High Immigration Major Contributor to ‘Disconnected Youths’ Unemployment

An October 27 story in The Washington Post spelled out the jobs crisis facing American youth age 16-24. Despite an allegedly improving economy, rising high school graduation rates and steadily declining unemployment, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the percentage of young people who are neither working nor going to school is virtually unchanged nationwide from its nationwide 14 percent level in 2011. Collectively, the group is referred to as “disconnected youth.”

Not surprisingly, young blacks and Latinos suffer the highest unemployment. Because the unemployment challenges are so acute, support groups have sprung up to help. The Washington D.C.-based Youth Reengagement Center opened to encourage high school dropouts to earn a GED. JP Morgan Chase, the Ford Foundation and BNY Mellon hosted a conference to address global youth unemployment that included speeches from major U.S. city mayors.

Disconnected youth ponder the future under Obama’s executive amnesty.

Even college graduates can’t find jobs. Polling done by AfterCollege, a San Francisco career-networking website, found that 80 percent of 2014 graduates don’t have jobs lined up.

If you ask me, the so-called experts are spinning their wheels and wringing their hands while overlooking (intentionally?) the biggest variable in American job loss for all demographics: in 2013 a record high 41.3 million immigrants were living in the U.S., according to the American Community Survey. Nearly 1 million legal, work-authorized immigrants come to the U.S. each year, a policy that has been in place for decades and, unless Congress intervenes, will persist for the foreseeable future.

America’s “disconnected youth” should brace themselves for tougher times. Not only will legal immigration continue, but jobs creation will diminish, especially full-time jobs that pay decent salaries. Also, robots will do more jobs humans once performed.

To top off the gloomy jobs picture, President Obama is determined to give work authorization through an executive order amnesty late this year for at least 5 million previously unemployable aliens. Obama has set in motion 34 million work permits, a blow that would severely diminish job opportunities for Americans.

My suggestion to those who pontificate about America’s young unemployed is to forget about organizing meaningless, unproductive conferences and to instead open their eyes and speak out for sensible, sustainable immigration.

Go to the CAPS Action Alert page here to ask your senator if he or she supports American workers or massive immigration increases.