Look at your paycheck. Look at your rent or mortgage bill as it arrives every month. Look at the overcrowded classroom where your child sits, the emergency room wait times that stretch into hours, the grocery bill that climbs while your income stagnates. Then ask yourself a simple question: Who is this system really serving?
It’s not you. It is not your neighbors in the factories, the warehouses, the suburban office parks, or the trades. The American working class—blue-collar and white-collar alike—has been systematically hoodwinked into cheering an immigration policy that dilutes their wages and endangers their neighborhoods, their children’s futures, and even their collective political voice.
Between 1980 and 2020, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population roughly doubled. Harvard economist George Borjas and others have documented that a 10 percent increase in the supply of workers in a skill group can reduce wages for similar native workers by 3 to 4 percent. In construction, meatpacking, hospitality, and service sectors, the effect is even more harsh: more applicants means less bargaining power, means smaller paychecks.
In high-immigration metro areas, demand for housing has outstripped supply for years. Rents and home prices have surged at a pace that outstrips increases in median incomes. A working family in the suburbs now competes not only with other local buyers but also with a growing population whose presence is the deliberate result of immigration policy.
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