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A dramatic schism over social issues? The United Methodist Church has been here before – but this time, America’s religious landscape is far different

The United Methodist Church will hold its General Conference, delayed several years by the pandemic, in April 2024. The meeting comes amid a dramatic divide…

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Debates over LGBTQ+ issues have divided Methodist congregations for years leading up to the current schism. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File

The United Methodist Church’s General Conference will meet in Charlotte, North Carolina from April 23 to May 4, 2024. Originally scheduled for 2020 and delayed three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this meeting of the church’s legislative body comes at a critical time for the United States’ second-largest Protestant denomination.

In 2022, conservative Methodists announced a break with the UMC, forming the Global Methodist Church. These leaders believed that the UMC had become too liberal, drifting away from orthodoxy. The issue at the heart of the split, however, revolves around the UMC’s long-standing battle over LGBTQ+ rights.

This denominational split draws comparisons to one in 1844, when Methodists divided over slavery. As a scholar of American religious history and Methodist studies, I see parallels but also great differences between the current schism and the one in 1844.

Both schisms center on predominant social issues of their eras. The current schism, however, comes at a time when United Methodists, like other American churches, must navigate a changing religious landscape – one where church membership is declining, especially among younger Americans.

Methodist roots

The UMC traces its origins to the 18th-century Anglican clergyman John Wesley, who sought to reinvigorate Anglicans’ sense of personal faith.

Emphasizing piety and social engagement, Wesley’s followers spread Methodism throughout the British Isles and North America. As the movement grew, his followers separated from the Anglican Church to form several Methodist denominations.

The upper half of a statue of a man with wavy hair in a heavy coat.
A statue of John Wesley sculpted by Paul Raphael Montford, in Melbourne, Australia. Adam Carr/Wikimedia Commons

The first Methodist church in the U.S., the Methodist Episcopal Church, was founded in 1784. This church and smaller Methodist denominations grew rapidly. By 1850, approximately 1 in 3 Americans affiliated with a church was a Methodist.

Today, there are 80 Methodist and Wesleyan denominations around the world, with the UMC being the largest.

The 1844 rupture

Like other Protestant churches before the Civil War, Methodists were divided over slavery.

Wesley viewed slavery as a great social evil that deprived enslaved people of God-given human rights. However, U.S. Methodists – including one of the founders of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Francis Asbury – worried that enforcing the church’s prohibitions against slavery would alienate members in the South. For much of the early 19th century, Northern and Southern Methodists followed Asbury’s lead, seeking to prevent a formal schism.

At the same time, Methodism fractured. African Americans in the Methodist Episcopal Church were barred from being ordained as ministers, and church members often worshipped in segregated congregations. This led to the formation of many independent African American Methodist churches – the largest being the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen in 1816.

At the 1844 General Conference, the slavery issue boiled over into a major schism. Delegates voted to remove from office a bishop, James Osgood Andrew, because he owned slaves. Andrew’s removal angered Southern delegates who argued that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible. In 1845, Southern Methodist leaders withdrew from the denomination, forming the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

A map of the United States on faded yellow paper with some states outlined in red.
A map from 1901 showing areas of the country with congregations in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Fifteenth Annual Report of the Woman's Home Mission Society of The Methodist Episcopal Church, South/Wikimedia Commons

In 1939, these Northern and Southern churches reunited. Together with another Protestant denomination with historical ties to Methodism, the Evangelical United Brethren, they then combined to form the UMC in 1968.

Debating homosexuality

In 1972, the General Conference adopted a formal statement asserting that homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Subsequent conferences tightened these restrictions, notably in 1984, when the church barred what it called “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained.

Since the 1970s, groups on both sides of this issue have mobilized. An organization called the Reconciling Ministries Network has worked to bring together UMC congregations who support the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people. Conservative groups, meanwhile, such as a caucus called the Good News Movement, have campaigned to enforce the existing LGBTQ+ prohibitions.

In 1996, the General Conference added legislation prohibiting clergy from conducting same-sex weddings – though the number who did so increased significantly.

In recent decades, members of many U.S. churches, including United Methodists, have shown greater acceptance toward LGBTQ+ people. The 2016 election of Karen Oliveto as the first openly gay bishop of any gender in the UMC marked these shifting attitudes.

A man in a suit and glasses speaks into a microphone in front of a crowded room of seated people.
Rev. Jeffrey Kuan wears a prayer stole in support for LGBTQ+ acceptance as he speaks at the UMC General Conference in 2004. AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

Conservatives continue to oppose reforms, including a growing number of United Methodists from outside the U.S – an increasing portion of the church. For example, many African United Methodists come from nations with strict laws banning homosexuality. Of the 862 delegates attending the upcoming General Conference, 380 will be from outside the U.S. Nearly 300 of these delegates will come from Africa.

At an impasse

Conflicts between conservatives and progressives came to a head in 2019, when bishops called a special conference in hopes of preventing a schism.

Their council endorsed what was called the One Church Plan, which would have allowed United Methodists in different countries more autonomy. Specifically, they could determine how to address questions on sexuality.

However, delegates voted overwhelmingly for what was called The Traditional Plan. This kept the church’s restrictions against LGBTQ+ people in place, while calling for more punitive measures against pastors who conducted same-sex weddings.

The 2019 conference then passed a resolution giving local congregations the option to leave the UMC over matters of sexuality. Congregations were given until the end of 2023 to disaffiliate, although the ramifications were to be finalized at the 2020 General Conference.

A man in a suit speaks at a pulpit in front of a room of standing people, most of whom are older.
The Rev. Bill Farmer speaks to Grace Methodist Church in Homosassa Springs, Fla., which is affiliated with the Global Methodist Church. AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File

This session was repeatedly postponed, however, due to COVID-19. Doubting that U.S.-based leaders would uphold the prohibitions of the Traditional Plan, a group of conservatives formed the Global Methodist Church in March 2022, triggering an exodus of several local churches. As of early 2024, more than 7,600 churches have disaffiliated, representing roughly a fourth of United Methodist congregations.

Uncertain future

Ahead of the 2024 General Conference, conservatives have indicated their intention to lobby to extend the deadline for disaffiliation. Some progressive United Methodists, frustrated by the UMC’s persistent refusal to expand LGBTQ+ rights, have considered forming a third Methodist denomination.

Regardless of what happens in Charlotte, Methodist churches will face challenging futures.

A bird's-eye view of a church sanctuary, with half or more of the pews empty.
Rev. Chris Morgan leads his congregation at Christ United Methodist Church in Bethel Park, Pa., in 2022. AP Photo/Philip G. Pavely

Unlike 1844, when many churches were growing rapidly, the current schism comes as American Protestantism is shrinking. This includes not only mainline Protestant denominations, but more conservative churches as well. In 1968, United Methodist membership in the U.S. was 10.3 million; at the end of 2018, it was 6.7 million.

Another serious challenge is the rising percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation, commonly called religious nones – many of whom are disillusioned by anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

Regardless of the General Conference’s outcome, Methodists face a religious landscape unknown to their 19th century predecessors.

Christopher H. Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Spread & Containment

How being furloughed affected people’s sense of time and relationship with work

For many, furlough was a time of disorientation and reflection.

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Mariia Korneeva/Shutterstock

Between March 2020 and September 2021, millions of workers furloughed under the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme lived what for many of us is a dream: being paid not to work.

Through interviews, I’ve researchedthe impact of this time on 35 people who were furloughed under the scheme. I found that for some, furlough created opportunities for reflection and growth, but for most of my interviewees it was a time of uncertainty and disorientation.

Social distancing requirements during the pandemic meant that non-essential businesses were paused or partially closed by the UK government. Under the government scheme, employers could apply for financial grants to furlough workers and pay them 80% of their wage to stay at home.

The higher a worker’s educational qualifications, the less likely they were to be furloughed. Workers from the hospitality and entertainment sectors were most likely to be furloughed, with young workers and older workers particularly affected. More women were furloughed at the start of the scheme than men, though at the end of the scheme more men were affected. And younger workers, as well as minority ethnic workers, were disproportionately likely to be affected by post-furlough job loss.

The gift of time

A few of my interviewees found furlough to be a relaxing break from the stressors of work, or a time to try new hobbies. One woman, an agency administrator, used the time to fulfil a long-held ambition to restore vintage airplanes. An airplane dispatcher researched climate change and became an activist. Another, a café manager, used furlough to learn creative writing and dance through online classes.

But for the majority of those I spoke to, furlough was a disorientating time period. Their experiences show how many people’s everyday rhythms and sense of self are closely tied to their work. Several of the workers I interviewed felt the absence of work acutely.

Abigail*, a fine dining chef, said that she found her usual catering work “creative” and “really satisfying”, especially when people said they enjoyed her food. In furlough she found herself without purpose and spent her days tiptoeing around her partner who was working from home, mindful not to disturb him and his productivity. She couldn’t fill her own time as she felt guilty about being paid to do nothing.

A worker with a face mask stands inside a cafe with a 'closed' sign on the glass window.
Workers in the hospitality sector were disproportionately affected by furlough. Irina Soboleva S/Shutterstock

Lydia, a retail worker, found herself unable to maintain her normal circadian rhythms and became “nocturnal by accident”. At one point, she stayed up for 22 hours in order to exhaust herself and reboot her sleep patterns. Lydia’s circadian rhythms only went back to normal when she and her partner, also furloughed, returned to work.

Joanna, a charity worker, realised that she would feel destabilised and “stagnate” by not working during furlough. Joanna set herself up with volunteer work in the charity sector, made a home office and worked from nine to five, with tea breaks and lunch breaks, “to have that element of still working” and to make her days feel like normal working days.

Others had to find alternative income streams when the 80% furlough salary did not meet their living costs. Lee, an events marketeer, learned how to trade currencies through online courses, something completely new to him. Anxious to make ends meet for himself and his family of four, Lee treated the newfound activity of trading as a full-time job.

Disorientation of furlough

How Abigail, Joanna, Lydia and Lee reacted to the absence of their usual work lives exposes how ingrained the rhythms of work can be. When those rhythms were removed by furlough, their lives became disorientating and uncertain in different ways.

My study also revealed that this disorientation continued when people went back to work. Carol, a casino worker, discussed feeling anxious that she had fallen too far out of the rhythms of work while furloughed. Her fears were justified, as after 40 years doing her job, she found timing tasks difficult on her return to work.


Read more: How COVID lockdowns distorted our sense of time – new research


Others furloughed, were worried that they would not be able to keep up with the social aspects of their workplace. Jenny, a stage manager fretted that her banter wasn’t “at the top of my game” and she would be embarrassed by her colleagues by being too slow at matching retorts.

Returning to work also involved catching up with backlogs of tasks that had built up during furlough. Alexandra, an optometrist, discussed how her newly heavy workload made her job feel more stressful than before furlough.

Pausing from work

This pandemic-induced pause revealed how integral work is in some people’s lives. This revelation led some workers in the study to reevaluate their relationship with work.

Caroline, a charity worker, began to think that she had given too much time and effort to her employer. On her return to work, like many other people, she started “quiet quitting” – or putting less effort in. For Carlos, a food scientist, furlough made him realise that his employer did not fulfil his expectations, so he resigned and found another job.

Like many in the study, Alison, who used furlough to learn to dance and write creatively, discussed how the time helped her revise her attitude to work, saying: “Work used to be my life… I realised life was not work”.

*All study participants have been anonymised.

Victoria J E Jones received funding from the UKRI through the ESRC to conduct the PhD study 'Waiting Through Furlough: a Geography of Disorientation' which is the research referred to in this article.

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Escobar: How The “Order” Based On Made-Up Rules Is Descending Into Savagery

Escobar: How The "Order" Based On Made-Up Rules Is Descending Into Savagery

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The Europeans will never be able to…

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Escobar: How The "Order" Based On Made-Up Rules Is Descending Into Savagery

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine...

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho’ unseen amongst us, -visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.-
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
- ShelleyHymn to Intellectual Beauty

As the de facto North Atlantic Terror Organization celebrates its 75th birthday, taking Lord Ismay’s motto to ever soaring heights (“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”), that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund to weaponize Ukraine for the next five years.

Translation, regarding the crucial money front in the NATO-Russia clash: partial exit of the Hegemon – already obsessing with The Next Forever War, against China; enter the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas, all in deep debt and most mired in recession.

A few IQs over average room temperature at NATO’s HQ in Haren, in Brussels, had the temerity to wonder how to come up with such a fortune, as NATO has zero leverage to raise money among member states.

After all, the Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine. For instance, assuming the White House-proposed $60 billion package to Ukraine would be approved by the U.S. Congress – and it won’t – no less than 64% of the total will never reach Kiev: it will be laundered within the industrial-military complex.

Yet it gets even more dystopic: Norwegian Wood, robotic stare, arms flailing, actually believes his proposed move will not imply a direct NATO military presence in Ukraine – or country 404; something that is already a fact on the ground for quite a while, irrespective of the warmongering hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris (Peskov: “Russia-NATO relations have descended into direct confrontation”).

Now couple the Lethal Looney Tunes spectacle along the NATOstan front with the Hegemon’s aircraft carrier performance in West Asia, consistently taking its industrial-scale slaughter/starvation Genocide Project in Gaza to indescribable heights – the meticulously documented holocaust watched in contorted silence by the “leaders” of the Global North.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”

The “logic” behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children.

Nearly simultaneously, the biblical psychopathology gang completely eviscerated the Vienna convention – something that even the historical Nazis never did – striking Iran’s consular mission/ambassador’s residence in Damascus.

This was a missile attack on a diplomatic mission, enjoying immunity, on the territory of a third country, against which the gang is not at war. And on top of it, killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajizadeh, another five officers, and a total of 10 people.

Translation: an act of terror, against two sovereign states, Syria and Iran. Equivalent to the recent terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow.

The inevitable question rings around all corners of the lands of the Global Majority: how can these de facto terrorists possibly get away with all this, over and over again?

The sinews of Liberal Totalitarianism

Four years ago, at the start of what I later qualified as the Raging Twenties, we were beginning to watch the consolidation of an intertwined series of concepts defining a new paradigm. We were becoming familiar with notions such as circuit breaker; negative feedback loop; state of exception; necropolitics; and hybrid neofascism.

As the decade marches on, our plight may at least have been alleviated by a twin glimmer of hope: the drive towards multipolarity, led by the Russia-China strategic partnership, with Iran playing a key part, and all that coupled with the total breakdown, live, of the “rules-based international order”.

Yet to affirm there will be a long and winding road ahead is the Mother of All Euphemisms.

So, to quote Bowie, the ultimate late, great aesthete: Where Are We Now? Let’s take this very sharp analysis by the always engaging Fabio Vighi at Cardiff University and tweak it a little further.

Anyone applying critical thinking to the world around us can feel the collapse of the system. It’s a closed system alright, easily definable as Liberal Totalitarianism. Cui bono? The 0.0001%.

Nothing ideological about that. Follow the money. The defining negative feedback loop is actually the debt loop. A criminally anti-social mechanism kept in place by – what else – a psychopathology, as acute as the one exhibited by the biblical genocidals in West Asia.

The Mechanism is enforced by a triad.

1.The transnational financial elite, the superstars of the 0.0001%.

2.Right beneath it, the politico-institutional layer, from the U.S. Congress to the European Commission (EC) in Brussels, as well as comprador elite “leaders” across the Global North and South.

3.The former “intelligentsia”, now essentially hacks for hire from media to academia.

This institutionalized hyper-mediatization of reality is (italics mine), in fact, The Mechanism.

It’s this mechanism that controlled the merging of the pre-fabricated “pandemic” – complete with hardcore social engineering sold as “humanitarian lockdowns” – into, once again, Forever Wars, from Project Genocide in Gaza to the Russophobia/cancel culture obsession inbuilt in Project Proxy War in Ukraine.

That’s the essence of Totalitarian Normality: the Project for Humanity by the appallingly mediocre, self-appointed Great Reset “elites” of the collective West.

Killing them softly with AI

A key vector of the whole mechanism is the direct, vicious interconnection between a tecno-military euphoria and the hyper-inflationary financial sector, now in thrall with AI.

Enter, for instance, AI models such as ‘Lavender’, tested on the ground in the Gaza killing field lab. Literally: artificial intelligence programming the extermination of humans. And it’s happening, in real time. Call it Project AI Genocide.

Another vector, already experimented, is inbuilt in the indirect assertion by toxic EC Medusa Ursula von der Lugen: essentially, the need to produce weapons as Covid vaccines.

That’s at the core of a plan to use funding of the EU by European taxpayers to “increase financing” of “joint contracts for weapons”. That’s an offspring of von der Lugen’s push to roll out Covid vaccines – a gigantic Pfizer-linked scam for which she is about to be investigated and arguably exposed by the EU’s Public Prosecutor Office. In her own words, addressing the proposed weapons scam: “We did this for vaccines and gas.”

Call it Weaponization of Social Engineering 2.0.

Amidst all the action in this vast corruption swamp, the Hegemon agenda remains quite blatant: to keep its – dwindling – predominantly thalassocratic, military hegemony, no matter what, as the basis for its financial hegemony; protect the U.S. dollar; and protect those unmeasurable, unpayable debts in U.S. dollars.

And that brings us to the tawdry economic model of turbo-capitalism, as sold by collective West media hacks: the debt loop, virtual money, borrowed non-stop to deal with “autocrat” Putin and “Russian aggression”. That’s a key by-product of Michael Hudson’s searing analysis of the FIRE (Finance-Insurance-Real Estate) syndrome.

Ouroboros intervenes: the serpent bites its own tail. Now the inherent folly of The Mechanism is inevitably leading casino capitalism to resort to barbarism. Undiluted savagery – of the Crocus City Hall kind and of the Project Gaza Genocide kind.

And that’s how The Mechanism engenders institutions – from Washington to Brussels to hubs across the Global North to genocidal Tel Aviv – stripped down to the status of psychotic killers, at the mercy of Big Finance/FIRE (oh, such fabulous seafront real estate opportunities available in “vacant” Gaza.)

How can we possibly escape such folly? Will we have the will and the discipline to follow Shelley’s vision and, in “this dim vast vale of tears”, summon the transcending Spirit of Beauty – and harmony, equanimity and justice?

*  *  *

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/08/2024 - 03:30

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Millions Of New Illegal Immigrants Mask True State Of US Economy

Millions Of New Illegal Immigrants Mask True State Of US Economy

Authored by Emel Akan and Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Economists…

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Millions Of New Illegal Immigrants Mask True State Of US Economy

Authored by Emel Akan and Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Economists are expressing concern over the increasing number of illegal immigrants in the United States, who they believe are obscuring the actual condition of the jobs market and the U.S. economy.

(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images)

For the last few years, the headline employment figure has been impressive. The country has recovered the lost jobs from the government-imposed shutdowns during the pandemic and added a few million more, despite a climate of high inflation and rising interest rates.

In 2023, the economy added approximately 3 million new positions. To kick off 2024, more than 800,000 new jobs have been added.

The labor market data is critical as it helps determine the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy.

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said on March 20 that the central bank is monitoring the labor market “very carefully” and isn’t observing any “cracks.”

We follow all the possible stories that are out there about there being cracks, but the overall picture, really, is a strong labor market,” he noted. “Things are returning more to their state in 2019.”

However, a closer look at the household survey of the employment report reveals a more gloomy picture. Employment for native-born Americans has been in decline over the past four years. This means that all of the job gains have gone to foreign-born workers, including both legal and illegal immigrants.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of U.S.-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.

In addition, during the Biden administration, there have been approximately twice as many illegal immigrants as legal immigrants entering the country, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.

That’s a big problem,” says economist Stephen Moore.

“What we’re interested in is how the economy is working for American citizens. So, we’re distorting the jobs market with all of the illegal immigrants,” he told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Moore, who served as an economic adviser to former President Donald Trump, criticized the Biden administration for turning the U.S. immigration system “upside down.”

He argued that the U.S. economy “desperately needs” more legal immigrants, who possess high skill levels or special talents, rather than illegal immigrants, who tend to be less educated.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of US-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.

Construction workers help build a residential building in Miami on Jan. 5, 2024. (Joe Raedle, Getty Images)

‘Very Troubling’

The BLS includes illegal immigrants in the labor statistics, identifying them as “undocumented workers.” However, the agency doesn’t disclose the data publicly and instead groups legal and illegal immigrant job data together.

Many economists have been surprised by the growing employment gap between native- and foreign-born workers since October 2019.

The contrast in the past year is even more striking. According to the BLS, native-born employment fell by 651,000 in March 2024 from the same period last year, while foreign-born employment climbed by nearly 1.3 million.

According to Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), it is hard to know the exact number of illegal immigrants who have recently entered the country and found employment.

However, he estimates roughly half of the job gains among foreign-born workers have gone to illegal immigrants over the last year.

Mr. Camarota notes that the government should know all economic activity and job creation in America, so counting illegal immigrants is not a problem.

“What I do think is problematic is that you can see a low unemployment rate and more importantly, lots of job growth, but almost all the job growth is going to the immigrants. That’s the distortion,” he told The Epoch Times.

There were a total of 31 million immigrant workers as of March 2024, constituting nearly 20 percent of the U.S. labor force. Mr. Camarota estimates that at the beginning of this year, roughly 9 million of these workers were illegally present.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the number of “immigrants with a nonlegal or pending status” increased by 2.4 million in 2023.

This group includes individuals who have been apprehended and released into the country, individuals who have managed to evade the Border Patrol, officially known as “gotaways,” and individuals who have overstayed their visas. The figure is modified to account for deaths, legalizations, and departures.

According to Mr. Camarota, the rise in illegal employment conceals the true state of the U.S. jobs market. There has been a concerning decline in the labor force participation of U.S.-born working-age men from the 1960s to the present. And this decline is more pronounced among the less educated.

Globalization, outsourcing of jobs overseas, generous welfare and disability policies, and wage stagnation are among the factors that have contributed to this drop over the years, Mr. Camarota said.

“That decline in labor force participation, particularly among U.S.-born men, is linked to many social problems, from overdose deaths to crime,” he said.

Hence, he argued that the government is missing the overall picture by focusing on headline data and reporting strong job growth, and not saying it’s fueled primarily by low-wage illegal immigrants.

“That’s very troubling,” he said.

Another issue with more illegal immigration is that it drives down wages for American workers.

According to EJ Antoni, an economist and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, one of the key reasons President Joe Biden is polling so poorly among voters is “because they are not the ones getting the jobs.”

As a result of the flood of cheap labor, American workers also earn less than they would otherwise, he told The Epoch Times.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, rejects the notion that illegal immigrants are hurting U.S.-born workers.

Experts Heidi Shierholz and Daniel Costa at the Institute wrote in a recent report that “the idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong.”

“The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace, while simultaneously maintaining record-low unemployment for U.S.-born workers,” they stated.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 04/07/2024 - 14:00

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