Job Creation and Immigration

[peejay 327]

Job Creation and Immigration

By Virgil Goode

8/9/2011

Tucked in between dramatic stock market drops on Thursday and Monday, there was a little bit of seemingly good economic news on Friday morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the private sector added 117,000 jobs in the month of July.

But this news needs an asterisk. As Chris Chmielenski of the immigration control organization Numbers USA notes, “that number still falls short of the number of jobs needed for the 125,000 work permits issued to foreign workers each month by the federal government.”

Despite the recession, the government continues to issue huge numbers of visas to foreign workers. In 2010, we issued over one million permanent green cards. Three quarter of these immigrants were of working age who are competing against Americans for jobs. We also issue nearly a million guest worker visas each year.

This is not enough for many in Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is reportedly planning to introduce another “comprehensive immigration reform” bill, which will grant amnesty to illegal aliens and massively increase legal immigration.

Knowing that this is going to be a tough sell in a recession, Sen. Schumer explained that he met with leaders of various pro-amnesty organizations and, “We decided we ought to start highlighting the fact that immigration creates jobs rather than takes them away. Everyone agreed that is how we are going to start talking about immigration, as a job creator.”

Talk all they want, but our current immigration policies are taking jobs, not creating them.

On July 26, Sen. Schumer held a hearing to promote the idea that immigrants create jobs called "The Economic Imperative for Enacting Immigration Reform." The hearing focused on immigration of high skilled workers and entrepreneurs, but these are only a tiny proportion of all immigrants. In 2010, only 0.2% of legal immigrants were investors, 5.2% received advanced degree visas, and 1.1% were listed as having “extraordinary abilities.”

Virtually all illegal aliens and the majority of legal immigrants are low skilled workers. Moreover, the skills of many workers on high skilled H-1B visas are often limited to a tech degree from a community college overseas. They are brought here not because they have truly advanced abilities needed by American businesses, but because they will work for far less than Americans. As Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) recently stated about H-1B visas “it is clear they are not working as intended, and the programs are having a detrimental effect on American workers.”

Last October, the Rakesh Kochar of the Pew Hispanic Center reported that since the "official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million." He updated his finding in March and found some small job creation for native born Americans, but that foreign workers were still finding new jobs at six times the American rate.

How should we solve this problem? Former National Review editor and George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum recently called for a simple solution to help reduce unemployment, an Immigration Moratorium. He argued, “You hear it often said that the US must create X number of jobs per month simply to stay even with the increase in the working population. It’s not stressed often enough that much of this increase is artificially created by immigration. In a time of high unemployment, why make the challenge larger?”

I don’t always agree with David Frum, but this is common sense. Until Americans are working, we should make across the board cuts on worker visas, while cracking down on employers of illegal aliens. In the meantime, whenever you hear a politician or pundit heads talking about “putting Americans back to work”, remember that many of those workers aren’t Americans.

Virgil Goode

Virgil Goode represented Virginia’s 5th Congressional District from 1997 until 2009.

http://townhall.com/columnists/virgilgoode/2011/08/09/job_creation_and_immigration

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

One only needs to look at England to see the results of mass immigration these days.

[peejay 327]

One only needs to look at England to see the results of mass immigration these days.

Notwithstanding riots in jolly old England, I hear nothing but silence and crickets from the usual open borders crowd. The US economy sucks and will be sucking for quite some time. Why are we importing millions more chain migration foreign permanent residents and so called temporary workers? Why the push to amnesty illegal aliens and give them work visas? It makes no sense. It's not like these people are benefiting the vast majority of American citizenry. They never did. So why do we continue to let our politicians do it? Riddle me that.

It makes you wonder what country or astral plane the politicians live in.

Edited August 11, 2011 by peejay

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Notwithstanding riots in jolly old England, I hear nothing but silence and crickets from the usual open borders crowd. The US economy sucks and will be sucking for quite some time. Why are we importing millions more chain migration foreign permanent residents and so called temporary workers? Why the push to amnesty illegal aliens and give them work visas? It makes no sense. It's not like these people are benefiting the vast majority of American citizenry. They never did. So why do we continue to let our politicians do it? Riddle me that.

It makes you wonder what country or astral plane the politicians live in.

Probably should start with scaling back on K1s....maybe start a lottery.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Probably should start with scaling back on K1s....maybe start a lottery.

Not the illegals and HB's ?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Not the illegals and HB's ?

Them too. We need to be like a club at 2am - 1 in and 1 out. Maybe we can let a few extra hotties in now and then.

[Rebecca Jo 1,962]

peejay, if businesses are filing visa applications with USCIS to bring over skilled workers they can't find in the US, that's got nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with capitalism.

[Golden Gate 530]

Them too. We need to be like a club at 2am - 1 in and 1 out. Maybe we can let a few extra hotties in now and then.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

peejay, if businesses are filing visa applications with USCIS to bring over skilled workers they can't find in the US, that's got nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with capitalism.

Really now? I'm guessing you didn't ever read about the MS scam along with other large corporations where they were investigated for hiring cheap over sea's labor to come into the US when they had plenty of US college grads to fill those positions.

[Rebecca Jo 1,962]

Really now? I'm guessing you didn't ever read about the MS scam along with other large corporations where they were investigated for hiring cheap over sea's labor to come into the US when they had plenty of US college grads to fill those positions.

It doesn't matter if I ever read about Microsoft or not.

In a capitalist economy, businesses are allowed to choose who they wish to hire. If they choose to hire aliens, then that is "free" capitalism.

If you don't like it, you should take it up with Microsoft and not blame it on US immigration policy.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

It doesn't matter if I ever read about Microsoft or not.

In a capitalist economy, businesses are allowed to choose who they wish to hire. If they choose to hire aliens, then that is "free" capitalism.

If you don't like it, you should take it up with Microsoft and not blame it on US immigration policy.

So you think that the corporations should be able to exploit the US immigration system yes? It's good to see where you stand on this subject.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Well it could always be worse here. I mean look at Britain. Anyone see the latest on the news tonight? That country is coming apart at the seams. So much for mass immigration eh.

[Rebecca Jo 1,962]

Well it could always be worse here. I mean look at Britain. Anyone see the latest on the news tonight? That country is coming apart at the seams. So much for mass immigration eh.

Nice try.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Nice try.

Nice try what? You think everyone in the US is retarded or something? You don't think we see what's been happening in Europe the past few decades and the results of mass immigration? Not all of us here watch "Dancing with the Stars".

Tell ya what. Turn on CNN and check out what's happening in Britain atm. It's similar to what happened during the Paris riots...yet worse.

[Rebecca Jo 1,962]

I get my news from the BBC.