Day 274: Who Are America’s Workers? on Substack
The Biden administration has granted “parole” to people from certain devastated countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nicaragua. DHS has also granted parole to some people who come to the border at a checkpoint and request asylum.
Lawsuits and the impeachment vote against DHS Secretary Anthony Mayorkas object to this practice. One of their primary objections arises from the fact that people with parole are entitled to work authorization immediately. (People who request asylum are entitled to work too, but they have to wait five months first, usually depending on unauthorized work or public services.)
Meanwhile, even if every American had a job, we would still have 2.4 million unfilled positions in this country.
In my research into immigration from southwest Germany in the early 1700s, I’ve learned about the details of the “redemption” system: German-speaking people who couldn’t afford to pay for their passage would cross the Atlantic on credit, putting themselves up for indenture to colonists when they arrived. Numerous letters and stories have survived describing the redemption system.
You can read a few of them this week on How We Got Here, Substack.