“Protections from racism, like all civil rights, depend on a national border.”

Move Americans to front of the line

Reality Check: Nearly 60 million working-age Americans aren’t working, and all of the net job growth of the last five years has gone to immigrants. This is not a policy for the people.

You don’t have to review the entire 200-year history of immigration surges, employer bias, and the depression of Black wealth to be convinced of the moral arguments for a well-regulated immigration system. The collapsed Francis Scott Key bridge had barely touched the water before the cheap labor lobbyists started talking to the Biden administration about giving reconstruction companies millions of reasons not to hire Black Americans for the rebuild.

Workplace raids (few and far between as they are) demonstrate that illegal hiring is the preferred method of employers to bypass Black workers. Time and again, when companies lose their illegal workers, they hire Black Americans at higher wages. It isn’t a mystery why the border crisis has so many defenders. Cheap labor benefits the wealthy and powerful. But it comes with a cost.

Among the costs borne by the American public: decreased wage and employment rates for Black Americans, and increased incarceration.

“Protections from racism, like all civil rights, depend on a national border,” writes Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Second Class, “and on the compact a sovereign citizenry makes with its own government.”

Together, we are the citizen lobby holding our government to account. 

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Factsheet: Job Displacement

Professor Roger House of Emerson University asked 25 members of the Congressional Black Caucus if they support granting work permit benefits to inadmissible economic migrants and/or safeguards to ensure that American workers wouldn’t be displaced. He did not receive a response.

In his article for The Daily Beast, “How Mass Immigration Hurts Black Americans,” House writes:

“[I]t would be prudent to untangle the meaning of popular terms used by the press to describe the border dynamics. For example, most people on the border are permanent economic immigrants. As such, they are not “migrants” in the normal understanding of the word and should not be treated as such….

“….America’s history of favorable treatment for immigrants is a window on the status of race and labor in our culture. Black American workers have been diminished by pro-immigration policies ever since slave labor built the country into an economic powerhouse. For example, America used preferential land and labor enticements to recruit European immigrants in the mid-19th century….

“….cities like New York are receiving large allocations of federal infrastructure funds. The city’s construction industry employed 374,000 people in 2020—and 53 percent were immigrants. By contrast, the unemployment rate of Black male workers was higher than any other ethnic group….

“….The failure of authorities in such cities to prioritize their native underserved populations creates a dynamic of “taking from Peter to feed Paul” that is abhorrent.”

Explore More: Hiring Line Initiative; State and Local Initiative; Economic Challenges; Rewarding Bad Behavior.