Think this just might be one reason why there are so many people unemployed and underemployed these days?
The number of foreign-born individuals holding jobs in the United States hit a recorded high of 24,639,000 in August, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has been tracking the number of foreign-born workers annually since 2005 and monthly since 2007. The BLS does not distinguish between foreign-born individuals who are in the United States legally and those who are here illegally.
Meanwhile, there are 9.6 million unemployed Americans, also according to the BLS. This doesn’t count all the people who have stopped looking for work. Now, while it is true that there is probably not a perfect match between the skills employers are seeking and the skills possessed by the nearly 10 million unemployed Americans, but it should be obvious that with 2.6 employed foreign-born workers for every unemployed American, mass immigration has a) significantly reduced American wages, and b) prevented the U.S. economy from reaching full employment.
The economy is not a zero-sum game. But it is also not a game where mathematics is entirely irrelevant.
Economists and politicians have blithely assured the various publics that immigration is good for national economies for decades. The problem with this assumption is that it is an observable fact that despite experiencing the greatest mass immigration in Western history, the Western economies have been in the doldrums for 15 years.