Posted on 10/14/2003 1:12:52 PM PDT by VU4G10
| The U.S. unemployment rate today is at the highest level in 20 years. |
| Millions of hard-working Americans who are desperate for jobs can't find them, and both the short term and long term prospects do not bode well for many American workers. The economic problems we face would be bad enough if all we had to contend with were a recovering economy, the continued threat of terrorism, and increased competition from foreign companies. But a Congress that should be looking for ways to help unemployed Americans is busy opening the floodgates to millions of new immigrants who take jobs away from Americans - and also helping companies take the remaining jobs offshore. It almost appears that our government is committed to making sure everybody in the world has a job - except Americans. Historically, the U.S. admitted around 300,000 legal immigrants per year, but Congress changed our immigration policies back around 1965 and opened the floodgates. We now allow more than a MILLION legal immigrants into the country each year. A small number of these are refugees; some have special skills not easily found here. But an increasingly large percentage of those pouring through our borders are undereducated, unskilled workers who threaten the income of blue-collar workers, the backbone of America. Millions more come here each year ILLEGALLY, and the government does nothing to stop that either. It's no secret that most immigrants - legal and illegal - come to the United States for a single reason: money. They know that no matter what a job pays here, it will be far more than they could ever hope to earn in their own country. A job in America is a ticket to what appears to them to be a fortune, letting them live better than they could have imagined at home. It's also no secret that those same immigrants will underbid any American for any job. Their arrival by the thousands corresponds directly with thousands of Americans being pushed out of a job. In effect, every visa given to an unskilled foreigner is really a pink slip handed to a hard-working American. Worse yet, the pink slips are being handed to Americans by their own government, paid for with their own tax money! And the cost of this flood of immigration is not just being borne by those who lose their jobs. American taxpayers are increasingly funding the health, education and welfare of millions of immigrants at a cost of tens of billions of dollars per year. The Federation for American Immigration Reform recently released a report that detailed the fact that educating illegal alien children is costing the U.S. over $7 billion a year - enough to buy a computer for every middle school child in America. Health care for the two million illegals in California runs in the billions of dollars a year; and it is estimated that the annual health care costs of delivering illegal alien children in Denver, Colorado alone is in excess of ten million dollars. All of these costs are borne by American taxpayers. Clearly, we have a broken system, one that lets hundreds of thousands of unskilled immigrants - legal and illegal - into the United States at random to take American jobs, stifle the American economy, and put little or nothing back into strained local, state and federal tax coffers. This has to end. Congress needs to immediately enforce our immigration laws to stop the flood of illegal immigration and change our outdated laws to reduce legal immigration back to more manageable numbers. A step in the right direction is a bill introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, H.R. 775, which would end the totally unnecessary visa lottery program. It would help give us a "time out" while we assess other ways to manage immigration into this country. America has always been a land of opportunity and a nation of immigrants. But when the opportunity is for today's flood of immigrants to put Americans on the unemployment line, our system is out of whack. Instead of maintaining policies that hand out pink slips to America, Congress needs to get serious about stopping illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration to reasonable levels that will allow the millions who have flooded into this country in recent years to assimilate. Every day of delay is another stack of pink slips for Americans. |
This same young lady (in her early 20's) already has a student loan debt of $22,000 and tuition costs for a local student have gone up from an average of $3000 per semester to $5000.
I guess that's to pay for the freeloaders tuition.
Sure you can, all it takes is a little hard work, foresight and two or three brain cells. People do it every day.
Wrong. If you not working and are looking for a job after unemployment has run out (or if you never collected it), you are counted as unemployed. If you haven't looked in 4 weeks, you aren't officially part of the labor force any more.
From the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_ques23.htm
Unemployed persons: All persons who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the 4 week-period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
Are these illegals, or people legally here on student visas?
When I went to college here in Ohio in the late 80's, foreign students paid out of state rates + assorted extra fees. The only ones who got out of that were the teaching and research assistants who had part or all of their college paid for plus got a stipend, but I counted that as payment for their work.
Well, the mainstream liberal media sure wouldn't lie, now would they? Rest assured, illegal scumbags are taking skilled jobs...as I can personally attest to.
I've told this story so many times that many FReepers are doubtlessly getting sick of it, but I was fired from a $23/hr. telecom cabling job in suburban DC, while the company hired more and more illegal scumbag aliens for $8-10/hour. One of these scumbags was a roommate of mine in company housing, and often bragged about how he never paid taxes, drove without insurance, paid $400 for his forged documents to get the job, etc. Furthermore, ask the (likely) thousands of roofers, framers, bricklayers, and other skilled folks in the construction field who have lost their jobs to illegal scumbag aliens if their former jobs were "beneath their dignity".
Furthermore, the whole argument that "they do jobs Americans wouldn't take" is specious to begin with. If the criminals weren't here, the wages for those "undignified" jobs would have to rise to their true value level, and Americans would take them. The laws of supply and demand apply to labor as well, but I guess now that the American economy has morphed into the "global" economy, the rules of capitalism no longer apply.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I too support reduced immigration, but this Wal Martian needs to get his facts straight before I could respect his opinion.
And people wonder why "landscapers" (as opposed to their illegal employees) in suburban NYC can afford a $500,000 house and a place "downashore."
Ding!Ding!Ding! We have a winner.
So you were living with a criminal and living off of his ill-gotten gain (he shared the rent right?), and only after you were fired did you speak out. Why did you not call immigration (for his being here illegally), the IRS (for not paying taxes), and the state DOT (for not paying auto-liability insurance) while he was living with you?
I'm sick to death of this talk about how Americans won't work. There are millions of Americans who will work but who can't find a decent job because this country is being flooded with illegal aliens.
Okay, tone down the emotion and read my post thoroughly..."company housing". That means the company furnished the housing, and no one on the crew paid the rent. Read thouroughly next time, please.
"...and only after you were fired did you speak out. Why did you not call immigration (for his being here illegally), the IRS (for not paying taxes), and the state DOT (for not paying auto-liability insurance) while he was living with you?"
Do you know me? Did you and I work together with that particular company? Or are you merely making an assumption about me and how I handled that particular situation? As a matter of fact, I did make a number of calls to the INS, and reported not only my roommate, but the company, because they had about 15 illegal scumbag aliens on the payroll. Of course, that was in August of 2001, so I imagine my report, if there was an investigation at all, got shuffled to the circular file the following month.
In the future, please don't make assumptions about people, especially those of us who are on your team. Contrary to the cliche, assumptions don't make asses of you and me, only you.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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