Media
Event Summary
The Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion on the effects of the federal government’s immigration policies on Black Americans. The panelists explored historical and recent trends, focusing on the wage and employment impacts on Black communities.
The July 11, 10 a.m. Eastern event featured representatives of Black America for Immigration Reform, a non-profit founded by Black American leaders advocating for immigration reforms that serve the interests of Black men and women.
Roy Beck, author of Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias and Depression of Black Wealth, also joined the panel, exploring how government policies and actions that have enabled employers to depress Black wages and to avoid hiring African Americans.
The participants reflected on the views of leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and A. Philip Randolph, who believed that mass immigration harmed their community. The panel considered whether restricting immigration today would tighten the labor market and provide more opportunities for Black American workers.
Participants
Kathleen Wells, Executive Director, BAIR
Former host of both the Kathleen Wells Show and The Naked Truth Report; member of Project 21, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s black leadership network program.
Donna Jackson, Director of Membership Development, BAIR
Director of Membership Development, Project 21, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s black leadership network program; Board member, The Conservative Caucus; former Deputy Controller, U.S. Export-Import Bank.
Roy Beck, Founder of NumbersUSA
Author of five books, the most recent being Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias and. Depression of Black Wealth.
Moderator: Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
Date and Location
July 11, 2024
Washington, DC
MARK KRIKORIAN: Good morning. My name is Mark Krikorian. I’m executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
The issue of the impact of immigration on Black Americans has been something that’s been considered in the debate for a long time and by a long time I don’t mean since Barbara Jordan in the 1990s talked about immigration policy. I mean much longer than that.
Let me read you a couple of quotes. Quote: “Every hour sees the Black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived immigrant whose hunger and whose color are thought to give him a better title to the place.” Unquote. That was Frederick Douglass in 1853.
A little more recently, quote: “To those of the White race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race. Cast down your bucket where you are.” That was more recent. That was 1895, Booker T. Washington.
So this is an issue that has been central to the immigration debate for as long as there’s been an immigration debate and so we at the Center for Immigration Studies thought it would be useful to have a panel discussion to air some of these issues and we have some very highly qualified people to talk about this issue.
First, Roy Beck is the founder of NumbersUSA. He’s the author of several books but most recently and most relevantly his book entitled “Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth.”
Also, we are then going to hear from Kathleen Wells who is executive director of a new organization, Black America for Immigration Reform, and the website of that organization, just to make sure I don’t forget to give it later, is ProtectBlackWorkers.org. It’s Black America for Immigration Reform and Kathleen will tell us a little more about that and also her thoughts on the issue in general.
And then last but not least Donna Jackson, who’s the director of membership development for BAIR, and after each of our panelists has their say and gives their statement we’ll be taking questions. So if you want to send in questions email them to [email protected]. That’s [email protected], and we’ll take those questions after the panelists make their presentations.
Roy, why don’t you start?
ROY BECK: In a recent presidential debate, one of the candidates talked about mass immigration/open border being an enemy of Black American workers. Much of the media responded in just amazement that something like that could be said – it can’t be – and as usual the experts were trotted out to say that basically what people can see with their eyes is just not true.
You can go to impoverished communities in south Chicago and various Black communities – urban communities – around the country and you look at what’s happening there, and basically the experts say, yes, but our econometric studies show us that that’s not true. Your eyes are lying. You have lying eyes.
This has been going on for decades in terms of ignoring what has been – what mass immigration has done to Black communities and one of the big lies is that low immigration does not help Black communities and this is where it’s important to know the history.
We do have some, I think, an increasing number of people who actually are changing their mind, coming out and speaking. Sir Angus Deaton, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Princeton, after a lifetime of referring to econometric studies and saying mass immigration is good for a lot of people and it has relatively small harm, he’s come out and said, I changed my mind. I’m wrong. I’m busy looking at these econometric models instead of what you can see with your eyes. And he said historians have a better idea about what immigration does than does these high-level econometric studies.
So we don’t have to guess what would happen if we would lower immigration. We have had a couple of major pilot projects. One of the pilot projects was right after World War – right after the Civil War. That wasn’t a matter of having low immigration but moderate immigration. Slaves were freed and for about 10 years Black Americans moved north, succeeded, rose the job ladder, started businesses.
But in a deal that was intentional, in 1880 mass immigration was created at a whole new level. Of course, Reconstruction ended. The troops were pulled out of the South after 1876 and we went through a period of about 40 years of mass immigration in which not only did Blacks stop – cease being able to move out of the South to go to jobs in the North but Blacks in the North had to move back south.
So that brings us to World War I, and I’ll quickly just mention that World War I Congress didn’t save Black Americans on this but I guess you could say the – Germany and Italy did. But you had World War I and World War I stopped the mass movement of Europeans into the United States.
And so for four years we had low immigration and Black – half a million Blacks moved out of the South to jobs in the North because the northern industrialists needed the labor. They needed labor so badly they sent recruiters throughout the South to recruit.
I mean, can you imagine today, Kathleen, if we – if the big businesses around America needed labor so badly that they would send recruiters into the job deserts of urban communities around America and be recruiting? But they don’t need to recruit now because our government provides them with foreign workers.
Now, World War I ended, thankfully, but high immigration began again, and in 1923 – just to remind you, in 1923 we still had about 90 percent of the descendants of American slavery still lived in the states of the Confederacy.
And let’s not sugarcoat it. At that time this was an apartheid system – a legal apartheid system in which most of the local governments turned a blind eye to vigilantism, to lynching, that most people lived and worked in poverty, and they couldn’t get – they couldn’t leave because there was no place to go to.
But in 1924 Congress passed an immigration act that slashed immigration numbers and for the next 40 years we saw an amazing transformation of the African-American population. We know what low immigration will do because we have the history of 1924 to 1965. It ended in 1965 because Congress started a new immigration program. They repassed mass immigration. More about that probably at another point.
But the main point here that I would make about our history is that we don’t have to guess. We don’t have to do econometric studies. Historians can show us what happened. It’s very interesting – in 1923 A. Philip Randolph, a leftist labor activist, one of the great Black leaders of the 20th century, he looked at what had happened with just temporary cuts in immigration and he predicted that if we could have a long-term period of low immigration he said that the Black Americans would experience better education, better housing, get voting rights, apartheid would end, and there would even be an end lynching, and basically over the next 40 decades – it was slow but – some of it was slow. The economic progress was immediate. But the civil rights happened eventually over those 40 years.
So these are the things that we know can happen. Barbara Jordan came along, headed the commission in the 1990s and that commission basically came up with a plan that was very, very similar to what Black editors were calling for in the late teens and the 1920s and that was, you know, cut immigration way back and use that as the best Black economic improvement program that you could possibly pass.
Unfortunately, Congress turned its back to that and we’re still in the situation right now that, in a sense, it’s not the same as 1923 but I tell you – or I could say in early 1924 but in 2024 in many Black urban communities around the country the prospects are about as dire as they were a hundred years ago and mass immigration is a major reason for that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Roy.
Kathleen?
KATHLEEN WELLS: Well, you say it’s not as bad as 1924. I think it’s actually – I can make the argument that it’s actually worse than 1924.
In Los Angeles, Black Americans are 40 percent of the homeless. This is absurd when you have tens of – and it’s been going – this mass immigration/illegal aliens have been going on since the 1965 Immigration Act but it got really heavy in the 1980s and 1990s.
But the history – I want to go back to the history because this history is so important and this is why I make the – this is why I devoted myself to Black America for immigration reform because I believe this history – many – Black Americans need to know this history, what was going on in the 1800s with Frederick Douglass, with Booker T. Washington, with W.E.B. Du Bois, with Marcus Garvey.
All four of them – they were dissimilar, they didn’t have the same positions politically or ideologies, but they all four agreed on mass immigration. They said it was absolutely unacceptable.
And so we fast forward to today. We don’t even have – we don’t only have mass immigration because America accepts more legal immigrants per year, at least a million, than any other country. So that’s mass immigration.
But now we have illegal aliens. OK. So if you – and this is completely unacceptable, and if you are for illegal aliens, which we can’t even use that term says the political left because it’s not politically correct, and I want to say political correctness has destroyed Black America and has destroyed America.
We must speak the truth. And if illegal aliens is a term used in our United States Code, you are anti-American if you don’t use the terms used by our founding documents. That’s what I take. That’s the position I take.
So I want to go right back to the 1800s again. The article is “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are” by Robert Malloy, and the Center for Immigration Studies published that article. They need to republish it again so Black – I want to – all the listeners out there I want to encourage you to read that article. You can read the actual words by Frederick Douglass, by Booker T. Washington, by Marcus Garvey.
You can read their actual words. Also, Black publications, Black articles, newspaper articles, Black intellectuals said mass immigration is unacceptable. This was in the 1800s. I don’t know why the political left, the Democratic Party, denies this history. I don’t know why they deny it.
Why are they harming Black Americans? If you’re pro-illegal aliens, you’re anti-Black America. That’s the position I take. That’s the position that we take at BAIR. If you’re pro-illegal aliens, you’re anti-Black American.
We are Black Americans. We have been in this country – our ancestors have been in this country since its founding. Political – let’s see, identity politics has failed. However, Black Americans and White Americans matter.
Why? Because we’ve both been in this country since its founding so what happens to each group matters. Every other group has come relatively recently since the 1965 Immigration Act. They’re relatively new to America.
But there’s no way that Black Americans and White Americans should be decimated or dissolved or in any way – how do I want to – lessened by immigration because they’ve been here. They’re the descendants of the ancestors who’ve been here since the founding of the country.
They matter. The truth matters. Why isn’t the truth getting out? I don’t know. Why doesn’t the Democrat – why has the Democratic Party betrayed Black America when we have been their most loyal constituents? Why have Black politicians betrayed Black Americans?
In fact, I know that – let’s see, what’s the guy out of Texas? He was just a guest. I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. He was just a guest on “Washington Journal” this morning. He is pro-illegal aliens.
All Black politicians are pro-illegal aliens. They call them it’s a good thing for our – they say it’s a good thing for the economy. How that’s – it’s just a narrative. It’s propaganda. It’s not true because the data is clear.
So for every 10 percent increase in mass immigration Black Americans lose a certain percentage of their wealth. I don’t know if – I can’t remember if it’s 1.1 percent or 2.5 percent. It suppresses their wages. The incarceration rates increase. Why? Because when Black men are not employed, they resort to violence. It deteriorates the family. It’s just a lose-lose situation.
We should not continue mass immigration. We should – illegal aliens should not be in the country at all. If you’re pro-illegal – I’ll repeat this. If you’re pro-illegal aliens you’re anti-Black American. That’s the position I take and I’m sticking with it.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Kathleen.
Donna?
DONNA JACKSON: Hi. Yes. I serve on the board with Kathleen on BAIR, but I’m also the director of membership development for Project 21 Black Leadership Network, and I think that’s important to understand.
We are a center-right organization. So I’m saying this to say that the majority of the people that actually call or I come in contact with usually are center right. Something has changed.
I get more phone calls from elite Black liberals than I do from conservative or people who lean conservative that are Black, and what has changed over the last two, two-and-a-half, three years? Illegal immigration.
I get phone calls at 11:00 in the morning from pastors, from leaders of NGOs, from community leaders, asking for my help that would never have the same policy and believe in the same policy issues that I do. But they’re asking for help because for the first time the straw that broke the camel’s back is mass illegal immigration in Black communities.
There’s a – I have a large network in Chicago of Black pastors who call and say, can you help us. Reality – there’s reality and there’s perception, and we need to not understand how powerful perception is. Here’s the perception of African-American males.
They think that illegal mass immigration of illegal immigrants in their community is so that they can swap out Black people for brown. They believe that they’re put there deliberately to take those jobs – low-industry, low-skill jobs that are historically held by African-American males.
They believe that they’re there to displace them so that they don’t have economic power so they can be pushed back.
Second, they believe that they’re there so that they can take control of their community. I hear from leaders in Black urban communities that they do – don’t lean right are saying to me that they’re meeting with people and they’re seeing these immigrants in their community actually recruiting members to be gang members.
Why? Because they want to take control of the community. They believe that there’s a plot to make sure that there is no Black ownership of businesses, of housing, because they have planted – deliberately planted all of the illegal immigrants purposely in minority communities to sow discord.
The last thing that I would hate to say but it’s true is that they believe that they – the left is deliberately setting up a scenario where there’s going to be a racial war between – not between Black and White but between Black and brown.
The fact that the majority of the illegal immigrants that you’ve seen in the last year are actually male, military-age individuals, a lot of those individuals are also – have been incarcerated, gang members, all of these situations, that we have a community that the Biden – I call him “Lock ’em up, Joe,” right – took – now, he didn’t just take fathers out of the house. He took fathers out of the community completely.
So there’s already a shortage of Black males in the community. Now you’re putting mass amounts of Black army-ready illegal immigrants in there. What do you think is going to happen?
Now, perception is a powerful thing. For the first time you have Black males who historically lean left that are all of a sudden moving to the right. Why? Because economically they’re being pushed down the ladder and these other people are coming, illegal immigrants that are being pushed forward and on the pedestal.
Imagine this – and I was thinking about this – the average income – median income for African Americans just nationwide $35,700 a year. That’s somebody that’s doing well. That’s the median income. That translates to about – a little bit over $31,000 a month pretax.
MR. BECK: Thirty-one hundred.
MS. JACKSON: Thirty-one hundred dollars a month pretax. If you add in the 15 percent because they still have to pay tax that’s about $2,600 a month. From that take away rent, which the average is $1,500 a month; in Chicago, $1,800 a month. If you’re lucky, you can share a(n) apartment with somebody. Maybe not. So you’re deducting that. Now you got to take out your transportation costs. You have to take out your food costs.
Illegal immigrants can come into this country. They get $2,200 a month for SSI. They get free rent. So let’s add that. Twenty-two hundred (dollars) average, 1,500 (dollars) in free rent. They’re already up to $3,700 a month.
Then you add in – and if you use the Eric Adams model they get another $1,400 in a debit card to pay for food and clothing and whatever necessities. So now you have people on this end who might – might – have about $400 a month to spend if they even – they’re probably going to be in the hole because they got other necessities that come up.
These people over here are actually living an upper-middle-class life coming – why? They’re being rewarded for crossing the border illegally. And that doesn’t even include the fact that they get free college. They get free health care.
So African – the perception is actually meeting reality when you see that there are people who have been fighting for freedom, and when you hear people say racism, when you say – when you hear Black people say racism what they’re talking about is financial freedom, financial stability – I don’t feel as financially stable as this person over here that’s doing well, this person over here that can afford all their bills, this person that can take care of their families, and in this sense Black people are being pushed back. Illegal immigrants are being propped up. So all of a sudden individuals that don’t – haven’t even achieved financial freedom – haven’t achieved it, fighting for decades – are now looking at people who have an instant amount of financial freedom.
I want to give you another story. I was in Memphis, Tennessee, for the last three weeks. Federal Express was laying off natural-born citizens to hire illegal immigrants. They were laying them off. Not only them, but it was another large company that you would know laying off legal citizens to replace them with illegal immigrants.
In the city of Chicago, the school board is considered a sanctuary city, which means that illegal immigrants get preferential treatment in hiring over natural legal citizens. They automatically get two board seats without running on the school board over natural citizens. Who’s getting pushed to the back of the bus? I can tell you something, we’re holding on to the tail pipe of the bus – we’re not even riding in it – after you put the amount of benefits that illegal immigrants have. It was really a slap in the face when the city of Chicago opened up – closed schools to house illegal immigrants.
MS. WELLS: They’re not immigrants. They’re illegal aliens.
This is what the Democratic Party has done or the political left has done to America. They have taken the word – they have taken control of the usage of words. They have – (coughs) – excuse me. They have controlled the narrative. They’re illegal aliens. (Coughs.) Excuse me. They’re illegal aliens. They’re not immigrants. This is very clear. We should not call them – why am I coughing? I’m sorry. Let me take a – I want some water. (Laughter.)
MS. JACKSON: Perception is reality. They’re seeing that reality every day. They’re walking over and walking past Black men, young men who have no opportunities who are sleeping in the street in boxes while illegal immigrants are getting free housing waiting. In New York City, a hundred and thirty-five of the hotels – New York City is the most expensive city in America to rent a hotel room. A hundred and thirty-five hotels of the 700 hotels – that’s a significant number – are now housing illegal immigrants. There are African –
MS. WELLS: Illegal aliens. Illegal aliens. Illegal aliens. I mean, I can’t stand –
MS. JACKSON: There are African-Americans who will never have the opportunity not only to go to New York City but to stay in a luxury hotel and, yet, illegal – people breaking the law coming over to the border are actually getting a free ride.
They have an American Dream that African Americans will never realize in their lifetime, and how are we OK with this? It’s the reason why you see the shift. You’re seeing a shift from the left to the right because that is the last straw.
Fighting my entire life for financial stability for my family and then here this person gets rewarded – rewarded – for breaking the law. Not only does he get – he hits the lottery because I still have student loans and they’re – they get to go to college for free.
MS. WELLS: It’s been going on since the 1800s. If you know the history you know it’s been going on since the 1800s – Black Americans being replaced, newly freed slaves being replaced by mass immigration. Now it’s illegal aliens, and Symone D. Sanders on MSNBC said we can’t even say the word illegal aliens. She was saying that to Byron Donalds.
That’s not true. It’s in our – you’re anti-American if you don’t go by the laws on the – with the United States code. It’s anti-American. You’re anti-Black American if you’re pro-illegal aliens. This is the position.
If you look at the history, if you know the data, you know illegal aliens, mass immigration since the 1800s, have adversely impacted Black Americans. It’s clear. It’s documented. So anyone allowing illegal aliens into the country is anti-Black America.
The Democratic Party is anti-Black America and the Democratic Party has destroyed the Black American family. We only have 75 – there’s only 25 percent two-parent households. It’s 75 percent single-headed households.
White liberal women push free sex, feminism/sexual liberation. This destroyed the American family – destroying the American family, destroying Black American families. All these policies – all the policies of the Democratic Party stink. They have destroyed America. They have destroyed the family.
John Adams says that for a country to be free and prosperous the citizens must be moral and good – be of good moral character. The family is the most important institution in society.
You have Black men who cannot marry Black women. Why? Because they don’t have income. They don’t have wealth. Why? Because mass immigration, illegal aliens. It’s clear. It’s very clear.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Kathleen, thank you.
Let’s take some Q&A now.
MS. WELLS: OK.
MR. KRIKORIAN: I just want to make clear the Center for Immigration Studies is a nonprofit, nonpolitical group. We don’t endorse candidates. Although people are free to endorse any party or candidate they want, the Center does not get involved in that.
And I had a question about politics, but first I want to ask a question that somebody had sent in and that is that a significant phenomenon that was true a hundred years ago but much more significant now is Black immigration – in other words, immigration from the Caribbean and from Africa in a very significant way, both legal and illegal. There’s significant illegal immigration now even from Africa.
So, you know, how does that – does that create – what’s the story with that? In other words, what is people’s reaction? How do you kind of process that?
Because when it was immigrants from Europe you can sort of see. That’s what Booker T. Washington was reacting to – Frederick Douglass, A. Philip Randolph. And if it’s, you know, illegal aliens from Latin America, again, you can sort of see there’s a(n) ethnic difference.
But what is – how do you process Black immigration?
MS. WELLS: Well, even Marcus Garvey, who was originally from Jamaica, was against mass –
MR. KRIKORIAN: And was deported back to Jamaica. (Laughs.)
MS. WELLS: Yeah. He was against mass – yeah, listen, Black – it’s about heritage. It’s about our lineage. Who are we? We’re Black Americans. I can trace my family back – my ancestors back to the 1700s, OK? So we’re Black Americans. We have been here since the founding of the country. That matters, does it not? Does it matter that our parents, our ancestors, were here since the founding? Since the 1600s? Since the 1700s? Is that relevant? Is that significant? Yes, I think it is.
MR. BECK: And – go ahead, I’m sorry.
MS. JACKSON: Oh, I’m sorry.
Look, people who break the law break the law. I don’t care if you’re orange.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MS. JACKSON: If you come over here you’re – and you come over here illegally you’re still taking a job. Let’s keep in mind that you have employers who will preference legal immigrants over natural citizens and that is still the case even if their skin is darker than mine.
So it’s still hurting everyone. And then a lot of the illegal immigrants that come over here and their skin is dark they don’t see themselves as being the same as I am. They don’t identify with the Black American experience.
MS. WELLS: Because they have their culture.
MS. JACKSON: Because that’s completely different, and so that makes – that still has a significant impact on the financial stability and ability of individuals who come from that lineage in the American experience their economic – their ability to pull themselves out of the lower rungs of society.
MR. BECK: You know, Donna and Kathleen, your comments are very much consistent with the comments that were made by Black leaders in Black newspapers a hundred years ago. Du Bois – at the same time he was making the comment that he said that the cutting off of White labor has been the salvation of Black workers but at the same time in that same article he said – he did kind of say – unfortunately, it sort of had a little race consciousness. He says, unfortunately, that means Blacks from the Caribbean are cut off, too. But he goes, that’s – he distinguished that that was a racial issue.
But African Americans are not about race; it’s about history. And the key thing was the history was the people whose families came through slavery. And for that – so the point of – the point of these Black leaders and newspapers a hundred years ago was that immigration policy should be about helping African Americans not based on their race but based on their experience.
MS. WELLS: Their heritage.
MR. BECK: And it had – their heritage, and it had nothing to do with helping somebody who happened to be Black from some other country.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MR. BECK: Anyway, that – it’s just very interesting to hear you talk because it fits so much with whether – basically, I’m sure that you can find leaders that were more race conscious. But one of the things that I found in some of my recent studies is that the Black leaders and editors they worked so hard to really get away from racial distinctions and idea of race because that was something that – this whole idea of scientific racism had been so harmful to African Americans and as it turns out the scientific community eventually got out of that.
MS. WELLS: Mmm hmm. Well, I mean, my ancestors didn’t slave and sweat and, you know, toil and all that hard work that they did for Joy-Ann Reid to have a job. She’s the first – she’s from the Congo. They worked for Black Americans to have jobs.
They did all that for Black Americans, not people from the Congo who are first-generation Americans. Not even Kamala Harris, who’s Indian-American and Jamaican. My ancestors didn’t work for Kamala Harris to have these benefits. They worked for Black Americans to have benefits. I think even Obama is not even a Black American. This is all – this is why using color – the skin color – is not sufficient.
MS. JACKSON: It’s the American experience.
MS. WELLS: It’s confusing, and this is why I say White Americans and Black Americans have been in America the longest since its founding and that is significant. That matters. That history matters. And so this is why, you know – and I don’t know why so many – and, you know, I want to get into this issue about Black women.
Black American women support – I know it’s nonprofit and – but Black American women don’t understand what most of them – some do but most of them don’t understand. They think everything is about skin color and that’s a superficial analysis of the situation.
They’re not looking at the history. They don’t know the history and they’re just so wedded to the political left position embracing all of their policies, and their policies have been detrimental to Black America. They need to get away from that embrace of all these policies that are the detriment.
So what I’m thinking, they’re not doing their homework. They’re not reading this “Cast Your Bucket Where You Are” – “Cast Down Your Bucket Where” – they’re not reading this history. They’re not – they’re being superficial. They’re just watching the television and going along with what the politicians say. That is not sufficient.
MR. KRIKORIAN: This raises a point I wanted to bring up, a question, basically, and it’s really – I mean, we’ve been touching on the issue but, you know, a century ago or more the top Black leaders in the country were critical in different ways but critical of immigration, whether it was Booker T. Washington or Du Bois, who were pretty much diametrically opposed in every way you could imagine.
Du Bois ended up as a communist and Booker T. Washington was a self-help guy who, you know, palled around with Teddy Roosevelt, and then Marcus Garvey, obviously. But they all agreed that large-scale immigration – and back then it was mainly legal but it was still – large-scale immigration was a problem.
MR. BECK: They believed their eyes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Exactly. They believed – it’s sort of what is it’s – it’s a struggle to see what’s in front of your nose or something like that.
But there isn’t really much of anything like that today and it’s not just among Democratic leaders. Obviously, there are some Republican – Black Republicans who are critical of immigration, but even there there really isn’t the same level.
In other words, there’s nobody who makes – even – I mean, let’s just – I’m not picking on him but Tim Scott’s a pretty high profile – you know, is talked about as potentially a vice presidential candidate. You know, maybe he said something about, well, we need more border control or something but that’s just an easy thing for politicians to say.
Why aren’t there more Black leaders, prominent people – no insult to anybody here, but I’m talking about the top people in the country who are willing to talk about immigration? The issue is just sitting there on the ground waiting for somebody to pick it up.
MS. WELLS: Well, you know, the establishment – can I answer?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Let’s – go ahead, Donna, and then you can –
MS. JACKSON: I’ll say this.
Unfortunately, most of the Black political leaders that have a platform are actually politicians. Now, I’m not – I’m from a nonprofit. You know, we don’t endorse anyone. But I think that, you know, they go along with whatever the prevailing issue that will keep them in their positions. They’re not on the – they don’t have boots on the ground in the communities hearing like we do from the people that think this is important.
The other thing is you’ll see prominent community leaders on the local level talking about the destruction of illegal immigrants. What’s problematic is they’re not given a platform. When you have a mainstream media whose primary concern is making sure the narratives are consistent with whatever the agenda is, they’re not going to give you that platform.
In fact, if you notice – and I don’t endorse any candidate one way or the other – if you notice, Eric Adams – all of a sudden he’s under investigation and many of the members of his team because he’s gotten out of step with what the narrative needs to be.
So but there are people who want to speak up. I have many of them. We just have to have people who are brave enough to be able to allow their voices to be heard and so that is the biggest issue. It’s the platform, not the people in the community, who are saying this because you go to New York in The Bronx. You go to New York City. You go to Chicago. You can go to Atlanta. I can tell you that – you can go to Detroit and those people are saying the same thing: We want jobs. We can’t get those jobs because we have meat packing plants that will only hire illegals.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. The thing is that, and, obviously, you’re right that, look, politicians are politicians.
MS. JACKSON: Correct.
MR. KRIKORIAN: The person you were talking about who was just on “Washington Journal,” that was Representative Al Green. He’s from Houston.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MR. KRIKORIAN: But one of the – you know, even when there is a political opportunity my sense is Black politicians still don’t take it and the thing that really drove that home to me was 2006 there was a Senate race in Tennessee. It was an open seat and Harold Ford, Jr., who was congressman from Memphis at the time and who – he was already in the House of Representatives. His voting record on immigration wasn’t terrible for a Democrat. It was actually –
MR. BECK: It was actually good.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. It was actually good for a Democrat. So the point is he was open to talking about immigration. He was running against a big business Republican, Bob Corker, who had actually, I think, had some – you know, hired some illegal aliens so he was vulnerable on that issue. Even then in the sort of best-case scenario the Black politician in question, Harold Ford, Jr., whatever his personal, you know, merits or otherwise, didn’t take the opportunity that was sitting on the ground in order to win. In other words, there’s more than just being a politician, it seems to me.
MS. JACKSON: Well, the pressure. I’m going to – I’ll give you some – (inaudible).
MR. KRIKORIAN: Sure.
MS. JACKSON: The pressure that comes from the people. So what you have in the Black community, and it’s been happening for a long time, you have these waves and each time the poor and the lower middle – the lower middle and the poor get poorer, and then you have the few elites that are given opportunities.
Those few elites are afraid – and this is on both sides of the aisle – to go out and speak on an issue even when they agree with it because they’re afraid that they might lose their position. And, unfortunately – unfortunately, what happens is these elite individuals that get these positions their whole families’ economic stability is surrounded around this one person.
You know, when people ask me, why do you say stuff, Donna, because I’ve already lived a life – a good life. I don’t care. I don’t have much to lose. I don’t care what people do to me. Right now it’s just about the truth.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And, interestingly –
MS. JACKSON: But a lot of people are afraid of that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, and to follow on that to sort of confirm your point, some of the prominent leaders like Washington, like Du Bois and others, they actually did kind of have their chains yanked by donors.
MR. BECK: Yeah, they did.
MR. KRIKORIAN: In other words, they kind of trimmed their sails later on because donors, who were a big source of their funding like you’re suggesting, said, yeah, we don’t want to hear any more of that. So –
MS. WELLS: Well, I mean, let’s just face it. This is the truth. The establishment does not have the interest of America or Americans. The media – the politicians are the establishment. Uniparty, both parties. The media is the establishment. I watch “Washington Journal” every morning. All they have on there is establishment news.
The government is supposed to be by we, the people. We are in charge, not the politicians, not the establishment. So it’s all been – it’s topsy turvy. OK. The American people are being gaslit by the politicians because the documentation is substantiated.
The positions from the 1800 it hasn’t changed. It’s only gotten worse. Things have gotten worse. So we need – and all the folks that call into “Washington Journal” they believe in the – they believe the politicians. This is very naïve. This is very gullible.
The politicians do not have your interests because they are the establishment. You must do research outside of what you hear on TV and find out what’s going on because the politicians don’t have your interests. They have their – they have the establishment’s interest and it’s so clear now.
I mean, what we’re witnessing now with this cognitive decline of Biden, I mean, this is the biggest cover up in American history. And why did it happen? We have to ask ourselves how did this take place that the media was sort of in cahoots with covering this up? What does this say to us? What does this tell us about the media and the establishment? What do we learn from this?
MS. JACKSON: And I think the one thing – I’m sorry, I’m going to stop. (Laughter.) The one thing I would add is don’t underestimate the fact that a lot of people just like the issue. I have an issue and this issue is actually profitable for me –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, I see.
MS. JACKSON: – so I’m not going to really work hard to get rid of it even though there’s always another issue. That’s the thing. There’s always another – get past this basic problem. I mean, we’re just at Maslow’s, you know, basic needs right now. There’s other issues that need to be solved but this is like a small step in, you know, the evolution of what can be in terms of prosperity and what the American Dream is about.
But there’s a lot of Black elites on both sides of the aisle that just like to be able to talk about the issue. They don’t want it to be solved.
MS. WELLS: Well, and they reduce – Black Americans reduce everything to racism and the political left, the Democratic Party, reduces everything to racism. That’s not sufficient. That’s superficial. That’s shallow.
You got to go deeper. Other things are taking place. You can’t reduce everything to racism because everything is not racism. There are other issues. Economic issues are more important, I think.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Before we get to the next question I just wanted to make sure we, first of all, reemphasize Black America for Immigration Reform and the website is ProtectBlackWorkers.org, and –
MR. BECK: Economics.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yes, exactly. Economics.
MS. WELLS: Economics.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And does – do you guys have a Twitter handle yet or –
MS. WELLS: No, I don’t have a Twitter handle.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. You – well, you have a Twitter handle, right?
MS. WELLS: Yeah. I’m a former radio host of the Naked Truth Report. Now I’m the executive director of B-A-I-R.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And you’re on Twitter at @KathleenTNTR, right?
MS. WELLS: Right, because I used to have the Naked Truth Report radio show –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Right.
MS. WELLS: – for five years, and Roy was a guest on my show. We discussed his book “Back of the Hiring Line.” This is another important issue that I want to point out in his book is that the Statue of Liberty was meant for the newly-freed slaves and their descendants.
So how did it – it wasn’t meant – the Statue of Liberty is not meant for immigrants. It’s for the newly-freed slaves and their descendants. So you see the establishment confuses everything. This is what I think.
MR. KRIKORIAN: We did have a question I wanted to get in and this is about sort of occupational segregation or racism. And I’m filling in a little here from the question but, you know, decades ago unions froze Black workers out of certain sort of better paying trades, you know, sort of higher level, whether – whatever it was. Carpentry and stuff like that was hard to get – hard to break in.
That, obviously, doesn’t exist anymore but does large-scale immigration almost kind of recreate that phenomenon where it’s hard to, say, if you’re a young Black man to get into – you know, to break into construction if it’s almost like there’s a cartel of illegal immigrants or even just immigrants in general being hired. So, in other words, the union halls don’t have to say, you know, Blacks aren’t allowed here – we’re not going to hire them – because immigration kind of does the same job without having to write it down.
MR. BECK: Right. Yeah. And I’d say the first rung of the ladder issue is so key to this is that what’s happened is the first rung of the ladder in every kind of occupation the real wage has gone down, down, down ever since the ’65 and ’90 immigration acts.
So that makes the jobs less attractive, and then as you fill them more and more with foreign labor the foreign labor don’t come in expecting American level working conditions so they will accept lower working conditions than what Americans accept. And, you know, Black Americans are Americans, right? Black Americans should expect American level working conditions.
So you get this vicious cycle in which those bottom rung jobs are not being taken, not being offered, not being recruited, to Black Americans, especially Black American men.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And the point is not to –
MR. BECK: And if you don’t get – yeah, if you don’t get on the first rung of the ladder you don’t get to the second rung and the third rung. So the occupational thing is really – Blacks are being segmented out of the better jobs because they don’t – at age 19 or 22 they’re not on the first rung.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MS. WELLS: And in Los Angeles in the construction industry – Los Angeles – everyone – you have to speak Spanish –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Yeah.
MS. WELLS: – to work in construction.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And the point is it changes the – this happens in Miami, too. I remember years ago there was some kind of public meeting in Miami and there was a young Black man who said, look, I fought in Vietnam and now I have to speak Spanish in order to get a job?
MS. WELLS: Now you have to – exactly.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And, you know, it’s – I understand it.
Donna?
MS. JACKSON: And the thing that I was going to add, because I lived in San Diego for a long time. Got my degree from California State University. There’s – within that rung – so once you start hiring illegal immigrants or you hire one or two, then he will actually prevent African Americans from getting in even if they want to. So there’s a preference where they as a group will lock out anyone who is not la familia.
MR. KRIKORIAN: That’s right.
MS. JACKSON: If you live in California you know that. So it’s all – anybody that’s not within that circle does not get the opportunity even if they want it.
I’ll tell you this. Minorities will work any job if it’s available for them. But I remember when they wouldn’t give me a job when I was at – because I didn’t speak Spanish. They wouldn’t rent an apartment to me because I was not Hispanic. I would have to send in a friend to go in and say, hey.
MR. BECK: Wow.
MS. JACKSON: I sent an employee in who was Latino who would go in there and then they say, yes, we have apartments available. But when I went in, they said we don’t have any.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Interesting.
MS. JACKSON: And this happened countless times.
MS. WELLS: Do you see the prejudice? But this is human nature, right?
MS. JACKSON: It was – even in the college. When I went to apply for San Diego State and the community college there in Chula Vista they gave me a hard time. I had to go to Miramar where the population was more Caucasian, Asian, to be able to get in even though – even though I was actually a(n) honor student. Each time they had more barriers to stop me from being able to get in. So they create that.
MS. WELLS: But this is human nature, right. This is human nature, how human nature works.
MS. JACKSON: Very.
MS. WELLS: This is why I’m saying White Americans, Black Americans, matter because they’ve been in the country longest. So these other groups that have just come subsequent to the 1964 Immigration Act they’re trying to get their foothold in America.
But we’re – Black Americans and White Americans should be priority because we’ve been here since the 1600s, since its founding. We should be a priority. Yeah, you can get your group thing going, but this is human nature, OK? But it’s about heritage. It’s about how long we’ve been in the country. And we are the descendants of the ancestors who’ve been here since the founding of America. We should not be second rate. We should not be second-class citizens because our ancestors paid the price already to help build America. Am I right?
MR. BECK: And this is – and, again, you know, it’s sad that we have to go back a hundred years to find the leaders but this is what the Black editors and – and you read what they said and they said – it says if it doesn’t help anybody else it will help us and that’s enough.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MR. BECK: They said, our survival is reason enough for cutting immigration and that’s the point right now.
I do think there’s a – I do think there’s a positive – I think we’re in a little bit of a positive trend right now. Things are getting worse, but I think some of the things you all have been saying about, the fact is the grassroots – the Black grassroots, the polling has shown for years the majority of the Black grassroots, which means the majority of Black Democrats, agree that mass immigration needs to be stopped.
They agree there needs to be mandatory E-Verify to keep illegal aliens from jobs. In other words, the Black grassroots are on the same side as where the Black leaders were a hundred years ago. Now, because of this crazy thing at the border, you’ve got whole communities – Black communities – now that are speaking up.
I think there’s a chance. You know, the only chance that Black leaders – Black political leaders will take the side of the Black grassroots is if the Black grassroots presses them. Right now the Black political leaders on immigration are doing the bidding of the business community. That’s what they’ve been doing for the last – at least the last four years.
MS. WELLS: Of the establishment. Of the establishment.
MR. BECK: Well, which is – yeah, I mean, but the business community plays well for keeping the flow of those workers.
MS. JACKSON: I want to add to this. You know, the reason why I was so against identity – there’s a number of reasons why but I’ll say this. I experienced more racism for illegal immigrants than I have from White Americans.
When I hear people talk about multiculturalism, right, they talk about – and they use California as the model, and I could sit there and say name a city and I’ll tell you what ethnic group lives there because they’re so segregated. The discrimination that African Americans experience in California is not from White Americans. In fact – (laughs) – it’s from the immigrants. Otay Lake is where all the new illegal immigrants come in. San Ysidro is where all the illegal immigrants live, Chula Vista. Then you get to upper-class Bonita, where the more upper-class Latinos that are more phased in. But the most racism that I’ve ever experienced was from Latino illegal immigrants in the state of California.
If you don’t think that’s happening in Chicago right now? That’s why they’re forming gangs. That’s why they’re recruiting.
MR. KRIKORIAN: One last point. We’re getting at the end so we’ve only got a couple minutes left. Is the – I mean, this isn’t so much a specific question but just an observation. The irony that in 1965, the 1965 immigration law which restarted mass immigration, was passed in part as a civil rights measure.
In other words, it was kind of part of the civil rights movement because the law up to that point – the 1924 law and its various changes – while they were wildly beneficial for Americans of all kinds it did have this mechanism that was explicitly race based or at least national origins based. You know, fewer Italians and more Irish or whatever it is.
MS. WELLS: Right. Exactly.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So getting rid of that was seen as a civil rights measure. It was explicitly presented that way. It was passed when the – the Civil Rights Act had been passed the year before, the – all kinds of other civil rights measures.
And so the irony is that what was passed as, in part, a civil rights measure has, in fact, ended up –
MS. WELLS: Right. Destroying. Destroying.
MR. KRIKORIAN: – undermining the interests of the people that the civil rights movement was supposed to help.
MS. WELLS: Right. I agree with you completely. It was – the Immigration Act was passed a year after the Civil Rights Act. Listen, everything needs to be reassessed and reexamined – everything, even the Civil Rights Act.
You know, I always say Martin Luther King needs to be looked at again. Do you think Martin Luther King would be happy that Black Americans only have 25 percent two-parent households? Do you think Martin Luther King would be happy that Black America is now facing zero median wealth by 2053? Do you think Martin Luther King would be happy that 40 percent of the homeless in Los Angeles are Black Americans? Do you think Martin Luther King would be happy that the Democratic Party said that, you know, we’re all people of color now – we’re all people of color against White folks? Even if the White Americans, White conservatives – because Black Democrats are pro-White liberals, and White liberals pump free-sex feminism, sexual revolution, which destroyed the Black family, destroyed all families.
So we need to go back and reexamine everything that we’ve been told, OK?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Donna?
MS. JACKSON: Well, you know, the thing that I’d like to add is they always disguise civil rights with intended consequences to cause people to be in constant states of survival so that they can control. Don’t always think because they said, oh, we’re going to, you know, give you this great mass immigration that it’s going to help you.
No, they know that that’s going to immediately cause chaos in the community, immediately cause trauma for families, for individuals trying to figure out who they are and how they build their way up. They did this with that in mind to make sure that these communities never thrive.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MS. JACKSON: You know, you don’t get individuals with policies that’s supposed to be a war on poverty where 60 years – 60 years – there’s more of it.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Poverty won. (Laughs.)
MS. WELLS: Right.
MS. JACKSON: So that – it’s not the war – I say it’s not the war against poverty. It’s the war for poverty.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Right.
MS. JACKSON: We need to always be figuring out another way to make sure that if they get one – two steps forward, it’s one step backward.
MS. WELLS: Exactly.
MS. JACKSON: So all of a sudden now, you know, you don’t have Black ownership in Black communities.
MS. WELLS: Of businesses, right.
MS. JACKSON: They own nothing. And what I tell White Americans is: Don’t worry about it, because it’s coming to a neighborhood near you. (Laughter.) We were the incubators, and it worked, and then now they’re going to spread it out to everybody.
They use the narratives of if you say something or speak up that somehow you’re destroying democracy or you’re racist or something like that. You know what? I don’t worry about what people say to me in words. I want to see results.
MS. WELLS: Right.
MS. JACKSON: I want to see outcomes. I would rather have a guy sit there and say he don’t like me personally, and you know what? There’s a lot of people I don’t like personally. So what?
But, at the end of the day, what have you done for me economically lately and the answer is when you look at it – if you look at the amount of mass immigration happening in minority communities there’s a(n) indirect correlation in the amount of crime because if I can’t find a job I’m going to rob you.
If I can’t find a job then I’m going to hurt you because I’m hurting. That’s the bottom line. There’s a difference. There’s a correlation and they want that. We got to – well, if they’re decriminalizing things, you know, because you can steal 950 items a day – dollars’ worth of items a day, then we got to think of new ways for you to kill each other, and – (inaudible) – outcomes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Well, we’re out of time. And I just wanted to – this is Donna Jackson, director of membership development at BAIR.
MS. JACKSON: And Project 21.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Kathleen Wells – thank you, and Project 21.
MS. JACKSON: And Project 21 Black Leadership Network.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Donna Jackson – I mean, Kathleen Wells, executive director at BAIR. And just to emphasize, it’s ProtectBlackWorkers.org is the website.
And Roy Beck, author of “Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth” available on Amazon.
MS. WELLS: Read his book. Read his book.
MR. BECK: On Amazon, yeah.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. And I thank – I want to thank everybody for coming in. Thanks to all of you for tuning in, and this will be posted – the recording will be posted so if you came in halfway through you’ll be able to watch the whole thing from the beginning if you’d like.
MS. WELLS: And we take donations at ProtectBlackWorkers.org for BAIR. We’re a nonprofit.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. Yeah.
MS. JACKSON: And you can find more about Project 21 Black Leadership Network at the NationalCenter.org, and she’s also one of our great members.
MS. WELLS: I’m also a member of Project 21. We’re both members. We work together –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Very good.
MS. WELLS: – on a lot of these issues. (Laughter.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you. Thank you, Roy.
MR. BECK: Thank you.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, Donna.
(END)