Does the U.S. Labor Market Really “Need” Immigrants?

Steven A. Camarota; Oren Cass

By Steven A. Camarota and Oren Cass on August 3, 2023

Listen to "Does the U.S. Labor Market Really “Need” Immigrants?" on Spreaker.

Summary

Permissive legal and illegal immigration policies have been shown to hurt the working class in America the most. Yet, the media and corporate America often repeat the myth that there are certain jobs Americans won’t do, and that the U.S. is experiencing a labor shortage. They conclude, therefore, that we need immigrants to fill these gaps, which are predominantly in less-skilled fields.

On this episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass and author of The Once and Future Worker, joins guest host Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research, to debunk these myths about the need for immigrants to enter the U.S. labor force. In reality, giving employers access to immigrant labor (both legal and illegal) suppresses wages and removes the incentive for employers to improve working conditions for Americans.

Cass and Camarota discuss the difference in how policymakers and business leaders approach less-skilled labor versus more-skilled, due in large part to an addiction to cheap consumption. Current visa programs benefit consumers and employers with lower prices while hurting the American worker, and Cass notes that very low unemployment rates and rising wages are identified as a problem only when the working class experience them.

Cass argues that our government should take steps to reduce illegal immigration and the best way to do this is to make it costly for employers to employ those not authorized to work. Illegal immigrants compete with the most vulnerable Americans and depress wages. The two experts agree that E-Verify, an internet-based system that allows an employer to determine a new hire’s eligibility to work, is a key tool for influencing employers.

In discussing legal immigration, Cass prefers the number of legal immigrants admitted to our country yearly remain the same, but he contends that the types of legal immigrants we are accepting should change – high-skilled, high-earning immigrants should be emphasized, as they will in turn create better employment opportunities for working-class Americans.

Camarota and Cass close out the podcast with a discussion on the importance of training Americans for these higher-skilled jobs as opposed to expanding the labor supply by importing high-skilled immigrants.