Biden Touts Allowing Record Number of Foreign Workers From Mexico

President Joe Biden attends a virtual meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, March 1, 2021. Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images

President Joe Biden on Tuesday touted the “record” number of foreign workers his administration has allowed into the United States from Mexico, stating that the move has boosted job opportunities.

Biden made the comments during a press conference with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the White House at a time when an unprecedented number of illegal aliens continue to try to make their way into the country.

Meanwhile, inflation stands at a 40-year-high in the United States and the number of employed Americans has declined.

The current unemployment rate stands at 3.6 percent, according to the Labor Department, marking the lowest since February 2020.

“My administration is leading the way to creating work opportunities through legal pathways,” Biden said on Tuesday. “And last year, my administration set a record. We issued more than 300,000 H-2 visas for Mexican workers.”

“We also reached a five-year high in the visas we issued to Central Americans, and we’re on pace to double this in fiscal year for—this fiscal year for Central America.”

According to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of Bureau of Labor Statistics data for January 2021, unemployment among native-born Americans remained much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of unemployed American natives in January 2021 stood at 8.6 million, according to the analysis, while the number of unemployed immigrants was 2.2 million.

Separate data from the nonpartisan independent think tank, The Migration Policy Institute, finds that the unemployment rate was equal at 3.3 percent for both U.S.-born workers and immigrant workers as of April 2022.

More Jobs, Wages Rising

Another study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which looked at job figures from September 2020 to March 2022 noted that there are currently approximately 11.5 million job openings in the United States and 14.73 million employable Americans.

“This means that there are 3.23 million more workers in the country than open jobs,” according to FAIR.

Despite the latest data regarding unemployment, Biden on Tuesday stated that since he stepped into office, his administration has “created more jobs than any president ever has in the beginning of his administration—almost 8.5 million new jobs.”

“Wages have risen five-and-a-half percent,” Biden said, although the president acknowledged that inflation has soared, something he credited to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“But we have the lowest rate of almost every major nation in the world,” Biden added. “Even last month, we created another 300 and—I think—57,000 new jobs. And it doesn’t mean we don’t have problems; we do.”

Biden’s meeting with Obrador on Tuesday came shortly after First Lady Jill Biden’s press secretary issued a statement on her behalf, apologizing for remarks she had made on Monday at a San Antonio event called the “LatinX IncluXion” luncheon.

During the event, the first lady had compared Hispanic people to tacos, prompting backlash among the Latino community.

“The First Lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community,” press secretary Michael LaRosa wrote on Twitter following the fallout from the comparison.