DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) – Leftist pro-immigration policies are stealing jobs from America’s Black populace, forcing them to flee their homes in search of employment.
Latest census numbers show Black individuals and families are abandoning cities in Democrat-controlled states like New York, California and Michigan in favor of more affordable living in southern states, reversing the Great Migration that occurred in the early to mid-1900s.
The former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Frank Morris, Sr., last week blamed the shortage of positions in the blue states on unbridled immigration:
Politicians in both parties pay lip service to helping Black Americans. If they were truly sincere, they’d listen to generations of civil rights leaders who’ve all recognized that the best way to boost Black Americans’ fortunes is to ensure tight labor markets. That requires stemming the influx of foreign workers.
There are no plans, however, to curtail the immigration or employment of foreign nationals — either legal or illegal — any time soon.
Biden Worsens the Problem
Since unelected president Joe Biden acquired the White House, he has implemented policies to further open U.S. borders. For example, he lifted the immigration restrictions former President Donald Trump enacted to protect American jobs at the outset of the pandemic. Also, on day one in the Oval Office, Joe Biden sent Congress a bill titled the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, claiming it would better manage migration.
As the Biden administration clears the way for immigrants to secure employment in the United States and pushes to give millions of unauthorized migrants already in the country a pathway to citizenship, the more difficult it becomes for job-seeking Americans to find viable work.
Influx Soars, Opportunity Shrinks
According to the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey, the competition has never been greater. The survey conducted in November indicated the United States had 46.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) residing within its borders. This is the largest number of immigrants ever recorded by any U.S. government survey dating back to 1850.
In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, Morris lamented that throughout history, employers “have preferred to hire newly arrived foreigners, who will often work for rock-bottom wages, instead of Black workers.”
He pointed to data compiled by a Harvard economist, who discovered that from 1980–2000, immigration “reduced the wage of Black high school dropouts by 8.3%, reduced the employment rate by 7.4 percentage points and increased the incarceration rate by 1.7 percentage points.”
Numbers like these are apparently luring Black citizens to sections of the country that offer hope of a brighter future for them and their children.
“It’s sort of like a ‘Blaxit,’ right, an exodus of Black Americans from cities that were sort of these beacons of the original Great Migration from the 1920s,” explained Politico correspondent, Brakkton Booker, who calls what we are seeing now, “The Next Great Migration.”
“So they were moving from the Jim Crow South to the North, in many cases, or into the Midwest,” added Booker. “So what we’re seeing now is people are moving away, trying to find better lives.”
Bishops Say Illegals Have ‘Rights’
In 2020, the U.S. bishops’ conference published what it called a “Backgrounder on Immigration” that reads: “The Church remains committed to accompanying immigrants and refugees from their point of origin through their migration journey, and in their destination country.” The document admonished government policies that failed to advance so-called rights for illegal aliens.
The pro-open borders push by many Church leaders who claim to advocate for the protection of human dignity by supporting Democrat-authored legislation leaves many Americans wondering if they actually consider the harm such policies can bring to unemployed American citizens, especially those of color.
For job prospects to improve for Black Americans, Morris stressed immigration levels must diminish.