Thread by @America_2100

Okay—challenge accepted.

For decades, we've been told that the only way to save small-town America is to flood it with foreign immigrants.

That's ridiculous.

We could rebuild these towns tomorrow, if we had leaders who cared enough to try.

Don't believe us? We'll show you. 🧵

In a recent essay, @Noahpinion claims there's only "one kind of person" who will work at a factory in "a small midwestern town": "An immigrant, without much education, usually from a low-income country."

This is the same "jobs Americans won't do" line we've heard for decades.

We were in Charleroi, PA last week. It's a working-class town of 4,000 people—but it's been overwhelmed by thousands of Haitian immigrants.

You can watch the trailer for our film below.

This is the kind of town that Smith thinks immigration is "saving."

The same "jobs Americans won't do" line we heard from Smith has served as the justification for flooding Charleroi with foreign workers.

That's the argument made by the businesses that are importing these immigrants for cheap labor.

This is from a local outlet just last week:

But Americans *were* doing these jobs.

"Those jobs that [immigrants] have—they used to be American jobs," Andy, a Charleroi native, told us last week. (See below).

Businesses pay immigrants "poverty wages" instead of paying Americans fairly, he said.

It wasn’t just Andy who told us this.

Below is our interview with Rick. He worked for one of the staffing agencies bringing immigrants into Charleroi.

He told us they were intentionally hiring immigrant workers *instead* of Americans.

Why? Because immigrants were cheaper.

Research backs up what Andy and Tom told us.

In Miami, for example, the Harvard economist George Borjas found that a large influx of refugees slashed low-skilled workers’ wages by 10-30%.

This wasn't creating wealth for working-class Americans—it was taking it away from them.

Borjas' work shows this wasn't a one-off—it's a pattern.

Time and time again, we see that low-skill immigrants don't "revive" small towns. They compete for jobs with locals.

The result? Lower wages and higher unemployment for the most vulnerable Americans in these communities.

Borjas isn't the only economist to have arrived at this conclusion.

Despite what you might read in the press, there's a large body of evidence that immigration depresses wages for many working-class Americans.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017:

Even some of Noah’s readers know this is true.

Under Smith's article, one reader explains how his wages *increased* when illegal workers at his plant were deported.

The "ICE raid did what our union couldn't do. It raised wages."

Now, he can work normal hours and pay his bills.

But it isn't just about wages.

As @oren_cass points out, when labor is artificially cheap, businesses don't need to innovate.

Thus, entire sectors see declining productivity.

In agriculture—which relies heavily on cheap migrant labor—productivity has been falling for decades.

Smith also claims migrants aren’t being "dumped" on these small towns—they're moving in for jobs based on "word of mouth."

Again, our reporting shows that isn't true.

Companies are actively importing immigrants into Charleroi.

Nonprofits there are literally boasting about it:

Smith's case for mass immigration has been conventional wisdom—in both parties—for decades.

Not only is it wrong; it betrays an extraordinarily low opinion of Americans. The core logic is that they can't be saved—they simply need to be replaced.

The cynicism here is astounding:

We'll be doing a lot more deep-dive threads and videos like this over the next few months.

Our philosophy is simple: America first. America forever. 🇺🇸

If you want to support our work, you can follow us at: @America_2100