Year after year, decade after decade, NumbersUSA continues to try to force the public and its officials to confront variations of the same question:
What numerical level of immigration is good for the American people?
We're doing it again with a massive national TV and social media campaign this fall. At the end of the TV ad that is running during the presidential and vice-presidential debate weeks, a narrator asks the key question that the news media thus far won't ask candidates for Congress and the White House:
Is it fair to continue high immigration when so many Americans need jobs?
We've been doing this for years around Presidential debates before primaries and general elections, trying to remind all Americans that numerical levels of immigration deserve to be addressed as a matter of national compassion and fairness.
Nobody has made the case more passionately, emphatically and convincingly that civil rights icon Barbara Jordan. Our ad once again uses a news clip of the former congresswoman and law professor insisting that immigration policies should be designed to make the task for struggling Americans "easier to find employment, not harder."
As the ad notes at the beginning, Jordan was making that statement a quarter-century ago. But it not only still makes sense today, it makes more sense.
Jordan, who tragically for America died the next year, was appealing for less immigration during the booming economy of the 1990s. She and her commission were well aware that even when an economy is doing great, millions of Americans can be left behind if the labor market is kept loose. Today, of course, tens of millions of Americans are hurting because of the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic.
Our ad points out that the job market is so tough that around 30 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits.
Our auto-pilot immigration policy allots around one million green cards with lifetime work authorization for foreign citizens each year regardless of unemployment levels. That is in addition to perhaps another million foreign citizens who get U.S. jobs each year through shorter-term work visas or by illegally taking jobs.
An immigration policy that was compassionate toward the most vulnerable members of our national community would in times like these limit new green cards and temporary work permits to only people having an essential claim for one.
NumbersUSA's specific recommendations for fair, compassionate and practical numerical immigration policies are always prominently displayed in the carrousel that runs at the top of our home page, as well as on the About Us page.
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
