Americans driven out of work by federal immigration policies can go nowhere. There is no free market in labor for them.
One of the major issues Americans will be voting on this November as they head to the polls to choose their next president is immigration. Poll after poll has found it to be a top concern for voters, especially after President Joe Biden’s infamously lax border, which allowed millions of illegal immigrants to pour across the border over the last three years.
This laissez faire attitude toward illegal immigrants will no doubt be continued by Biden’s border czar, Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. But it’s not just Democrats who believe in open borders. Economists and many on the free-market Right also believe that America should have a free market when it comes to labor to go with our free markets in investment, goods, and services.
There are many problems with this view. Illegal immigrants drive down the wages of the working class and compete with lower-income Americans for resources like housing, education, and health care. But there’s another reason illegal immigration hurts American workers: The American labor market can never be a free market. While millions of migrants move here for work, Americans are generally not free to return the favor. Less than six million U.S. citizens live permanently in other countries. This is thanks to the fact that most nations work hard to keep foreign workers out of their labor force. Developing countries, especially, know they can’t afford to hand out scarce jobs to newcomers.
