President Joe Biden on Tuesday touted the “record” number of foreign workers his administration has allowed into the United States from Mexico, stating that the move has boosted job opportunities.
Biden made the comments during a press conference with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the White House at a time when an unprecedented number of illegal aliens continue to try to make their way into the country.
Meanwhile, inflation stands at a 40-year-high in the United States and the number of employed Americans has declined.
The current unemployment rate stands at 3.6 percent, according to the Labor Department, marking the lowest since February 2020.
“My administration is leading the way to creating work opportunities through legal pathways,” Biden said on Tuesday. “And last year, my administration set a record. We issued more than 300,000 H-2 visas for Mexican workers.”
“We also reached a five-year high in the visas we issued to Central Americans, and we’re on pace to double this in fiscal year for—this fiscal year for Central America.”
According to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of Bureau of Labor Statistics data for January 2021, unemployment among native-born Americans remained much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of unemployed American natives in January 2021 stood at 8.6 million, according to the analysis, while the number of unemployed immigrants was 2.2 million.
Separate data from the nonpartisan independent think tank, The Migration Policy Institute, finds that the unemployment rate was equal at 3.3 percent for both U.S.-born workers and immigrant workers as of April 2022.
More Jobs, Wages Rising
Another study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which looked at job figures from September 2020 to March 2022 noted that there are currently approximately 11.5 million job openings in the United States and 14.73 million employable Americans.
