The government should favor automation over migration because robots can help Americans get higher wages, says Vice President JD Vance.
“The evidence that I see is that if we really lean into robotics and technology, it’s going to raise everybody’s wages and make everybody better off,” Vance told Fox News.
The Democrats’ candidate for vice president, Gov. Tim Walz, prefers more migrants. “This country is better because of immigration,” Walz told a Texas event on November 13. “We should encourage it, and we should want it.”
Vance has pushed the automation-beats-migration argument since at least March.
The promise of cheap labor is ”a drug that too many American firms got addicted to … [and] globalization’s hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it’s been bad for innovation,” Vance told an audience of investors in California.
“Real innovation makes us more productive, but it also, I think, dignifies our workers. It boosts our standard of living. It strengthens our workforce and the relative value of its labor,” Vance said in his speech.
That automation-beats-migration argument has been echoed by President Donald Trump, who is also endorsing the use of well-trained temporary migrants to build high-tech factories in the United States.
“We’re going to need robots … to make our economy run because we do not have enough people,” he told Breitbart News in August, adding:
We don’t enough people to do it. So we have to get efficient … we’ll probably add to [the existing workforce] through roboticallly … Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots. The whole thing, it feeds on itself.
Vance explained his views in a November 12 interview on Fox News by focusing on the growing use of robots to help construction workers.
“I understand why people are worried that if you have a robot doing that job, [it might] take away from a blue-collar worker who can do that job right now,” he said, adding:
Sometimes what technology does is it allows somebody do something a little bit different, to use their mind a little bit more than some of the routine tasks they might have been doing, and that actually means they’re more productive. They get better wages, and everybody becomes better off.
I don’t think that we’re going to ever eliminate the construction industry in this country just because you’ve got robots. What you’re going to have is a lot of construction workers who are using those robots, who are directing those robots, who are actually able to do more [every day] because they’re using technology to help them.
You’re always going to need construction workers in this economy, but I want their wages to go up, and I think if we lean into technology, that’s what’s going to happen
No robot can replace a great blue-collar construction worker. You see in some of the houses, some of the things they do, the trim that they’re able to do, there’s an art there that I don’t think a robot’s ever going to be able to replace. But can a robot maybe make it easier for construction workers to put up more nails and more walls over a shorter period of time? Some of the rote things? In other words, you’re going to see I think robotics helps construction workers, and I think that’s going to lead to higher wages, and it’s also going to lead to more homes.
Robots are also better than the Democrats’ inflow of wage-cutting migrants, he said:
There really are rules of how you make people more productive, how you create economic growth, of how you make people better off. The Democrat model was “Import low-wage immigrants!” and I really do think that hurt the jobs of our construction workers and hurt the wages of a lot of our blue-collar workers.
Their idea was that the way that we get more prosperity is to import more and more low-wage servants. And that actually, I think, reduced prosperity because it meant that a lot of our blue-collar workers were struggling.
But if you use technology and you empower the blue-collar workers [with robots and automation] rather than replace them with foreign labor, I think they’re going to do way better. They’re going to make higher wages, and the whole country is going to be better off.
Should government “depend on low-wage immigrants, or do you depend on American citizens bolstered by technology and innovation?” he said. “That’s … the model that’s going to deliver long-term prosperity.”
Breitbart News has closely followed the emerging automation vs. migration debate, and has shown how migration cuts Americans ‘ wages, drives up Americans’ housing costs, and cripples civic development in the migrants’ home countries. Breitbart has also covered the huge burden of migrant crime, as well as related welfare, diversity, medical, and civic costs.
Vance’s automation-beats migration strategy is very different from the max-migration strategy pushed by the Democrats’ self-serving alliance of government progressives and Wall Street investors.
Under President Joe Biden, Americans’ wages stalled, inflation jumped, and housing costs ballooned as Biden welcomed roughly 15 million migrant renters, consumers, and workers.
“I would make the argument that I don’t think the immigration issue is pushing wages down,” Walz told his Texas audience, adding:
I don’t think [immigration] is the main culprit … the [immigration] system could be smoother, but this is one of those cases I am not going to compromise. This country is better because of immigration.
“We should encourage it, and we should want it,” said Walz.
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