At House Hearing, Cato Calls for Unlimited Immigration
Advocates for levels its own polling shows Americans oppose
By Robert Law on April 30, 2021
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship held a hearing this week entitled, “Why Don’t They Just Get in Line? Barriers to Legal Immigration”. The Democratic members and the three witnesses they invited used the hearing to suggest that (1) there are not enough avenues for legal immigration; and (2) we are not admitting enough legal immigrants. I was the lone witness invited by the GOP and testified about how the high levels of legal immigration, both permanent and temporary, harm American workers.
One of the more remarkable takeaways from the hearing was the testimony of the Cato Institute’s David Bier, who repeatedly claimed that immigration does not negatively impact the wages and job opportunities for Americans and called for unlimited legal immigration. Here are a few examples:
No, [immigrants] absolutely do not hurt Americans.
This, of course, is demonstrably false. Pew found that the real wages of non-college-educated Americans have stagnated or declined over the last 40 years. It took a decade for the wages of hourly workers to return to pre-Great Recession levels.
https://cis.org/Law/House-Hearing-Cato-Calls-Unlimited-Immigration