Wall St. Journal: Illegal Migration Drains Public Support for Legalized Migration



AP Photo/Andres Kudacki

by Neil Munro 18 Jun 2026

Even the Wall Street Journal‘s pro-migration editors recognize that the economic harm caused by illegal migration drains the tepid public support for legalized migration.

“In recent years, those rules [in immigration policy] haven’t been consistently enforced,” said a June 16 op-ed by James Carter, a deputy undersecretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration, adding:

The result is a market distortion [because a bubble of illegal labor] holds down wages for those Americans most exposed to labor competition from unauthorized workers [and] increases demand for housing without a corresponding increase in supply.

The economic damage to ordinary Americans, the Bush appointee admitted, “undermines the legal immigration system that serves everyone’s interests.”

“We’ve moved on from that,” dismissed Rosemary Jenks, co-founder of the Immigration Accountability Project. She continued:

He’s very much stuck in the 1980s when ‘Legal good/Illegal bad’… [But] now most people actually understand that we need to end mass immigration — not just stop illegal immigration — but end [legalized] mass immigration.

For Americans, “It doesn’t matter if they’re legal, illegal, or legalized — they’re dragging down wages because they’re flooding the labor market,” she said, adding that migration also reduces marketplace incentives for companies to invest in productivity-boosting technology.

Polls increasingly show rising GOP opposition to the legalized migration — including white-collar programs — that extracts foreign workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries.

Breitbart News has posted many employer admissions that Americans’ wages rise when migration falls.
“If I can’t find staff, I’m going to increase my wages,” Rob Liebrich, CEO of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Goodwin Living business, told SeniorHousingNews.com for an article about Trump’s decision to cancel President Joe Biden’s expansion of the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) program to 350,000 Haitian migrants.

“I think everyone in the country is seeing this reality… wages have to increase because we have a smaller pool of individuals who are filling in the roles,” he added.

The article added:

For now, operators are shifting away from relying on new immigrant workers hires and are strengthening their domestic hiring pipelines.

Aspenwood added a second recruiter to its staff, leading to savings by avoiding the use of outside contracted recruiters. The operator has also taken a more proactive approach, according to Varley, by building on partnerships with trade schools, universities, and school systems. The idea is to get into classrooms and make the industry more appealing to students, she said.

The loss of migrant workers will also force the industry to hire Americans from long-ignored areas. “I’m going to recruit people from further away in markets where maybe people feel like they don’t have any impact,” said Liebrich.

Rachel Blumberg, the CEO of Sinai Residences in Florida, is also raising wages, according to Bloomberg:

Blumberg has been forced to hike wages multiple times for the positions affected by TPS: nurses, CNAs, maintenance, housekeeping, culinary, and dishwashers. She said competition for labor could lead to a wage war. “There will be a ripple effect, and everybody’s going to be fighting for the same employees in the same city,” she said.

The industry is lobbying hard to preserve the profitable TPS workers.

That campaign has been amplified by gullible coverage from establishment media sites, even as migration advocates admit that TPS migrants generate $20 billion in profits for investors each year.

Some members of Congress want to bail out the employers by raising the inflow of legalized workers.

In September, Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) filed a bill that would create a new inflow of H-2C visa workers for employers who have not offered enough money to hire local Americans, most of whom have families to support.

The Smucker bill would slash the ability of ordinary Americans to negotiate wages and benefits with local employers, such as Indian-run franchise hotels, chain restaurants, and roofing companies. The business-backed supporters include Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Mark Amodei (R-NV), Andy Harris (R-MD), Don Davis (D-NC), Rich McCormick (R-GA), and Mike Kennedy (R-UT).

The cheap-labor lobbying is backed by FWD.us, which is run by major West Coast investors.

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/20...zed-migration/