TOI Correspondent from Washington: Cherrypicking data from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report during a heated election campaign, some pro-Trump economists and the MAGA media are alleging foreign-born workers are scoring “nearly all job gains” at the expense of native-born Americans amid a toxic undercurrent of resentment and racial abuse of Indian tech community.
“Over the last year, native-born Americans have lost almost 800,000 jobs while foreign-born workers have gained over 1 million jobs; the US labor market is turning into a temp agency for foreign workers and govt bureaucrats,” Heritage Foundation Economist E J Antoni wrote in a post on X that some MAGA activists portrayed as part of the “great replacement theory” to sideline native-born Americans with immigrants.
According to Antoni’s reading of the report, native-born Americans have fewer jobs today than before the pandemic (-873k), while all net job growth has gone to foreign-born workers (+3.7 million). “Many Americans aren’t happy w/ the economy b/c they’re not the ones w/ the jobs,” he wrote.
But the October jobs report actually shows employment rose for native-born workers and fell for foreign-born workers during the month, although over the past year, employment has fallen by 773,000 for native workers and risen by 1 million for the foreign-born.
The MAGA media, notably Breitbart Report, which has long carried on a crusade against foreign skilled workers, particularly H1B visa holders from India, segued the analysis into Trump’s recent comment — “So foreigners coming in illegally, largely illegally into our country, took the jobs of native-born Americans and I’ve been telling you that’s what’s going to happen” — to argue that all immigrants are taking jobs that could and should go to native-born Americans.
It cited a Pew Research Center study that found that as of 2022, more than 30 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens were holding US jobs — a 20-percent increase over the last 15 years — which incidentally also includes four Trump years. During the same period, the number of native-born Americans who have been added to the workforce increased by less than 10 percent, taking the native-born work force to 130.8 million.
The tirade against foreign workers, illegal or legal, comes amid intense trolling on social media of Indian and Indian-origin tech workers and executives, even if they are US citizens. Over the weekend, Sheel Mohnot, a San Francisco fintech executive, posted a screenshot of comments his recent post on a mostly Patel-run bank in Texas attracted. They included “They all go back to India next year,” “All need to be deported back to their shithole,” “We will seize all their assets and send them all back to Gujarat” and “I can only imagine how their office smells.”
Not everyone joined the verbal lynchmob. Several Americans defended Mohnot. “f*** em. hit them with the haymaker,” one of them wrote, with a data-chart that showed Indian-Americans with the highest median household income in the US ($100,500), almost double that of white-Americans ($ 59,900). Indian-Americans also have the highest percentage of bachelor’s degree holders — 70 percent compared to the national average of 28 percent.