Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, held a town hall meeting on Tuesday in front of CNN.
While the town hall meeting’s main talking points were over the coming presidential election, political events (such as the recent targeting of police in Dallas), and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticizing of Donald Trump, another point of discussion also emerged.
Ryan suggested as an aside that he’d like to see a system where employers could have fewer restrictions in terms of hiring foreign workers. The ostensible reason for this policy implementation would be to cut costs.
His sentiments were more precisely: “We need to have an immigration system that is wired for what our economy needs … so let’s find out where those gaps in our labor markets are and have our immigration system wired for that.”
It is indeed debatable as to what gaps Ryan is referring to, much less how such a policy could be put into place. Nevertheless, it has become a point of some debate, largely because the wages of those who would likely be affected— the lower-and middle-class— have seen very little in the way of wage increases in the past few decades.
It is said that for every American who joins the workforce for the first time, there are three workers— legal or illegal— who join them.
It should be noted that this isn’t the first time that Ryan has mentioned bringing immigrants to the U.S. to do jobs which there are supposedly no other candidates.
