What’s a ‘Black Job’? Trump’s Anti-Immigration Remarks Are Met With Derision

At the presidential debate earlier this week, there was much said that would have been the primary story if not for the shaky performance of President Joe Biden.  For example, in his diatribes about immigrants, Donald Trump claimed that immigrants were taking “Black” and “Hispanic jobs.”   In any other election story, that statement would have been the story.

Immigrants long have been accused of taking jobs from U.S. citizens.  And a few — and overwhelming minority of — economists have claimed that low wage immigrant labor compete with poor whites and African Americans for jobs.  But few  political leaders have put it like Trump did in the debate.  

Maya King for the New York Times reported on the reaction to Trump’s statement in the debate that undocumented immigrants were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”  According to the story, the statement “touched off a host of internet jokes and memes over what, exactly, a `Black job’ is.”