President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the move boosted employment opportunities by advertising the number of “record” foreign workers his administration allowed from Mexico to the United States.
Biden made a comment inside Press conference With Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House as an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants continue to invade the country.
Meanwhile, inflation in the United States is at its highest level in 40 years, and the number of Americans employed is declining.
The current unemployment rate is 3.6%Marks the lowest since February 2020, according to the Ministry of Labor.
“My government is leading the way in creating work opportunities through legal channels,” Biden said Tuesday. “And last year, my administration set a record. It issued more than 300,000 H-2 visas to Mexican workers.”
“We also reached a five-year high on visas issued to Central America. This year, we are doubling this in Central America.”
according to analysis According to data from the Immigration Research Center of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in January 2021, the unemployment rate of natively born Americans remained much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the analysis, the number of unemployed Native Americans was 8.6 million in January 2021, while the number of unemployed immigrants was 2.2 million.
another data As of April 2022, the unemployment rate for both US-born and immigrant workers was 3.3%, according to the Immigration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan independent think tank.
More jobs, rising wages
another study According to the United States Immigration Reform Federation (FAIR), which looked at the number of jobs from September 2020 to March 2022, there are currently about 11.5 million jobs in the United States and 14.73 million Americans available. increase.
“This means that there are 3.23 million more workers in the country than open jobs,” says FAIR.
Despite the latest data on unemployment, Biden on Tuesday said that since he took office, his administration has “created more jobs than any previous president at the beginning of his administration-almost 850. Ten thousand new jobs. “
President Biden admitted that inflation had skyrocketed, but said “wages had risen by 5%” because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“But we have the lowest rate of almost any major country in the world,” Biden added. “Last month, we created another 300, and 57,000 new jobs, and that doesn’t mean we’re not having problems. We do.”
The meeting between Biden and Obrador on Tuesday took place shortly after a spokesman for President Jill Biden issued a statement on her behalf, apologizing for her remarks at the San Antonio event “Latin X IncluXion” luncheon on Monday. did.
During the event, the first woman compared Hispanics to tacos and caused a backlash among the Latin community.
“The First Lady apologizes for her words conveying more than pure admiration and love for the Latin community,” spokesman Michael Larosa said. I have written Follow the fallout from the comparison on Twitter.
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Katabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She focuses primarily on the United States and covers the news and business of The Epoch Times.