This past week's debates among candidates of both parties offered little economic hope for the descendants of America's slavery and apartheid eras.
The candidates almost universally revealed a lack of interest in the dismal jobs picture for Black Americans.
Here is the statement I issued to the media after last night's Democratic debate:
Despite lots of rhetorical flourishes aimed at South Carolina's large African American population, candidates had little to say about how they would improve the horrific Black low labor participation rate.
Perhaps they were afraid they might be asked the question that Sen. Rubio dodged in the Thursday debate about why pledge to add millions more foreign workers while so many Americans can't find a job.
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, the Democrats talked rights but not the right to compete for jobs without the federal government rigging the job market against them with mass immigration policies."
Of course, King's work on civil rights gets mentioned. But his battles weren't just about stopping governmental entities from restricting civil rights but about stopping the government from blocking Black Americans' participation in the economic mainstream.
A half-century of mass immigration has done what segregationists in the quarter-century before 1965 couldn't do. It has stopped Black movement into the middle class. During that period before 1965, immigration was low and the labor market was tight. Black Americans saw their incomes rising faster than even the rapid progress of White Americans. But the possible economic improvements that might have resulted from the Civil Rights Act of 1965 were negated by the immigration act passed that same year which has flooded the labor markets with foreign workers.
Some of the Republican candidates in earlier debates have shown a little bit of interest in this central political question of whether the federal government should allow for a tighter labor market or continue to use immigration to keep the labor market loose. But in last week's debate, no candidate seized a perfect opportunity to speak up.
This was my statement to the media after the Republican debate:
Fox's Bartiromo cornered Rubio with the toughest immigration question of all the debates: why did he lead the Gang of Eight immigration bill that would have brought in an additional 10 million immigrants in first decade when so many Americans can't find work. Rubio blew it off.
Immigration policy now is only about security, he indicated. He pledged to be really tough to keep dangerous people from getting into the country but offered no response at all to whether he cares about the effect of immigration numbers on vulnerable American workers. Instead, he changed the subject to an attack on Ted Cruz on other issues. Sadly, none of the other candidates called Rubio on his refusal to answer the jobs question."
Rubio seemed to indicate that illegal aliens coming to the U.S. to get a job are not that big of a problem. He said as president he wouldn't let anybody in unless we could be sure of who they are and why they are coming. But apparently if a foreign citizen says they are only coming to take a job from an American Rubio would let them in. He had a great opportunity to clarify that isn't where he stands and he declined to stand beside struggling American workers.
Happy MLK Day?
-- ROY BECK (Founder & President of NumbersUSA)
