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Donald Trump has wildly claimed that “107 percent” of new jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants.
Trump made the baseless claim at a town hall event on Thursday night in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, after a woman in the crowd told him she was worried about illegal immigrants “taking away opportunities from Americans”.
The Republican presidential nominee responded: “It’s going to start with the Black population. African Americans are losing their jobs. And I don’t know if you heard the latest statistic, that of the jobs that these people created, which is very little, every single job was taken – about 107 percent – was taken by illegal immigrants.
“There’s been no job creation by them, the jobs were filled by illegal immigrants.”
His statistic – which does not make mathematical sense and was not backed up by any evidence – prompted the crowd to boo and jeer at the made-up figure and he was not scrutinized further by town hall host Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump then outlined his plans for tackling immigration. “We’re gonna be closing the border… really closing it,” he said, before launching into another attack on Kamala Harris, whose interview on CNN aired shortly after Trump’s town hall.
Republicans Against Trump shared the clip on X and said: “Math isn’t Donald’s subject.”
The former president previously said the figure was 100 percent. “Virtually 100% of the new jobs under Biden have also gone to illegal aliens,” Trump said back in June.
More than 15 million jobs have been created since January 2021 when President Joe Biden took office. And while the population of unauthorized immigrants has risen in recent years, it is not enough to take all of the jobs created during Biden’s presidency.
Throughout this presidential election campaign, Trump has pitched his anti-immigration platform as a way to attract Black voters. He sparked outrage for claiming immigrants were taking away “Black jobs” during the CNN debate with Biden.
Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that his administration has done more for Black workers than any other president, including achieving the lowest Black unemployment rate and poverty rate while he was in office. But those record lows were eclipsed by figures during the Biden administration.
In a speech to the NAACP’s 115th national convention in Las Vegas on 17 July, Biden said Trump is “lying like hell” about Black unemployment when that figure hit a “record low” while he was in office.
While employment gains since 2018 have almost entirely come from workers who weren’t born in the US, they are nearly all naturalized US citizens and legal residents — not “illegals,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
He was eviscerated by Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention, who said: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
