TOI Correspondent in Washington: Gathering data from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report during a heated election campaign, some pro-Trump economists and MAGA claim the press foreign-born workers they get “nearly all the job gains” at the expense native americans amid a toxic undercurrent of resentment and racial abuse of Indian Technology Community.
“In the past year, native-born Americans lost nearly 800,000 jobs, while foreign-born workers gained more than 1 million jobs; the US labor market is turning into a temp agency for foreign workers and government bureaucrats,” Heritage Foundation Economist EJ Antoni wrote in a post on X that some MAGA activists described it as part of the “grand theory of replacement” to leave native-born Americans with immigrants.
According to Antoni’s reading of the report, native-born Americans hold fewer jobs today than before the pandemic (-873,000), while all of the net job growth went to foreign-born workers (+3.7 million). “Many Americans are not happy about the economy because they are not the ones with the jobs,” he wrote.
But the October report shows that employment rose for native-born workers and fell for foreign-born workers during the month, even though over the past year, employment fell by 773,000 for native-born workers and rose by 1 million for those born abroad.
MAGA Media, in particular The Breitbart Reportwhich has long waged a crusade against skilled foreign workers in particular H1B visa holders from India, the analysis continued with Trump’s recent comment — “So the aliens who are coming illegally, mostly illegally into our country, have taken the jobs of native Americans, and I told you that was going to happen” — argue that all immigrants are taking jobs that could and should go to native Americans.
He quoted a Pew Research Center study that found that as of 2022, more than 30 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens held U.S. jobs — a 20 percent increase over the past 15 years — which coincidentally includes four Trump years. During the same period, the number of native-born Americans who were added to the labor force increased by less than 10 percent, bringing the native-born labor force to 130.8 million.
The tirade against foreign workers, illegal or legal, comes amid heavy social media trolling of Indian and Indian-origin tech workers and executives, even if they are US citizens. Over the weekend, Sheel Mohnot, a fintech executive in San Francisco, posted a screenshot of the comments his recent post about a Patel-based bank in Texas had drawn. These included “They are all going back to India next year”, “They must all be deported back to their pit”, “We will confiscate all their belongings and send them all back to Gujarat” and “I can only imagine how the office smells their. .”
Not everyone joined in the verbal lynching. Several Americans defended Mohnot. “F*** em. love it with fanmaker,” wrote one of them, with a data chart showing Indian-Americans with the highest median household income in the US ($100,500), nearly 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.