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We
need a groundswell of citizens asking politicians, pundits, and media
about the numerical levels of immigration. But how many know the
numbers?
The
story is one-stop shopping for basic immigration statistics. The
statistics here are not in dispute, but because the mainstream media
avoids the subject of numerical immigration limits, few people in the
U.S. are aware of the current scale of legal immigration.
If
some of these statistics were widely known, we could change the way
people -- and especially politicians -- discuss immigration policy. For
instance legal immigration has a greater numerical impact on American workers than illegal immigration
The
overwhelming majority of immigration to the United States is the result
of our visa policies....The lion's share of these visas are for
lesser-skilled and lower-paid workers and their dependents who, because
they are here on work-authorized visas, are added directly to the same
labor pool occupied by current unemployed jobseekers.
Politicians who only talk about the border are dancing around the issue (and often want to further expand immigration):
Improved
border security would have no effect on the continued arrival of these
foreign workers, refugees, and permanent immigrants -- because they are
all invited here by the federal government.
Here's a statistic that everyone should know:
Department
of Homeland Security statistics show that the U.S. issued 5.25 million
green cards in the last five years, for an average of 1.05 million new
legal permanent immigrants annually.
To put those numbers in historical context:
The
post-World War II boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s averaged together
less than 3 million green cards per decade -- or about 285,000
annually....
...These lower midcentury immigration levels were
the product of a federal policy change: after the last period of
large-scale immigration that had begun in roughly 1880, immigration
rates were lowered to reduce admissions....
...Legislation enacted in 1965, among other factors, substantially increased low-skilled immigration.
Why should we care?
During
the low-immigration period from 1948-1973, real median compensation for
U.S. workers increased more than 90 percent. By contrast, real average
hourly wages were lower in 2014 than they were in 1973, four decades
earlier.
How is Congress working to change the numbers today?
...the
immigration "reform" considered by Congress most recently -- the 2013
Senate "Gang of Eight" comprehensive immigration bill -- would have
tripled the number of green cards issued over the next 10 years. Instead
of issuing 10 million green cards, the Gang of Eight proposal would
have issued at least 30 million green cards during the next decade (or
more than 11 times the population of the City of Chicago).
The media won't ask politicians about their desire to increase the numbers. We have to. Read the full story and share these statistics wherever you can (see NumbersUSA tweets here, here, and here. Ask others where they think the numbers should be. |
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