Posted on 06/14/2010 12:52:30 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
With 10% unemployment, one would think that the government would consider lowering the number of green cards issued to foreign workers until Americans were back on their feet. Amazingly, recently released data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that we have actually increased immigration. Far from reflecting supply and demand, our legal immigration numbers continue to climb no matter the state of the national economy.
The latest figures come from fiscal year 2009. The fiscal year began on October 1, 2008, which is when our economic collapse began and continued through September of 2009. Over five million Americans lost their jobs during that period.
America issued 1,130,818 permanent green cards, 808,478 of which were given to immigrants of working age. This is an increase over 2008 and 2007. Excluding the extra green cards given after the 1986 amnesty, this was the second highest number of green cards issued since 1914. From 2000 though 2009, we issued 10,299,430—the highest decade in American history.
In addition to the green cards, the government issued 881,840 temporary work visas and gave refugee or asylum status to 96,721 aliens. The total increase to the American workforce was 1.75 million foreign workers. According to the Census Bureau, 1 out of every 6 workers is foreign born.
What are the possible justifications for this policy? Are these immigrants taking jobs Americans won’t do? With the unemployment rate at nearly 10%, no one can say this with a straight face.
Does this create diversity? The pool of legal immigrants is rather un-diverse. Less than 10% of them come from Europe.
Does more legal immigration decrease illegal immigration? If that were the case, you would have expected the illegal immigration numbers to decline as legal immigration increased. In fact, they have both skyrocketed.
Instead of talking about reducing these numbers, politicians are calling for raising the level of legal immigration. Senators Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D.-N.J.), and Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) recently released an outline for their ideas for “comprehensive immigration reform.” They call for adding an additional 3.4 million family visas and 550,000 work visas.
In the house, Representatives Luis Gutierrez (D.-Ill.) and Solomon Ortiz (D.-Tex.) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act (H.R. 4321) which makes the same proposals for increasing family and work visas, but one ups them by adding a special new visa category of 100,000 permanent green cards a year to go specifically to Latin American countries.
There are two bills in Congress that will reduce legal immigration. Rep. Phil Gingrey’s (R.-Ga.) Nuclear Family Priority Act (H.R.878) will limit family-based immigration and reduce 111,800 green cards. Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R.-Va.) SAFE for America Act (H.R.2305) will eliminate the Visa Lottery category that grants 50,000 visas a year. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership is not backing these bills and they only have 30 and 57 co-sponsors, respectively.
These bills are a great start, but even if they passed we’d still issue nearly one million green cards a year. If we really want to put Americans back to work, we need a moratorium across nearly all categories of legal immigration. A moratorium will free up jobs for American citizens, reduce the stress on social services, and allow the immigrants already here to assimilate.
The only people who will lose out from a moratorium are the ethnic interests who want new constituents and the business lobbies who want cheap labor. Unfortunately, both political parties are more concerned with the well-being of these special interests than the well-being American citizens.
Mr. Goode represented Virginia's 5th Congressional District from 1997 through 2009.
Green cards are issued according to federal law to people who qualify and who have reached their spot on the quotas. The problem is not lawful immigrants but an open southern border. The author is being stupid.
Totally didn’t even consider that. There’s gotta be a way to tie the number of visas allowed vs. the unemployment rate or some such thing. This is just common sense.
Many members of Congress bought and paid for by business interests who want the supply of labor to continue greater than the demand for labor.
No surprise, and it will continue until the voters really hone in on this issue.
Yep, and the quotas are set by Congress, which is constantly lobbied by business interests for higher quotas.
SAFE for America Act (H.R.2305) will eliminate the Visa Lottery category that grants 50,000 visas a year.
This is VERY IMPORTANT! Most people don’t realize that we give away 50,000 green cards per year in a “diversity lottery”! If you live in almost any country you can go to the US Embassy and throw your name in a hat, and potentially win a Green Card (I spoke with an Irishman once who had won, and told me he had entered it based on a pub bet!)
We need to have a much smarter immigration policy. I personally would much rather let a few more Mexicans come who applied legally and were checked out than allow people in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. to win Green Cards pulled out of a hat! We need to let people come who really espouse our ideals and wish to become Americans, not because they are winning bar bets!
“SAFE for America Act (H.R.2305) will eliminate the Visa Lottery category that grants 50,000 visas a year. This is VERY IMPORTANT! Most people don’t realize that we give away 50,000 green cards per year in a “diversity lottery”! If you live in almost any country you can go to the US Embassy and throw your name in a hat, and potentially win a Green Card (I spoke with an Irishman once who had won, and told me he had entered it based on a pub bet!) We need to have a much smarter immigration policy. I personally would much rather let a few more Mexicans come who applied legally and were checked out than allow people in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. to win Green Cards pulled out of a hat! We need to let people come who really espouse our ideals and wish to become Americans, not because they are winning bar bets!”
You are right, this is an important issue.
The lottery should be ended promptly.
It’s time we started carefully selecting who (and how many!) we want coming here. Spinning an arrow and letting it land on criminals, terrorists, or permanent welfare recipients who can immigrate here is beyond insane.
It’s why I split from beautiful SoCal for NFL.
There are still a few employed Americans.
That being considered, it’s only right government continue with chain immigration.
Right you are.
Without getting too much into it, I get the pleasure of seeing a lot of these people arriving. With RARE exception, it's a person from Bangladesh or Mali who speaks no English, has all his belongings in a trash bag slung over his shoulder, still excited from the ride on the "Great Silver Bird" and is being met by a representative from an "Immigrants Rights" group to be walked through the welfare and social entitlement processes.
Great to see Virgil’s name again, even as the author of a commentary. Virgil was is a great, stalwart American who was taken down down 0bamamania. Tom Pereillo is nothing more than an 0bamatron to the core.
down down 0bamamania=down during 0bamamania
As California goes broke times 3, the people who constantly vote for bonds and unions increased pay need to have their heads taken out of their rumps IMO.
You can only have your hand out so long and you can only give away the state and federal treasury to non-citizens so long before it collapses.
I knew a guy who got his in the lottery. Took years, but he finally “won”.
He was amazed that there were no other qualifications to be met.
In the mean time, while he was waiting to win, he managed to get into New Zealand, I believe. There, he said they put him under a microscope before they’d let him in.
Are you on the water? What's FL's Gulf Coast's prognosis re: the oil leak?
You get a green card by showing you have a qualified job offer or are a relative of a citizen. It if a step to becoming a citizen. Green card holders must pay taxes on their earnings and cannot accept welfare without jeopardizing their status.
When your goal is to destroy a country’s economy, it helps if you bring in a few million foreigner shock troops.
You get a green card by showing you have a qualified job offer or are a relative of a citizen.
Generally true, unless you win the Diversity Lottery as discussed above.
I’m on the east coast near Jax, so that oil spill is still a long way away from us, psychologically.
125,000 brand new foreign workers with work permits each month -- HERE'S THE PROOF
"These green cards are the most insidious aspect. Every year, our federal government hands out PERMANENT access to U.S. jobs to nearly a million foreign adults through our legal immigration system. In 2008 while our economy was suffering the worst collapse since the Great Depression, our government continued to flood the occupations of beleaguered U.S. workers at this incredible pace.
Lots of people in think tanks that ought to know better have thrown ridiculous accusations at us, such as claiming that the feds can't possibly have given 951,000 green cards to immigrant workers since the law only allows greencards to 140,000 skilled and 5,000 unskilled workers per year.
This is the kind of deception that the high-immigration people often use. Most immigrants don't come on employment visas but through lottery, family, refugee and chain migration categories. What, these adults don't take jobs, they just go on welfare?
In fact, all immigrants (employment-based or otherwise) enter the job market at even higher rates than American natives. And that's a big problem when there are 951,000 of them a year during a Jobs Depression."
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