Americans are losing: Millions of foreigners are given work permits but jobs aren’t keeping up

The professional who just got laid off never expected this. They worked hard their whole life. Always had a plan B, C and D. Never without a job. Never needed a handout. Now, for the first time, they’re facing the unknown, the unemployment line.

The recent college graduate, diploma in hand, who spent four years living on Top Ramen, buried in textbooks and study groups, was told the degree was the ticket to success. Stay in school, study hard, and there will be a future waiting for you.

The stay-at-home mom who’s always believed in raising her children full-time would prefer to keep doing just that, nurturing her family, providing the care only a mother can give. But with food prices rising and their household on the edge, she’s forced to return to work for the first time in years. Not because she wants to, but because she must.

These Americans all know the challenge ahead. They know they’ll need to fight for the job that helps them keep their home, pay their bills, feed their families and contribute to their communities.

What they don’t know is this: There aren’t enough jobs for Americans anymore.

And worse, they’re not just competing with each other. They’re competing with millions of work-authorized foreign nationals who are now legally walking into the same job market.

In 2024, while the U.S. economy only created 2.2 million new jobs, the federal government approved over 5.56 million employment authorizations for foreign nationals. That’s more than twice as many workers added to the job pool than jobs created.

And it wasn’t an isolated year. From 2022 to 2024 America issued over 18 million work permits through a patchwork of visa programs, asylum cases, student extensions and executive actions. During that same three-year period, only 9.7 million jobs were created.

Millions of hardworking Americans, just like the laid-off parent, the young graduate and the mother returning to work, are entering a job market that’s already saturated. Not because of natural supply and demand, but because the government is flooding the system with foreign competition.

The government’s role

Many Americans assume that employment-based immigration is tightly controlled, limited in number and directly tied to job availability. In reality, that is not how the system works.

Each year, the U.S. government issues millions of work authorizations to foreign nationals through a variety of immigration categories. These include asylum applicants, individuals with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), H-1B temporary skilled workers, international students participating in post-graduation work programs such as Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM OPT and other similar work visa programs.

Most of these programs do not require a specific job offer to exist at the time of approval. In many cases, there is no legal obligation for employers to demonstrate that they attempted to hire a U.S. worker first. Additionally, several of these programs have no annual cap, meaning there is no fixed limit on how many individuals can receive work authorization each year.

As a result, foreign nationals may be granted the legal right to work in the U.S., sometimes for multiple years, without any link to actual job openings or confirmation that the U.S. labor market has unmet demand. There is no built-in labor market test, no requirement to prioritize American workers and no formal mechanism to align these approvals with the number of available jobs. In practice, this means that millions of work-authorized foreign nationals can enter the job market each year, even during periods of high unemployment or limited job growth for U.S. citizens.

American workers left behind

For American workers, whether they’re behind the wheel of a truck, fixing engines, building homes, caring for patients, writing code, or stepping out of college with a degree, the impact is personal and immediate. When the federal government authorizes millions of foreign nationals to enter the workforce each year, it floods the job market and stacks the deck against American citizens.

This is no longer limited to so-called “low-skilled” jobs. The displacement is happening across the board, in white-collar careers, government contracts, hospitals, classrooms and tech companies. And because there’s no hard limit on how many employment authorizations can be issued, the floodgates stay wide open.

Employers, enticed by lower costs and fewer obligations, are increasingly turning to foreign workers with temporary status. Americans aren’t being passed over because they lack skills, but because the system itself has been rewired to favor foreign labor over American talent.

The result is a quiet restructuring of the U.S. labor market, one where citizenship, hard work and sacrifice no longer guarantee opportunity. The data makes this shift hard to ignore. According to the Federal Reserve’s FRED database, foreign-born men have consistently been employed at higher rates than American-born men, a trend that persisted through 2024. In recent years, that employment gap has remained steady, averaging 15% to 17%. This pattern points to a deeper structural preference where foreign workers are being favored, while American workers are being pushed aside.

A betrayal hidden in plain sight

The numbers speak for themselves, American workers are now competing in a labor market reshaped by federal immigration policy, one that adds millions of foreign workers each year without regard to job availability.

Across the country, parents, recent graduates, veterans and working families are doing everything they were told would lead to success, earning degrees, gaining experience, showing up day after day, only to find fewer opportunities waiting for them.

Not because they lacked the skills or experience, but because millions of foreign nationals were approved to enter the workforce ahead of them, many of whom will work for lower wages, tolerate unsafe conditions, skip benefits and stay silent rather than risk losing their place. Not because they choose to, but because it’s the only way to be more appealing than an American who can do the same job.

Stay tuned. The WND America First Immigration Team is continuing its investigation into the federal government’s approval of foreign workers and the growing connection to U.S. layoffs, job displacement and wage suppression. As new data and whistleblower testimony emerge, we’ll bring you the facts the mainstream media won’t touch. You can follow us on X @Worldnetdaily, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and visit wnd.com for the latest reports, whistleblower stories, and ways you can take action. Let’s keep America first – always!