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. |
Most of the "unemployed" and "laid off" workers I've seen in the news did not lose the type of jobs that are typically taken by these immigrant workers. Of course, many folks have lost jobs to plants moving to other countries, but that is an entirely different issue.
Folks, somebody's gotta harvest the crops, process the poultry, landscape the yards and perform the many other tasks that most Americans consider "beneath" their dignities! If these immigrant workers are willing to do this work, more power to them ... and if they are performing their services at low,low pay, that is a form of taxation in itself, and we all benefit!
It's sure a darn good thing Republicans are in control of the House and the Senate, ain't it? What time is it?
I see no evidence that immigration, illegal or otherwise, has any effect whatsoever on the price of the service they are rendering.
For example, the quotes I received for landscaping my front yard, the type of job permeated with illegals in these parts, 'bout knocked my socks off.
I'd like to see the evidence that excessive immigration - or for that manner, outsourcing, has any effect at all on the normal cost curve of the industries they're involved in.
How long are native Americans going to keep tolerating this destructive lie? We are not a nation of immigrants there has not been an immigrant in my family since 1734. This lie from the bowles of corrupt politicians suggests that nothing has been built here, there is no native population, no culture, no history, and we have no more say about who and what comes into our home than someone with wet feet. What time is it?
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