Last week was not a good week for the Biden-Harris administration as far as economic news is concerned. Not only were the April job numbers extremely disappointing – with a measly 266,000 new jobs added last month, way short of the 1 million new jobs projected – but inflation is also up. If the trend of growing inflation continues (which is likely), it is bad news for the American middle and working class, particularly in conjunction with historically high, unchecked levels of mass immigration.
In April, the Consumer Price Index – which measures “average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services” – rose by 4.2 percent from a year prior. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics pointed out, it was “the largest 12-month increase since a 4.9-percent increase for the period ending September 2008.”
The administration, the Federal Reserve, and some of the media have dismissed the April uptick in inflation as merely “temporary.”
If increased inflation turns out not to be “transitory,” those who will feel its pinch the most will be the middle class, blue-collar workers, lower-income Americans, and those with fixed incomes.
Not coincidentally, the same socio-economic strata most affected by inflation are also the ones hardest hit by mass immigration (both legal and illegal): either through increased job competition and wage stagnation, or by being forced to foot the bill for various social services for the newcomers.
The middle and working class already faces threats – such as outsourcing and the growing power of mega-corporations – as well as challenges, such as automation, not to mention COVID-19-inflicted economic damage. Mass migration tends to exacerbate these conditions. But it is also the factor over which our government has the greatest control. The Biden administration has the ability to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. Instead, it is doing precisely the opposite.
The pro-mass-migration lobby frequently attempts to sell mass immigration as a way to keep down inflationary pressures. The gist of their argument is that mass immigration restrains the demands of U.S. workers for higher pay while simultaneously adding immigrant contributions to the economy – as though working Americans, who have experienced nearly a half century of wage stagnation, are the culprits.
Moreover, the push for higher wages tends to be a symptom of inflation (people want their earnings to keep up with rising costs), rather than a key driver of it. And, given the primarily low-skilled composition of the immigration stream (both legal and illegal) into our country, the law of supply and demand has resulted in lower real-term wages for comparably skilled American workers. Nevertheless, if higher inflation persists, Americans are likely to be told, by the very politicians who claim to be their champions, that mass immigration is needed to get it under control.
Joe Biden has often paid lip service to blue-collar and middle-class Americans, praising them as the “backbone” of this nation. Unfortunately, his policies have been greatly at odds with his go-to rhetoric. That’s because the Biden-Harris approach – which, in practice, combines a dedication to record-level inflation-fueling spending with an equal zeal for record-level mass migration – undermines the very people whom Biden has repeatedly credited with having built this country.
