America’s two-tier economy is working exactly as planned

The left suddenly fears that artificial intelligence will replace American workers. It showed far less concern when illegal immigration undercut wages and jobs.

The double standard reveals a larger economic vision: protection for the credentialed class, cheap labor at the bottom, and little concern for the working Americans caught between them.

The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.

Progressive warnings about AI often begin with the claim that employers will use new technology to replace costly labor or avoid training new employees. One progressive platform warns that AI could cause massive labor-market disruption. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposes taxing AI so that its gains do not flow only to the wealthy.

The concern isn’t inherently foolish. New technology can displace workers, at least temporarily, and policymakers should consider how people adapt. But the left’s labor solidarity becomes strangely selective when the competing worker entered the country illegally.

The Migration Policy Institute recently estimated that the illegal immigrant population may have reached 15.8 million. The Biden years also produced more than 10 million border encounters, although that figure includes repeat attempts and excludes people who evaded detection.

Meanwhile, the July Bureau of Labor Statistics report counted 7.1 million unemployed Americans. Those numbers do not prove that every illegal worker displaced a citizen. They do make it absurd to pretend that millions of additional workers have no effect on wages, bargaining power, or employment.

The standard answer is that illegal immigrants perform jobs Americans refuse to do. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) put the argument plainly: In a capitalist economy, someone will always do the work others do not want.

But jobs are not fixed objects with permanently assigned wages. When employers cannot attract workers, they must raise pay, improve conditions, invest in equipment, or change the way the work is performed. Labor scarcity gives workers leverage.

Progressives claim to understand that principle when they campaign for higher legal wage floors. The five states with the highest minimum wages are deep blue. Democratic lawmakers routinely demand “living wages” and stronger benefits.

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Yet the same politicians short-circuit the market mechanism that might raise wages naturally. They permit a large supply of unauthorized labor, including an estimated 8.5 million people working off the books, to fill jobs at wages and under conditions many would never accept.

That arrangement is not compassionate to workers. It allows employers to avoid the higher pay, benefits, and taxes that legal labor would require. It also leaves illegal immigrants vulnerable to exploitation because their status limits their ability to challenge abuse.

The result is a two-tiered labor market.

At the top sit credentialed professionals whose jobs may be threatened by AI. Their anxieties receive white papers, Senate hearings, tax proposals, and sympathetic coverage. At the bottom sit unauthorized workers whom progressive politicians describe as indispensable because they perform society’s least desirable tasks.

Crockett’s own words and similar comments from other Democrats expose the hierarchy. The jobs at the top must be protected from technological competition. The jobs at the bottom must remain cheap enough that Americans supposedly will not take them.

The people excluded from both priorities are working-class citizens.

They are told that automation may eliminate their better-paying opportunities but that low-wage jobs cannot pay more because imported labor must fill them. They face high legal wage mandates and benefit requirements on one side, then competition from off-the-books labor on the other.

Government benefits without strong work requirements can compound the problem by creating a steep penalty for returning to employment. Sanctuary policies then protect the unauthorized labor supply that keeps wages down.

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This is not a coherent defense of workers. It is a coalition strategy.

The modern left protects the professional class that staffs its institutions and the immigrant constituencies it hopes to mobilize. The blue-collar Americans who once formed the Democratic base receive speeches about dignity while policy steadily erodes their bargaining power.

Long gone are the days when the left at least pretended to organize politics around the American worker.

AI may indeed disrupt employment. Illegal immigration can also depress wages and displace workers. A party genuinely committed to labor would confront both pressures honestly instead of treating one as a crisis and the other as a moral obligation.

The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.