Demand for labor has risen steadily since 2004, but the program is still capped at 85,000 a year.
There are roughly 9.6 million job openings, according to the U.S. Labor Department, but only 5.8 million people are searching for work. Which means that if everyone looking for a job were to find one tomorrow, we’d still be close to four million workers short.
This dynamic is a main driver of the holy mess on our southern border, which could become a much bigger obstacle to Joe Biden’s re-election prospects than his age. Most of the people coming aren’t legitimate asylum seekers looking for refuge from persecution back home, as the administration would have us believe. Rather, they are migrants in search of employment who’ve gotten word from contacts already here that America is hiring.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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