Tucker Carlson Analyzes the Big Picture of Immigration, including the Automated Future

Brenda Walker

01/19/2018

The popular Fox News host appeared on another show onThursday and proceeded to give a brief history lesson on immigration and how today there is no longer a need for America to import mass numbers of foreign workers.
Tucker Carlson reminded the viewers that immigration should exist only when it helps — not harms — the American people: “ … the point of immigration policy — the point of all US government policies — is always the same which is to benefit American citizens, so the question isn’t ‘Does this country need to send people here for its sake?’ the question is ‘Do we benefit from their coming here?’ and so the real debate is ‘Are these numbers right?’ and I don’t know if they are or not, but no one seems to be even arguing over that.

“DHS says that there are higher-than-average fraud rates among Haitian immigrants and higher-than-average overstays. If you think that’s wrong, I think that’s a completely fair conversation to have, but no one’s bothering because virtually everyone in Washington, including most Republican leaders, believes the U.S. somehow, for reasons they never fully explain, has a moral obligation to let people in to relieve economic pressure on their countries, to assist in disaster relief or whatever, but none of those reasons have anything to do with Americans or helping America. And I think that’s maybe the best part about Trump is forcing the conversation back to its core — ‘Is it good for us, or is it not?’ “

Martha McCallum replied that indeed, America in the past has had pauses in immigration, but the debate is far more limited now.

Tucker then explained how the need for foreign labor has largely ended, due to the development of the nation over time and today’s technological change, namely automation: “Previous waves of immigration had clear economic justifications — so the country was opening up to the west, manifest destiny, someone needed to farm the land, immigrants did that. Then it was industrialized, factories needed workers, we brought them from abroad from western, central and eastern Europe and other places. There’s no economic justification for the current waves of immigrants coming — none — we don’t have a massive need for low-wage labor, in fact just the opposite: that’s going away, according to every estimate, because of automation.

“So what is the point of this? How does it help? I understand that it helps foreign countries, and all those people are nice great people, I’m not attacking them, but how does it help America, the people who put these leaders in office who pay for the whole thing? No one even bothers to explain that because they don’t care.”

It’s good to see someone in media connecting the dots between immigration and technology: it makes no sense to continue immigration at record levels when the robots are coming on strong. There is a clamor from business for more labor now because President Trump has unleashed capitalism to grow and hire. However, as smart machines become cheaper they will replace human workers, a process that is already underway in some areas of the economy like fast-food restaurants.

Automotive manufacturing has been largely automated for years, but it is out of the public eye.

In a much cited study, Oxford University researchers predicted in 2013 that nearly half of US jobs were vulnerable to replacement by smart machines in 20 years. Even President Obama warned about technology taking jobs in his final days while he continued immigration anarchy at the border to import millions of foreigners to work (and vote Democrat).

Several knowledgeable firms have forecast that the threat to jobs from smart machines will become significant in around five years.

There’s not a lot that can be done to prepare for the automation juggernaut except to increase technological training and reduce immigration. But the federal government has been asleep to the massive job threat estimated to begin in a few years.

Hey, Washington — Automation makes immigration obsolete!

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