RUTHFULLY YOURS

.https://www.city-journal.org/html/truth-behind-trump-storm-15676.html

…..”The truth is that an “hourglass,” low-mobility, big-government economy presents a new set of questions about immigration policy. Today’s immigrants face a different economic reality from their predecessors. 

During the mass migration that took place in the period between 1850 and 1930, more than 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Many were uneducated and unskilled people from countries that were largely shitholes. Immigrants from nineteenth-century Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Austro-Hungarian, Greece, even the now-flush Scandinavian countries, were escaping poor, stagnant places where the future promised more of the same.

Poverty and lack of skills didn’t stop newcomers from finding work because there was plenty of it—on the piers of New York and Philadelphia, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest, and in the factories that were spreading to cities all over the country. In 1914, over 70 percent of the factory workers at Ford Motor Company were foreign-born. Immigrants and their children were over half of all of American manufacturing workers in 1920. New technologies and a swelling population also meant more jobs for construction and transportation workers. The pre–World War II industrial economy, sociologists Roger Waldinger and Joel Perlman have written, offered a “range of blue collar opportunities” for immigrants and their children.

Today’s unskilled immigrants are not so lucky. Automation and offshoring to Third World countries have seriously eroded the number of blue-collar jobs. Manufacturing positions plummeted from 19.4 million in 1979 to 11.5 million in 2010, even as immigrants were adding millions to the population of job seekers. In 1970, blue-collar jobs were 31.2 percent of total nonfarm employment. By 2016, their share had fallen to 13.6 percent of total employment. Today’s immigrants are more likely to be hotel workers, agricultural hands, bussers, janitors, and hospital orderlies. They may be earning more than they could have in their home countries, but their wages—assuming they work full-time—are enough only to keep them a notch or two above the poverty line in the United States. Adding to their troubles is frequently a lack of benefits, unreliable hours, and little chance for moving up the income ladder.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/acting-dhs-secretary-border-crossings-down-43-percent-since-may/

Acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday that border crossings have declined 43 percent since May, when arrests between ports of entry at the southern border increased for the fourth straight month to 132,887, up from 99,304 arrests in April.

“So those efforts are making progress, 43 percent reduction in crossings since May,” McAleenan said. “We’re hoping to continue the progress in August.”

McAleenan said DHS is working with Central American countries to protect migrants who need asylum as well as conduct an “aggressive effort against human smugglers,” a project he said “could really change the game.”

“I’ll be going back to Central America next week to try to build on that with El Salvador and Panama and really address this problem as a regional effort,” he said.

The number of immigrants being held at border stations is also down significantly from its June high of 20,000, McAleenan said. “This morning we have less than 4,000, and they’re not staying with us very long. We’re able to repatriate the single adults quickly. The unaccompanied children are going to a better situation with Health and Human Services.”

The acting DHS chief went on to take a shot at what he sees as a toxic political environment “where we’re demonizing law enforcement for doing their jobs,” calling it “concerning.”