Pay no attention to that foreign-born worker
“You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible,” says Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
The Washington Post’s online front page this morning blares that immigration is fueling the “roaring” U.S. economy. And you thought there was a border crisis, a crisis hyped by Republicans who believe it can wait for the November election.
“About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data,” The Post reports. By the middle of 2022, rapid growth in the foreign-born labor force “closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic“:
Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.
Even so, apprehensions of migrants at the southern border topped 2 million in fiscal 2023 for the second straight year.
Washington is deadlocked on a solution to the crisis. Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats voted down a sweeping $118 billion national security package that included changes to the nation’s asylum system and a way to effectively close the border to most migrants when crossings are particularly high. House Republican leadership called the legislation “dead on arrival,” which seemed all but guaranteed after former president Donald Trump came out strongly in opposition.
Opinion polls show that voters widely disapprove of Biden’s handling of the border, and Trump, who is closing in on the Republican nomination, is touting plans for aggressive deportation policies if he wins in November. Republicans have increasingly campaigned on the idea that immigrants have hurt the economy and taken Americans’ jobs. But the economic record largely shows the opposite.
It’s a presidential election year, so Republicans are playing all their greatest xenophobic hits for their conservative base.
Border apprehensions are not an issue Joe Biden can ignore, however. Perception is reality in politics. Both Biden and Donald “91 Counts” Trump, his likely Republican opponent this fall, will visit the border today to blame each other.
Another Washington Post story:
Biden will visit Brownsville, making his second trip to the border since becoming president. His trip is part of a recent effort to take the initiative on the issue of illegal immigration, which polls suggest has been politically damaging for him.
Trump, the leading Republican presidential contender, will visit Eagle Pass, a city that has become a symbol of Republican defiance against Biden’s handling of immigration. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, seized a park in the city earlier this year, shutting out U.S. Border Patrol agents who had long used it as a staging point.
Biden’s visit underscores his political vulnerability after enduring sustained Republican attacks over record levels of migrants at the border. Biden recently embraced a tough bipartisan Senate proposal on immigration, saying he would use its provisions to shut down the border if crossings reached a certain level.
Republicans, who had demanded that border enforcement measures be added to a foreign aid package, blocked the measure after opposition from Trump, who said he feared its passage would help Biden address a political liability.
Republicans want their weapon.
Biden is exploring executive actions available for slowing the migration and asylum volume, but his authorities are limited. The booming U.S. economy is both a product of and an irresistible draw for migrants not just from Mexico, Central and South America, but from elsewhere in the world. Biden cannot remedy political and economic instability south of the border nor the impacts of climate change with a pen stroke. But as president, he’ll get the blame. He just cannot seem to win credit for the booming economy.
The same is true of Biden’s limited leverage over the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. The U.S. has defense commitments with Israel going back over half a century that it will not abandon because Israel’s temporary leader is acting like a monster. Biden has won blame for not cutting off the Netanyahu government cold turkey, and little credit for non-public and as yet unsuccessful efforts to stop the slaughter of innocents. Ukraine may not be a NATO country, but U.S. military aid to fend off Russian aggression is cheap and in ours and NATO’s interests, yet a Republican-controlled House wants none of it. How quickly Russophiles among the Party of Trump have forgotten “fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.” And Ukrainians are not asking us to do any of their fighting.
Biden wanted to be president. This is what it’s like.
If Republicans hate the immigrant flow now, just wait until Vladimir Putin’s troops move farther west.
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