By William Chip, FAIR Board Member
In today’s Washington Post: “Nearly one in three Americans who grew up middle-class has slipped down the income ladder as an adult, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.”
Maybe we need to refocus and redirect our message. Our decades-old message that immigration hurts the working class has not resonated. The working-class Americans who need protection aren’t paying attention. The unions and other “progressives” who should care about their fate are immobilized by political correctness.
We need to get the message out to middle-class parents, who have spent a fortune educating their kids, that it is their kids’ jobs that are now in the sight of the immigration lobby. First it was “jobs Americans won’t do”. Now (according to Mitt Romney) it’s “jobs Americans can’t do.”
The economic analysis is not hard. American wages are determined by supply and demand. In our globalized economy demand for products and services made by highly paid American workers is declining and will continue to decline as Third-World countries ramp up their industrial bases and educational systems. Yet, even as demand for workers based in America declines, the supply grows relentlessly because of immigration. Shrinking demand, growing supply. No wonder many middle-class Americans have “slipped down the income ladder.”