"U.S. Workers Ask: Where's My Raise?" proclaims the Wall Street Journal in a serious June 3 analysis of many reasons for the stagnant wage situation for millions of Americans. But, as usual for mainstream media, the Journal totally ignored one of the most obvious factors: out-of-control immigration that adds to the country's giant labor surplus that allows employers to hold down wages.
I am stunned but not surprised to see the Journal's latest example of most American media self-censoring immigration policy out of jobs and wage discussions. When you have millions of both legal and illegal immigrants flooding a U.S. job market that was crippled in 2008 and has been weak ever since, a slight knowledge of basic supply-and-demand economics should cause journalists to at least glance at the juxtaposition of high immigration and the lack of raises.
Where did the raises go? With the government handing out new work permits to foreign citizens faster than jobs were created in many of the months since 2008, it's a good bet that the money for the raises went into the pockets of the employers and the new foreign workers. George Borjas, the nation's leading immigration economist found as recently as 2013 that an 'immigration surplus' reduces the wages of American workers by an estimated $402 billion per year. He also found that illegal immigration alone reduces the wages of American workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion per year." (http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-liter...).
Failure to even mention this issue in every discussion of wage depression makes the media an enabler of most politicians who choose to avoid these issues that they apparently think are too hot to handle. I worry that until the media's near-total silencing on this issue ends, wage-earners may not have much hope of seeing raises take them back to pre-recession levels.
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
