The common mantra from those supportive of the tidal wave of illegal immigration unleashed by President Joe Biden is that those migrants just come to America for a better life.
If that’s true, most of them are not working for it.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports strict enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, reported on Monday that only 46% of immigrants who came to America in the past two years have jobs.
The employment figure was part of a broader report on Biden’s immigration chaos.
The main headline of the report noted that America’s foreign-born, or immigrant, population, for both legals and illegals, hit new record highs in March 2024. Now, almost 52 million people living in the U.S. were born elsewhere, equal to 15.6% of the total population.
“Since March 2022, the foreign-born population has increased 5.1 million, the largest two-year increase in American history. The foreign-born population has never grown this much this fast,” the report by CIS’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler stated.
The study also revealed that since Biden took office in January 2021, the foreign-born population has spiked by 6.6 million in just 39 months, with at least 58% of the jump attributable to illegal immigration. The group estimates that the illegal population is now more than 14 million.
Regarding employment, the authors were sympathetic to the plight of new arrivals.
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“There is an unfortunate tendency to see immigrants solely as workers rather than as the full human beings that they are,” they wrote. “Adapting to life in a new country is never easy. It is unreasonable to expect that all or even most new immigrants will find jobs right away, even if they are of working age.”
However, while many of Biden’s immigrant population “do work,” they added, “others are unable or do not wish to work.”
Over the past two years, “Many new immigrants are children, elderly, disabled, caregivers, or others with no ability or interest in working. Immigration clearly adds workers to the country, but it just as clearly adds non-workers who need to be supported by the labor of others<” the report stated.
“This was the case in the past, it is true today, and it will surely be the case for immigrants who arrive in the future. Those who simply see immigration as a source of labor need to understand it is also a source of school children, retirees, and many other non-workers.”
The authors also noted that the unemployment rate of “new arrivals” is about 8.5%. “This is higher than for the U.S.-born or for immigrants overall, but it is not very different from the rate for newcomers over the last three decades,” they added.
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However, the question is, what happens if current trends are not reversed?
“The current scale of immigration (legal and illegal) into the United States is without any precedent in the nation’s history,” the report noted. “If the trends since President Biden took office continue, the foreign-born population would reach 62.5 million in 2030 and 82.2 million by 2040 — larger than the current combined populations of 30 states plus the District of Columbia.”
“Perhaps the most fundamental question these numbers raise is whether America can successfully incorporate and assimilate all the immigrants already here, let alone millions more in the future,” the authors wrote.
“Immigrants are not simply workers, they are human beings, and, as such, a large share of newcomers are children, elderly, disabled, caregivers, or others who cannot or who do not wish to work. Immigration clearly adds workers to the country but also adds non-workers who need to be supported by the labor of others. This is a reminder that policy-makers need to think about immigration’s broad impact on American society, not merely its usefulness to employers.”
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