If Trump tries to fix this, he won't have a friend left in DC.
US Chamber of Commerce is the root of the problem.
Link?
Lets say that many of us can agree that the best and the brightest are good for the economy. And they strengthen our nation. So when we can attract the best and the brightest from foreign nations its in our best interest to let them in.
However, lets look at the other end of the economic ladder. It may not be so good to bring in those who are not skilled, not educated, and don’t wish to assimilate. I wonder how much the black population and to some extent the white population have been held back by massive numbers of Mexicans. And its not true that Mexicans are not a great people. They are. By most accounts they are hard working, generally civilized cultured. But is there not a limit? Or a cost?
Economics will tell you that when you create scarcity you create cost. Or in this case we call them wages. The reason a college educated engineer gets paid more than a McDonald’s worker is the scarcity of college educated engineers. Right now only 24% of the population has a college degree and fewer than 10% of those have engineering degrees.
But economics is not in play when a 100 million low skilled workers are able to flow across the boarder unchecked. Those people on the left who are so interested in income equality should look to themselves and their policies for the cause of that income inequality. Why can’t the left see the folly of their politics.
A cousin of mine who is a small contractor and developer in the Atlanta area says that he would be out of business without his crews of Mexican and Central American illegals. A friend who owns and runs a large ornamental landscape plant grower says the same thing.
These days, unemployed college kids often tend to scorn hard manual labor, insisting on easier indoor work even when it pays less. Those who in former times would be the basis for a flow of trained and work eager blue collar laborers developed by high school vocational ed programs now tend to be idle, have active drug habits, or serious criminal records and inclinations.
No small part of the harm of mass illegal immigration is that it has undermined the work readiness of a large segment of the American citizenry. And with the decline of vocational ed in high school, the damage has become institutional as well as generational and cultural.
Higher wages will help to redress the problem. Wages will rise if the border is closed, illegals deported, E-verify required, and legal citizenship requirements enforced in the workplace. The relative scarcity of good skilled labor will nevertheless pose severe problems for many employers.