U.S. Workers Oppose Being Replaced by Automation, Foreign Nationals

WAYNE, MI - DECEMBER 14: Workers build a Ford Focus on the assembly line at the Ford Mot
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The combination of automation and continued mass immigration has left American workers increasingly supportive of economic nationalism and opposed to having their jobs either replaced by automated machines or foreign nationals.

In new polling by Pew Research Center, an astounding 85 percent of American said they favored restricting automation to doing jobs that are either dangerous or unhealthy for workers to do. A total of 47 percent of those Americans said they “strongly” favored the limitation on automation.

Additionally, 58 percent of Americans said there should be a limit on the number of American workers that businesses can replace with automation. Republicans, slightly more than Democrats, support limiting Americans being replaced by automation to only those jobs which are considered too dangerous or unhealthy for workers to do.

The data, coupled with Americans’ views on mass immigration, show a great reluctance by the public to buy into a globalized, outsourcing-oriented and low-wage economy that has been trumpeted by the political establishments, big business, the open borders lobby, and Silicon Valley.

For instance, in an unreleased poll by Pulse Opinion Research, 71 percent of Americans said businesses should be required to try harder to recruit and train from American demographic groups with the highest unemployment, rather than bringing in foreign nationals to take jobs.

Even if prices were to rise on products because they are made by Americans, rather than foreign nationals, 59 percent say it is better to raise wages to attract native workers in the U.S., instead of importing foreign workers to keep costs down.

The same poll revealed Americans’ desire to see overall legal immigration levels to the U.S. greatly reduced, as the change would bring about higher wages and stem the current trend of Americans being replaced in the workforce.

A total of 61 percent of Americans said they wanted to see the current inflow of legal immigrants — where the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals every year — reduced to 500,000 a year or even lower. Some 26 percent wanted to see legal immigration levels slashed to 250,000 new immigrants a year, just a sixth of the current immigration flow.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals are brought to the U.S. by multinational corporations specifically to take American jobs that would otherwise go to American workers. The inflow of cheaper, foreign workers has led to stagnant wages for workers in working-class, blue-collar jobs, as Breitbart Texas reported.

A plan endorsed by President Trump, known as the RAISE Act, would not only cut legal immigration levels in half to raise American wages, but it would transform the current immigration system — which is based on family chain migration where relatives of new immigrants are given priority — to make it one based on merit and skills.

The plan, which Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) authored, is a revival of Civil Rights leader Barbara Jordan’s demands in the 1990s to limit legal immigration to relieve working-class and middle-class Americans of the immigration burden.

“When immigrants are less-educated and less-skilled, they may pose economic hardships for the most vulnerable of Americans, particularly for those who are unemployed or underemployed,” Jordan said during a press conference on the findings of a congressional immigration committee.

“The commission sees no justification for the continued entry of unskilled foreign workers unless the rationale for their admission otherwise serves a significant national interest, as does the admission of nuclear family members and refugees,” Jordan said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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