> In many states the employment market is so tight that jobs are going unfilled.

That has been the case for a mere 12-18 months out of the last decade.

You know why liberals used to be against allowing vast inflows of unskilled labor? They fully understood the obvious consequences to the workers their party represented, as it pertained to wages & employment prospects. Make that labor more scarce and wages rise. It's the reason Bernie Sanders used to openly advocate against allowing large amounts of unskilled labor immigration.

No other developed nation uses the immigration approach that the US uses. Everyone else favors a merit based system and favors immigrants that can pay for their social benefits. This is why Canada is so annoyed with the US right now on immigrants crossing the border into Canada. [1] A few thousand illegal immigrants cross over each month and Canada is begging the US to make it stop. Out of the entire planet, only the US is held to a different standard, everyone else is allowed to restrict unskilled labor immigration. The US is uniquely backwards in its approach to heavily limiting skilled labor and simultaneously allowing unlimited amounts of unskilled labor.

Where's the international condemnation for Canada's approach to restricting hispanic immigration into their nation? Why are they not called racist for it? They're a mere 1.5% hispanic, specifically because they won't allow unskilled labor from Latin America into the country.

That's an extremely ugly, hypocritical double standard. If the US behaves exactly as Canada does, it's called racist, xenophobic, etc.

I'll note that the sole reason the Republicans are supporting / allowing the low skill immigration approach (and why they've blocked Trump's attempt to shift to a merit system), is that it benefits business margins: they want as much cheap labor as they can get to suppress wages. It's why the Koch brothers are such big proponents of it.

The vast, endless supply of unskilled labor that has flooded the US for decades is partially responsible for low wage growth among lower skilled workers in the US over that time. If there's always more low-skilled labor, wages will not rise for low-skilled laborers. It's basic supply and demand. As automation increasingly hammers low-skill laborers, that effect will get dramatically worse.

The other critical reason why the US is going to be forced to end its immigration policies: you can't support an increasingly generous welfare state matched against vast inflows of unskilled labor that can't pay for its own benefits programs. This is why other developed nations follow a pay-your-way merit system. If you can't support yourself, Canada generally isn't letting you in. A couple million low-skill immigrants coming into their nation would bankrupt their welfare system and collapse their healthcare system. The US welfare state is now more generous than Canada's, so how is the US expected to continue to afford it? You want universal healthcare? You can never have that unless you change the immigration system to restrict inflows of unskilled labor.

The US should flip its policies: continue to allow in some reasonable amount of low-skill labor, and allow in a lot more high-skill labor (which helps pay for the benefits cost of the low-skill labor). As the US moves gradually toward universal healthcare, and continues to increase the generosity of its welfare state, this will become a fiscal necessity, just as it is in all other developed nations and for the exact same reason.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-immigration-border...