President Joe Biden has welcomed millions of low-wage migrants to produce more goods and services — and an even bigger wave of children, mothers, and older migrants who consume the goods and services needed by American families.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reported on May 13 that 5.1 million additional migrants moved into the United States since March 2022, either legally or legally:
Many observers think of immigrants solely as workers, but only 46 percent of the foreign-born who arrived in 2022 or later were employed in the first part of 2024 — similar to the share of new arrivals employed during previous economic expansions.
As in any human population, many newly arrived immigrants are children, elderly, disabled, caregivers, or others with no ability to work or interest in doing so.
“Although many think of immigrants only as workers, less than half of those who arrived since 2022 are employed,” the CIS reported, adding:
The scale of recent immigration is so high that it appears to have made the Census Bureau population projections, published in November of last year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share would not reach 15.6 percent until 2040.
The vast majority of Biden’s legal, illegal, or quasi-legal migrant workers want to work, and they often work hard and diligently.
But Biden’s policy of inviting migrants to work in the United States also reduces pressure on CEOs to pay good wages to Americans. His easy migration also reduces CEOs’ willingness to invest in the high-tech workplace productivity that helps Americans earn more wages for each hour they work.
That is a Biden one-two punch for ordinary Americans.
But there is a third Biden punch: The migrants and their families also drive-up costs for Americans as they consume or buy autos, K-12 school seats, and housing.
In February 2024, MLIve.com reported on Brian Dillon’s effort to replace a used auto that he bought in 2016 for $25,000. Unluckily for him, he is competing for the limited supply of used autos against the millions of desperate migrants who also need to commute to and from their jobs:
“What you used to be able to get a car for, now you can’t get a car for that anymore,” Dillon, a union pipefitter [in Michigan], said last week. “Everything’s (significantly) higher. It seems like they’ve been coming down a tiny bit, but not by a lot.”
By the end of 2023, the average new vehicle in the U.S. sold for $48,759, up more than $8,000 from three years earlier, according to data from Cox Automotive. In fact, the average transaction price for new vehicles has increased 27% over the last five years and 46% since the average price tag was $33,396 a decade ago.
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As of December 2023, the average used vehicle listing price was $26,446, according to Kelley Blue Book. That’s …[32 percent] above the less-than-$20,000 price tags from fall 2019.
Biden is welcoming a vast number of children who are squeezing into K-12 schools, so taking resources and attention from millions of young U.S. kids. In Colorado, for example, the Christian Science Monitor reported:
This [migrant] class, for English learners in kindergarten through third grade, is itself new. In January, soon after a migrant shelter opened nearby, the school of 212 students added another 125. Most come from Venezuela, where political and economic crises have caused millions to flee.
“When you have 17 kids in your classroom, and then the next day you have 35, you’re basically starting over,” says Janine Dillabaugh, the principal. Beyond academic support, she says, “we also have to attend to their social and emotional needs.”
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The Department of Education has outlined $940 million, in the president’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2025, that would support English learners. (That would be a $50 million boost from the latest fiscal year.) The federal government has also reminded states that leftover pandemic aid can support immigrant students before a funding deadline this fall.
Rents are up by at least 30 percent because Biden is allowing groups of bunk-sharing migrants to collectively compete for apartments needed by American families. The New York Times reported from Milwaukee on the rising number of Americans who are being pushed out of American housing by the federal government’s determination to lure migrants with offers of taxpayer-funded housing:
The [Americans] arrive in cars crammed with the contents of the homes they were evicted from, or by bus, weighed down by bags. They walk over, in wet socks or ruined pants, from a tent encampment nearby when the weather is too rough to be outside. They leave their kids sleeping in the queen beds when they go to work the night shift at an Amazon warehouse. Few of the guests at this airport motel arrive on a flight; most are locals in search of affordable shelter. A yellow school bus picks up children outside the lobby and police cars and outreach workers do rounds through the parking lot, but mostly the true role the motel plays is invisible and improvised by desk clerks.
The capacity of shelters and subsidized housing hasn’t kept pace with the growing homelessness crisis, so New York and other cities have turned to private motels to house people, and some charities offer emergency vouchers for brief stays. During the Covid pandemic, empty hotels and motels were also temporarily converted into official homeless shelters; most of those programs have since wound down.
Whatever the impact on American families, this flood of new taxpayer-aided renters, consumers, and low-wage workers has been great for CEOs and investors. A $22,000 stake in the Wall Street FSHOX housing fund in November 2020, for example, would have grown to $42,000 by April 2024.
