Thread: MLK Day: Decades Later, Immigration in the Interests of Black America Remains a Dream

Jan. 21, 2019
John Binder

Civil rights icon Barbara Jordan warned more than two decades ago of mass legal immigration’s impact on black Americans. To this day, her reforms to aid the black community have remained a dream.

In a television ad on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, NumbersUSA — the organization that fights for American workers in the immigration debate — is running an ad featuring Jordan’s famed recommendations to Congress in 1995.

“The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force,” Jordan said at a presentation in August 1995 as the chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.

“Many American workers do not have adequate job prospects,” Jordan said. “We should make their task easier to find employment, not harder.”

At the time of Jordan’s recommendations, the U.S. was admitting a little less than a million legal immigrants a year and about 1.5 million illegal aliens were arriving in the country annually.

Former President George H.W. Bush’s Immigration Act of 1990 had just created the country’s current form of chain migration — which allows naturalized citizens to bring their foreign relatives to the U.S. — and had increased the number of visas awarded to mostly unskilled foreign nationals every year.

Jordan’s recommendations were a blow to what had become the immigration status quo among the Democrat and Republican Party; mostly that all immigration — no matter the total — was good for Americans.

Among her recommendations, Jordan’s requests included:

*Mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens
*Barring illegal aliens from non-emergency public services
*Cutting legal immigration levels down from about one million admissions a year to 550,000 admissions a year
*Ending chain migration, which makes up about 70 percent of all legal immigration to the U.S.
*Reducing the importation of low-skilled foreign workers who compete for U.S. jobs with poor and working-class AmericansJordan’s assertion that among the most hurt by the country’s mass legal immigration policy, black Americans, has been solidified in research and data for the past two decades.

National Bureau of Economic Research’s analysts George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson reiterated Jordan’s warnings in their 2007 study of immigration’s impact on the black American community.

“We find a numerically sizable and statistically significant negative correlation between immigration and the wages of black men,” the researchers noted. “A sizable and significant negative correlation between immigration and the employment rate of black men; and a sizable and significant positive correlation between immigration and the incarceration rate of black men.”

The researchers’ findings also revealed that the immigration inflow of more than a million legal immigrants a year to the U.S. “reduced the employment rate of low-skill black men by about eight percentage points.”

“Immigration, therefore, accounts for about 40 percent of the 17.9 percentage point decline in black employment rates” the researchers found.

At the same time, mass legal immigration drove up the number of workers in the country by nearly ten percent between 1980 and 2000 and increased the number of high school dropouts by more than 20 percent.

Despite immigration’s negative impact on black Americans, and specifically black American men, the country’s mass legal immigration policy has yet to be reformed. In fact, immigration has expanded through a series of visa programs and giveaways since Jordan’s call for less overall immigration.

The closest the country has come to Jordan’s recommendations is Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue’s (R-GA) RAISE Act, which would have reduced legal immigration to the U.S. to about 500,000 admissions a year, as well as creating a merit-based system as the Civil Rights leader demanded.

This wage-raising plan, more than two decades later, has been met with gridlock and rejection from both Democrat and Republican political establishments.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...mains-a-dream/

No one is listening to her and she is absolutely right. Now millions of these illegal aliens are roaming our cities, raping, robbing, committing crimes, horrific car accidents and murdering us in cold blood.

They are pouring over our border carrying serious infectious diseases and LET GO to infect us! Not only will we be forced to pay for their medical bills, we will have to pay for ours when they infect us too and it ain't cheap! TB costs $50,000 - $150,000 per person to treat! Who can afford that for themselves let alone a refugee or illegal aliens who has it! This is outrages.

Every one of them with medical issues needs to be fast tracked OFF our soil...the whole family!

These illegals are not only murdering our youth...they are murdering our 80 year old senior citizens

At the time of Jordan’s recommendations (1995), the U.S. was admitting a little less than a million legal immigrants a year and about 1.5 million illegal aliens were arriving in the country annually.

Former President George H.W. Bush’s Immigration Act of 1990 had just created the country’s current form of chain migration — which allows naturalized citizens to bring their foreign relatives to the U.S. — and had increased the number of visas awarded to mostly unskilled foreign nationals every year.

This was so wrong on all levels. Most Americans didn't know this was happening.

This needs to be stopped and reversed.

Trump...stop your damn tweeting and speeches about DACA and TPS deals and the 11 million not being deported. We want them cut off the free stuff and forced to self deport.

Every time you show your face on TV now...we are getting sick of the sight of you and this talk. You had better not keep this up! I am already changing the channel.

We have no love for DACA, their UAC's or the ones pouring over our border! American's are hard workers, we obey our laws, we reward those who strive to do their best and achieve their goals LEGALLY...NOT those who criminally trespass our border and do us harm. We will NEVER accept this or the foreign citizens who do this. That is NOT America! We do not lie, cheat and steal, that is not what this country is based on!

This humanitarian "crises" is their countries responsibility...not the USA or it's taxpayers. We are not the dumping ground or ATM machine for the world!

Our dreamers want to go to school, afford housing, medical care and have a better life! We owe these illegals nothing!

FIRE Jared and Ivanka who is filling your head with their agenda against the American people. We did not vote for them.

And do not listen to Grahamnesty either! He is a slithering two faced snake!

WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR LIE YOU ARE NOT "THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD"?

ARE YOU NOW THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS AND VENEZUELA???? THESE ARE NOT OUR CITIZENS AND NOT YOUR RESPONSIBLITY, SEND THEM BACK!

NO DACA, NO TPS...THEY NEED TO GO HOME NOW!