President Joe Biden’s Navy secretary wants to import skilled blue-collar migrants to build the U.S. Navy ships that protect Americans and their job opportunities.
“What we’ve got to do is open up the spigot a bit, basically, on legal immigration to allow blue-collar workers to come here … so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told a meeting in Arlington Va.
Del Toro’s call for migrant shipbuilders comes amid a shipbuilding crisis where many U.S. warships are being delivered far behind schedule, sometimes with deep flaws, Forbes reported in 2021 that the United States:
builds less than 10 vessels for oceangoing commerce in a typical year. China builds over a thousand such ships each year. The entire U.S.-registered fleet of oceangoing commercial ships numbers fewer than 200 vessels, out of a global total of 44,000.
However, the administration’s support for mass migration reduces the pressure on state governments and companies to train the next generation of Americans for skilled jobs.
The government’s inflow of cheap migrants also provides CEOs and investors with an easy excuse to avoid the difficult task of raising per-person productivity. Boosting productivity usually requires executives to manage a painful mix of training, automation, reorganization, risk, and innovation.
The Navy is now spending more than $15 billion to upgrade productivity at the shipyards, the U.S. Naval Institute reported in February:
Unfortunately, GAO noted in the 2022 report, “While the condition of the shipyards’ facilities generally improved, they are still among the lowest scored depot facilities across DoD. All shipyards have an average facility condition that is in the ‘Poor’ category.”
Del Toro did say the Navy would “devote an enormous amount of resources into re-training [American] individuals so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers, for example.”
That could be good news for Americans and their children. Amid Biden’s mass migration of roughly 10 million people, several million American men have fallen out of the economy, including because of addictions, and many millions more are sidelined in low-wage jobs that shrivel hopes for homeownership, marriage, and families.
File/Workers walk at the General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego, California, U.S. (Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty)
But migration is a top priority for Biden’s administration. “President Biden continues to do everything possible in his authority to create more legal pathways [for migrants] to citizenship,” Fabiola Rodriguez, deputy Hispanic media director for the Biden campaign, told TheHill.com on April 25.
Many business groups are also eager to import more migrants for low-wage jobs that would otherwise go to Americans at higher wages. For example, business groups have persuaded many state legislatures to allow illegal migrants to get licenses for skilled jobs, such as plumbers, therapists, electricians, and ironworkers.
U.S. politicians and national security activists have repeatedly called for migrants to fill recruiting shortfalls. For example, in February 2017, Bill Kristol declared that population replacement would be best for the elite’s exercise of national power around the globe:
Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? [I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico.
The Cuban-born Del Toro followed that pro-migration trend when he spoke at the Stimson Center on April 23:
“I think the bigger problem … is actually the lack of blue-collar workers that we have in this country,” he said, adding:
Regretfully, we’re a pretty divided country politically, you might say, but it really is time for Congress to get together and pass comprehensive reform and increase the amount of legal immigration that we actually allow into this country [and] increase the amount of work visa programs that are authorized for blue-collar workers to come from other nations and actually do the work here as has actually existed since the founding of our government, very much so.
Many polls show that the public opposes labor migration, especially when Americans lose opportunities as companies try to cut labor costs.
