Schlafly Ping!
Posted on 04/24/2006 4:24:45 PM PDT by HEMICRASHBOX
Illegal immigrants in this country are threatening a massive boycott on May 1, purportedly to demonstrate they are so essential that the U.S. economy would shut down without their labor. On the contrary, such a boycott will expose the lie expressed by President George W. Bush in Cancun, Mexico, that they are "doing work that Americans will not do."
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. If every one of the 20 million illegal aliens in our country plays hooky from his job on May 1, the overwhelming majority of those same types of jobs will be worked by millions of U.S. citizens.
All over America, U.S. citizens will flip hamburgers in fast-food shops, wash dishes in restaurants, change sheets in hotels, mow lawns, trim shrubs, pick produce, drive taxis, replace roofs on houses, and do all kinds of construction work. Americans are quite willing to work unpleasant, menial, tiresome and risky jobs, but not for Third World wages.
An employment service in Mobile, Ala., recently received an "urgent request" to fill 270 job openings from contractors who were hired to rebuild and clear areas of Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The agency immediately sent 70 laborers and construction workers to three job sites.
After two weeks on the job, the men were fired by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for lower wages. The U.S. citizens had been promised $10 an hour, but the employers preferred Mexicans who would work for less. Employment agency manager Linda Swope told The Washington Times: "When they told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame."
Swope said that employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi all face similar problems because an estimated 30,000 men from Mexico and Central and South America, many in crowded buses and trucks, came into those three states after Hurricane Katrina, willing to work for less than whatever was paid to U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile, President Bush signed the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act extending for 13 weeks the unemployment benefits to U.S. citizens displaced by Katrina. Thus employers get the benefit of cheap foreign labor while you and I provide taxpayer handouts to workers whom the government allowed to be displaced from the jobs they were eager to take.
There is no penalty on employers who replace U.S. citizens with illegal immigrants at lower pay. Homeland Security even announced it has suspended the sanctioning of employers who hire illegal immigrants, and President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires local contractors to pay "prevailing" wages.
A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that the surge of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s lowered the wages of our own high school dropouts by 8.2 percent. The surge has accelerated since that report was issued. The Congressional Budget Office reported that 60 percent of Mexican and Central American workers in the United States in 2004 lacked a high school diploma.
The Kennedy-McCain-Bush guest worker plan would import more uneducated, unskilled workers, and thereby deny our own high school dropouts (of whom we have too many) the opportunity to get started in building their lives in the labor force. U.S. citizens are threatened that the cost of lettuce will rise precipitously if we don't continue to import Mexican agricultural workers. But a farm worker gets only 6 or 7 cents out of a $1 head of lettuce, so even if the pay doubles, consumers would hardly notice the difference.
On the other hand, the costs taxpayers are forced to pay for social benefits for low-paid workers are astronomical. The National Research Council reports that an immigrant to the United States without a high-school diploma consumes $89,000 more in government services than he pays in taxes during his lifetime.
Low-paid illegal immigrants obviously pay very little taxes, but they cash in on all sorts of benefits paid by other taxpayers, such as schooling for their children, emergency health care, housing subsidies, Earned Income Tax Credit and law enforcement. If the 20 million illegal immigrants are legalized, they will also become eligible for Medicaid, and that's a real break-the-bank prospect.
These figures don't even count the rapidly growing underground economy, in which millions of illegal immigrants are paid off the books in cash. That enables both employer and employee to avoid paying taxes, and enables employers to avoid paying workers' compensation, unemployment compensation, and assorted other taxes.
If the Internal Revenue Service collected all the taxes that should be paid by the underground economy, our current budget deficit would disappear overnight, according to a Bear Stearns study released in 2005. The Americans who pay taxes are giving a free ride to those who are not paying taxes, and a 7-cent increase in the price of lettuce should not be on our worry list.
If section 1 of the 14th amendment were changed, I believe this would go a long way towards helping our immigration/illegal alien problem.
No, if the Pew Hispanic number in the first line is good enough for her, why wouldn't the Pew number be good enough for her in the second line? I'll tell tou why. Exaggeration.
Bttt
Bush said today that illegal aliens are only human beings who should be accorded "respect." He also said it would be impossible to deport millions of them.
So, those who willfully and deliberately and repeatedly break our laws should be given "respect?" Will somebody please tell what planet this guy is living on? Does he really think this kind of nonsense is going to sway the American people?
He also said this, just in case there's still anyone left who doesn't know how much contempt he holds the American worker in:
"That's why I'm for a temporary worker program that will -- (applause) -- that says to a person, here is a tamper-proof card that says, you can come and do a job an American won't do, fill a need."
Is it really going to say that on the card?
Our President,President Bush seems to care more about the criminal alien Mexicans that are coming into our country without authorisation than he does for the hard working American citizens who are paying the bills.
He Basicly said so when he stated that "we could not deport the 12 million Mexican criminal aliens who are here already,After all these are people too"
The Republican Party has had it as of 2008. I will not vote for a party that will not stand on its principles.
The Republican party does not deserve that vote
She is picking and choosing numbers. This is called dishonesty.
What do you call living in this country illegally? Or using false S.S. numbers? How about avoiding income taxes? Talk about picking and choosing!
I call that de-facto legal status.
"Since 2001, 6 million people have been caught illegally trying to get in this country, and turned back -- 6 million people."
The above is a quote from President Bush today.
"Since 2001, 6 million people have been caught illegally trying to get in this country, and turned back -- 6 million people."
The above is a quote from President Bush today
President Bush may have made that claim,But I have heared of and read estimates that claimed that there are at minimum 12 million criminal aliens in the country allready and that's probably underestimated.
The number is probably twice that number.Seeing the numbers that I have seen in a small state like Connecticut I just have to be concerned what the rest of the country looks like.
Yep, time for the FairTax to put the pressure on the illegal economy and make it pay some part of the tax revenue they benefit from - instead of us paying it all.
And the 20 million number (it was actually 21 million) was from data of over a year and a quarter (or more) ago.
The number now is probably correctly more like 25 million.
I'd gladly respect them if they'd stay in their own country and try to improve it instead of dragging ours down.
No, it'll probably say "Fake California Driver's License". You surely don't expect them to have to walk or ride a bike to work do you???
Have you no respect???
Schafly/Rice 08
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