There’s a cold and sad truth behind the left’s seemingly unwavering love of all things immigrant.
It’s the same faux compassion that drives the left’s political pandering to low-income black families in inner city slums, promising to “fight” for them while keeping them chained to the same woefully inefficient government programs that perpetuate generational cycles of poverty, violence and despair. At best, it's blissful, arrogant ignorance.
At worst, it's just plain ol’ racism.
Even as liberal town criers march in the streets ranting against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, a new poll out from Gallup exposes this long-standing reality. The polling agency found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats say immigrants help the economy because they provide low-cost labor. By comparison, only 28 percent of Republican respondents agreed.
Immigration fans also say that foreign-born workers are willing to take jobs that are beneath most Americans, filling an employment niche we need, but don’t want to do ourselves. A full 72 percent of Americans said immigrants are more likely to take jobs that “Americans don’t want,” while 60 percent said that higher numbers of immigrants doesn’t negatively impact their own career. Gallup notes:
Proponents of immigration often assert that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy due to their willingness to accept lower wages than Americans will work for, keeping the costs of goods and services down.
The self-admitted truth here is an obvious one. The left loves immigrants not because they’re geographically unlucky souls struggling to find a more prosperous future in the land of opportunity, but because we can theoretically pay them next to nothing to do the nasty jobs we don’t even like. It saves us money and headache, and our hotel rooms stay clean.
Think I’m exaggerating? Simple stats prove the point. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, immigrant men actually have higher rates of work than native-born men (82 percent to 73 percent, to be exact). Even still, immigrant families are more than a third more likely than native-born families to live in poverty. A full 21 percent of immigrant families lived at or below the poverty line in 2014, compared to just 13 percent of native-born households.
In fact, immigrant households account for about 25 percent of families in the United States living in poverty, and one-third of all impoverished children, despite making up a significantly smaller portion of the population. The poverty rate among immigrant adults who’ve been here for 20-plus years is still 57 percent higher than native-born Americans.
On the whole, immigrant families also receive 41 percent more in welfare benefits than the average native-born household, launching a cycle that carries down through generations and is often nearly impossible to break.
The problem gets even worse for foreign workers who are undocumented. A recent article published by Public Radio International found that garment workers in the left-leaning, immigrant-loving state of California make about $5 to $6 an hour, well below the minimum wage of $10.50. Agricultural jobs were slightly better, but still came in at only about $12 an hour for hard work and long shifts, PRI found.
Of course, none of this seems to bother the Golden State, which boasts the highest illegal alien population in the country. Just toss them in the orange groves – they’ll be poor, but we’ll label it “compassion,” pat ourselves on the back and call it a day.
But despite the rampant poverty and welfare dependency that spreads like cancer throughout many immigrant communities, left-leaning politicians continue to push for higher immigration under the guise of “love” and “opportunity,” while their own base openly admits the primary economic benefit comes in the form of dirt-cheap labor and low-rung jobs with barely a prayer of advancement.
Exploiting foreign-born workers of a different race to perform jobs we don’t want to do for next-to-no pay? Sounds a lot like another point in American history -- back when the left's party wore hoods instead of pussy hats.