The Media Standards Project team analyzes and reviews media that elevate discussions on how immigration policy and limits should serve our national interest.
As the year winds down, we review some of the most noteworthy immigration coverage reported in 2022.
Immigration Limits Are Not Hatred
To begin our review, we highlight that NumbersUSA denounces hostility toward migrants while seeking fair immigration agendas. Mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein called out the "transparent lie" of the hatred of migrants tweeting in June:
Significant Coverage on Immigration's History Negatively Impacting Black Freedmen
Newsweek contributor and business consultant Pamela Denise Long held a two-part, 13-hour Twitter Space covering Back of the Hiring Line with author Roy Beck. Part I of the Twitter Space is still available on Spotify. Long reviewed Beck's book In the American Affairs Fall 2022 essay "Immigration Viewed from the Back of the Hiring Line" wherein she urged readers to look at the history of great waves of immigration through the eyes of "one of our nation's oldest citizen groups, American Freedmen."
Former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Frank Morris explained in a January Chicago Tribune Op-Ed that: "[a] major culprit in the wage gap between Blacks and whites is America's immigration policy."
T. Willard Fair, President and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Miami wrote in the March Philadelphia Tribune column "Immigration comes at a devastating cost to Black Americans": "...if we want to create a fairer economy, we can no longer ignore immigration's unique contribution to racial inequality."
In the November Glenn Show "Are Open Borders Good for African Americans?" Glenn Loury asks "[Why] should black Americans uncritically and in the name of "antiracism" support [immigration] policies that may end up making their lives more difficult?"
Wages Not the Cause of Inflation Surge
The Economic Policy Institute detailed in its April report "Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?" that recent wage gains are not the driving force behind inflation.
On the Aspen Institute panel "New Ways to Measure Our Economy" writer and policy advisor Oren Cass points out that the depressing of wages is behind the push to fight inflation with more immigration.
Authors Reference Barbara Jordan in Explaining How Immigration Can Cheapen Labor
In explaining his analysis on immigration and wage depression in the February Tablet column "The Borscht Belt Theory on Immigration," Professor and columnist "The Borscht Belt Theory on Immigration," professor and columnist Michael Lind included the Barbara Jordan quote:
There are people who argue that some illegal aliens contribute to our community because they may work, pay taxes, send their children to our schools, and in all respects except one, obey the law. Let me be clear: that is not enough." Jordan also told Congress: "Simply put, if we cannot demagnetize our economy for illegal aliens who come here to seek jobs, we cannot control illegal immigration. If we cannot control illegal immigration, we cannot sustain our national interest in legal immigration. Those who come here illegally, and those who hire them, will destroy the credibility of our immigration policies and their implementation."
The New York Times senior writer David Leonhardt channeled Barbara Jordan in advancing the cause for "a more restrictive immigration policy" in his June conversation with AirTalk host Larry Mantle.
Columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon Hollows Pelosi Worker Shortage Claims
House Speaker Pelosi brought up a presumed U.S. worker shortage to say that Florida agriculture needs illegal workers to "pick the crops." In the October New York Post article "Pelosi's 'pick crops' line shows how Democrats betrayed the working class," columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon took Pelosi to task for sending a message to open the border in order to allow the working class of other countries to undercut workers in the U.S.:
[Pelosi's] comments exposed something the Left has been struggling mightily to hide: that they talk about immigration in moral terms when in actual fact, they think about immigration in economic terms...the tight labor market has had a huge impact on low-wage and blue-collar laborers.
You know how you undo those gains? Import an entirely new working class from a failed socialist state made up of people who are willing to work for much less money than an American worker. Undercut working-class Americans by opening the border and signaling to the working class of other countries that there is work for them here."
Immigration Policy Displacing U.S. Tech Workers
As recession worries increased in 2022, layoffs in the tech industry made headline news.
Reporters Natasha Singer and Kalley Huang wrote in the December New York Times column "Computer Science Students Face a Shrinking Big Tech Job Market" that: "...layoffs, hiring freezes and planned recruiting slowdowns at Meta, Twitter, Alphabet, Amazon, DoorDash, Lyft, Snap and Stripe are sending shock waves through a generation of computer and data science students who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies..."
In the May Bloomberg opinion column "Biden Is Caught Between Big Tech and Black Voters," editor Rachel Rosenthal details several cases where major tech companies have been caught bypassing domestic talent in favor of cheaper foreign labor, which is what our visa programs were written to do. The poor record of these companies in terms of hiring from places like Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) has been "decades in the making," Rosenthal writes.
Opinion contributor Jonette Christain wrote on how Big Tech's reliance on foreign workers comes at great expense and fairness to U.S. talent in the August Bangor Daily News column "Big tech's reliance on foreign workers is leaving Black and Latino Americans behind."
Writing On Coloradans and Population Growth
Reporting for KDVR in "Coloradans have had enough of newcomers," DJ Summers asserts "...according to a recent poll, even those newcomers are sick of newcomers." See the full story and video here.
Fort Collins-based environmental activist Gary Wockner, Ph.D., wrote in the September Colorado Politics column Survey Says Coloradans want Less Growth": "Coloradans simply don't like the continued rapid population growth and the majority of the public wants to shut growth down to protect the environment and their quality of life. In fact, Coloradans love their mountains, open spaces, flowing rivers, forests and farms — the very natural resources that growth is devouring across the state."
See our study, "Disappearing Colorado" for more.
Questioning Whether Our Immigration System Serves the National Interest
In the March Tablet column "The End of Citizenship" Michael Lind critiques the selling of American citizenship (i.e. the EB-5 program reauthorized by Congress and the president last month) and word games the media plays "to erase any distinction between legal and illegal immigration" and reduce the very idea of citizenship down to "a matter of paperwork, with no moral or political significance."
LISA IRVING is a Content Writer for NumbersUSA's Media Standards Project
