They are a significant factor in forcing American companies to take the short-term remedy of moving out of the United States. I say short-term because a nation, like the USA, cannot continue to exist economically when 80% of its jobs are classified as "service" jobs.
Our manufacturing base is practically nil and the service jobs are moving to India and China. Our government encourages this by issuing visas to hundreds of thousands of workers from these countries to come to this country to be trained to perform these jobs.
Unfortunately the American workers doing the training find themselves without jobs once these foreigners have returned to their homeland and begin scheduling Sear's service staff from thousands of miles away!
We won't see a viable political candidate address this issue because there aren't many honest ones available. Only one comes to mind: Congressman Tancredo, the Republican from Colorado.
We're kept so busy reading about other issues that we haven't the time to concentrate on this issue that is paramount to our future.
Are you trying to tell me that the reason companies are moving jobs overseas is because of immigration ?