Fact Check: 2020 Democrat Plan for Mass Immigration Hurts Black Americans Most

CLAIM: During the CBS Democrat Debate on Tuesday evening, a debate moderator mentioned the hardships that continue to face black Americans, and specifically black American men.

VERDICT: True. Unmentioned by the debate moderator is how each 2020 Democrat presidential primary candidates’ plan on the issue of illegal and legal immigration would most hurt black American men, as they would be forced to compete for jobs against a rapidly growing foreign workforce.

“Black men earn 73 cents for every dollar earned by white men, are about twice as likely to be unemployed, five times as likely to be incarcerated…” the CBS debate moderator stated.

Analysis through decades shows that it is minorities in the United States that suffer most from downward pressure on jobs, wages, and their communities, caused by illegal immigration and mass legal immigration.

Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota’s 2008 testimony before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission revealed that immigration hurts specifically poor and working-class black American men most.

“In my own research I have found that blacks are more likely to be in competition with immigrants than are whites,” Camarota said:

A 1995 study by Augustine Kposowa concluded that, “non-whites appear to lose jobs to immigrants and their earnings are depressed by immigrants.” A 1998 study of the New York area by Howell and Mueller found that a 10-percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of an occupation reduced wages of black men about five percentage points. Given the large immigrant share of the occupations they studied, this implies a significant impact on native-born blacks.

Camarota’s testimony also mentioned how some research has even concluded that employers prefer Hispanic and Asian illegal and legal immigrants over black Americans. Despite constant claims of labor shortages by the big business lobby and corporate interests, Camarota’s research found that the lack of wage growth for low-skilled American jobs, and even a decline in wages, almost certainly proves that there is not a shortage of low-skilled workers; in fact, quite the opposite.

Tight labor markets with less illegal and legal immigration, on the other hand, have boosted wages and opened job opportunities for working-class black Americans. Thanks to President Trump’s tightened labor market, black Americans working full-time saw their weekly wages grow 4.3 percent in the last year.

In cases over the last few years, black Americans filled American jobs that were once held by illegal aliens, driving up their wages in the process and securing them better working conditions.

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