WASHINGTON, DC (June 25, 2013) — The Center for Immigration Studies has published two interviews highlighting liberal voices concerned about immigration’s impact on the American worker and income inequality. As the debate on immigration reform intensifies in the Senate and the House, these videos make clear that immigration reform is not a liberal vs. conservative issue but rather one that sets the elite against the public.
The first set of videos feature Dr. Vernon Briggs, Emeritus Professor of Labor Economics at Cornell University, who has been studying immigration’s impact on American workers and the labor market since the 1960s. Noting that there is a disproportionate flow of immigrant workers, particularly illegal immigrants, into the less-skilled segment of the labor market, Dr. Briggs comments, “if [this were] happening in upper-income jobs it wouldn’t be tolerated for a minute.”
The second set features Frank Morris, the former Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and former Dean of Graduate Studies at Morgan State University. In lamenting the long history of America giving preferential treatment to immigrants over African-Americans, Mr. Morris states, “nobody really speaks for many of the grassroot, poor, less-educated working class Americans.”
To view these videos go to:
http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews/Vernon-Briggs-Cornell-University
http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews/Frank-Morris
The concern voiced regarding immigration’s impact on the labor market has intensified with the Center for Immigration Studies’ recent analysis of the Schumer-Rubio bill finding that, in the first year, the bill (S.744) would admit nearly 1.6 million more temporary workers than currently allowed. After that initial spike, the bill would increase annual temporary worker admissions by more than 600,000 each year over the current level, resulting in roughly a doubling of the number of temporary workers admitted each year (nearly 700,000 in 2012). These workers are classified as "non-immigrants" and would be in addition to S.744's large proposed increase in annual permanent legal immigrants competing for jobs (more than 30 million green cards issued in the next decade).
View prior CIS interview of Don Crocetti, architect and former Chief of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service at:
http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews