While most Americans have their eyes on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and the fallout culminating in riots and protests across the country, only a few have paid any attention to the quiet exodus of illegal immigrants.
President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security offered illegal immigrants the chance to voluntarily deport from the United States. This program incentivizes self-deportations with a $1,000 stipend, offers cost-free travel, forgives the failure-to-deport fines, and deprioritizes arrests and detentions for those who register for the program.
The Center for Immigration Studies investigated whether or not recent job reports made by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and their subsequent analysis by outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post were correct in attributing recent trends to this voluntary program.
The BLS released its unemployment data for May on June 6th, which showed that "the unemployment rate was unchanged in May at 4.2 percent, even as 'total nonfarm employment increased by 139,000' jobs last month." But “In May, the employment-population ratio declined by 0.3 percentage point to 59.7 percent.” That means a smaller share of Americans were working in May, despite the increase in jobs and a stable unemployment rate. In other words, more people disappeared from the labor force altogether. This drop raises an important question: where did those workers go? The Washington Post asserted it was illegal immigrants taking advantage of the Trump administration's self-deportation program. What does this mean for Americans?
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When the Washington Post analyzed the BLS report, they found that “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May,” and they attributed that boost to "the exit of immigrants from the labor market. More than a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” With fewer illegal workers competing against American workers for jobs, employers have had to raise pay to keep their positions filled. This trend, if continued, could mark the beginning of a long-overdue recalibration of the labor market in favor of the American worker.
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