Joe Biden: No More ICE Workplace Enforcement, Deportations

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden delivers remark
Tom Brenner/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The Democrats’ leading 2020 candidate, Joe Biden, posted a tweet suggesting he would bar the arrests and deportation of illegal migrants who are hired by companies in place of Americans.

“This is who Donald Trump is: a president determined to terrorize immigrant communities and rip apart families — at the border and across our country,” Biden tweeted images of migrants’ upset children in Morton, Mississippi. The photos were taken as enforcement agencies arrested hundreds of foreign migrants who were working in local slaughterhouses.

“We are a nation that will end these cruel policies,” Biden wrote.

The migrants had replaced American job-seekers in Mississippi, helping to ensure the state has the lowest rate of working adults in the United States.

In contrast, Phil Bryant, the GOP governor of Mississippi, tweeted his support for the enforcement of the nation’s immigration and workplace laws on his own state’s chicken industry.

Enforcement officials have not announced how many of the arrestees are illegal workers. Some are likely recent central American migrants who received temporary work permits after bringing some of their children to the border and then asking for asylum.

State officials touted an August 12 job fair for people considering jobs at the slaughterhouses. The company advertisement did not announce promised wage levels.

For many years, the poultry companies have rejected many lower-skilled workers and have instead hired migrants, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“Who are the American workers they are ignoring? Black workers” said Krikorian. “Let’s face it- the employers did not want to hire black workers. They see them as more trouble than they are worth if they can hire illegal immigrants from Latin America instead. In effect, these anti-border groups on the left are conspiring with employers to elbow out black Americans from these jobs.”

The inflow of illegals also has the greatest impact on the least capable workers who cannot get or hold jobs, even when the economy is doing well, he said.

“The migrants are probably better workers than the Americans who don’t have jobs in this economy — that’s probably true because the Americans who don’t have jobs in this economy are more likely to be recovering addicts or recovering convicts,’ said Krikorian. “Business is going to have to deal with that.”

Democrats argue that worksite enforcement actions are traumatic, and should be replaced by prosecutions of company managers after quiet inspections of company hiring records. However, under President Barack Obama, worksite inspections or enforcement slipped back to the levels seen during the tenure of President George W. Bush. Also, in 2012, Obama announced he would give work permits to hundreds of thousands of younger illegals under the so-called “DACA” amnesty.

Biden has already staked out a pro-migrant, pro-employer position in the Democrats’ 2020 debate.

“We should … [and] I proposed, significantly increasing the number of legal immigrants who are able to come,” he said in the Democrats’ second debate. He continued:

This country can tolerate a heck of a lot more people. And the reason we’re the country we are is we’ve been able to cherry-pick from the best of every culture. Immigrants built this country … We are a country of immigrants. All of us. All of us. Some here came against their will; others came because they in fact thought they could fundamentally change their lives … That’s what made us great.

Nationwide, at least 8 million illegals hold blue-collar jobs that would otherwise go to marginalized Americans, including people who are disabled, old, former drug addicts, ex-convicts, or psychologically troubled people.

Also, a growing share of illegal migrants and guest workers hold white-collar jobs that would otherwise have gone to U.S. graduates. Many U.S. graduates are being locked out of jobs because foreign-born recruiters have hidden incentives to hire foreign graduates instead of young American graduates.

Immigration Numbers:

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business, health care, engineering, science, software, or statistics.

But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately 1 million H-1B workers and spouses — plus around 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.

The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.

This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth and returns for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.

This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.

The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.

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