favored by business lobbyists would result in staffing firms flying in planeloads of guestworkers to ensure that wages did not rise. Unfortunately, rather than touting the positive impact of a tight labor market resulting in part from President Trump's immigration policies, the administration has signaled that it will actually increase the importation of foreign workers by raising the cap on H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers. Also, the administration is no longer talking about an E-Verify mandate, which would decrease the competition of illegal immigrants in the workplace. As a consequence, Krikorian suggests renaming Trump's executive order: "Buy American, Hire Foreign". Visit Website Further Reading:  The Employment Situation of Immigrants and Natives in the First Quarter of 2018 What Would Less Immigration Look Like? No Evidence of Labor Shortage in H-2B Occupations Should We Be Importing More Farm Workers?