America


Immigration Curbs Will Ease Working-Class Pain


Wages for unskilled and semiskilled jobs will rise as labor market tightens, say experts. A BY LISA SCHIFFREN


mericans with incomes under $100,000 helped put Donald Trump over the top last November, especially with their votes in the seven critical swing states.


Working-class Americans came out for the president in


record numbers after mostly voting for Democrat candi- dates previously. With their incomes stagnating for 50 years as GDP


per capita has risen 141% and others were moving up the income ladder, the working class needed the policy solu- tions he was offering. Now, the question arises: What can the Trump adminis-


tration actually do to help them? The most basic way to raise wages is by tightening up the


labor market for unskilled and semiskilled work. This will be accomplished by deporting illegal immi-


grants and limiting legal and illegal immigration in the future, which is underway. Working-class wages haven’t gone up because there has


been, for the past 30 years, a constant stream of immigrants and illegal aliens who would take jobs at lower pay. It isn’t necessarily true that there are jobs Americans


“won’t do.” If you raise pay, which happens when labor is scarcer, people will do most jobs to make a good living. There is a huge lobby for cheap labor, and it is found at


the heart of the Republican Party. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, is totally pro-immigration, as are certain industries. With the 30-40 million illegal immigrants who have


come in this century, that means that wages stay low. So, Trump has to fight these forces ostensibly on their side. One argument is that if you have to pay more for, say,


22 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2025


agricultural labor, food will cost more. But if food costs a little more (though still down from the Biden-era inflation) and a third of the workforce that has been underpaid is bet- ter off, is that a problem? One area that Trump can easily control is H-2A and


H-2B visas for, respectively, seasonal agricultural and non- agricultural workers. More unemployed inner-city young men would do semiskilled construction work if wages were higher.


American Compass is a think tank that works on policy


to create a better economy for workers. On its website, it says, “We are developing the conservative economic agenda to supplant blind faith in free markets with a focus on workers, their families, and communities.” They are especially focused on the “reindustrialization”


of the economy, after the hollowing out that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other turn- of-the-century free trade agreements created. Their literature stresses that free market ideology often


reduces citizens to mere consumers of market goods, as if a cheap TV is more valuable than a community centered around a source of well-paying jobs. American Compass is a pillar of the New Right, which


is offering a more populist, nationalist, competing vision of conservative ideology for the Trump era, in comparison to the older Reaganite, free market, laissez faire version. Leaders include Vice President JD Vance, Sens. Tom


Cotton and Josh Hawley, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and a handful of intellectuals like national conservative Yoram Hazony, as well as Oren Cass, the founder and chief economist of American Compass. Newsmax asked Cass what Trump should do to help the working class. He said: “The most important thing is to try


BRIAN VAN DER BRUG/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES


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