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STEIN REPORT Thursday, July 22 2004 10:19:21 ETFOREIGN LABOR: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?
The Christian Science Monitor notes that immigration is not just diversifying and changing America, it is also costing Americans in their taxes and in their jobs. The paper cites a recent Columbia University study that pegs the net cost of immigration at $52 billion a year. It also notes, “high levels of immigration, these economists posit, are depressing wages, exacerbating the income gap between rich and poor, and requiring government to support and educate the many newcomers who subsist at the bottom of the economic ladder.” Furthermore, “…many economists see as ‘voodoo economics’ the argument that US-born Americans won't take the unskilled jobs that immigrants typically occupy. With fewer immigrants, economists say, wages for the tough jobs in farms, factories, or elsewhere would rise and pay enough to attract US-born Americans. Or Americans might need to mow their own lawns or pay more for these services.”
(FAIR Comment: Our current estimate of the annual net cost of immigration is $66 billion. See also FAIR study on Immigration and Income Inequality.)
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Author Donald Collins:
".... a delegation of 9/11 families went to Washington in mid-July to speak with Senators and their staffs, in several offices these surviving relatives of murder victims of 9/11 were treated with contempt when they expressed concern about the unprotected borders of America."
"September 11 Commission member John Lehman Thursday criticized so-called 'sanctuary' practices in Houston and elsewhere that restrict cooperation between local police and federal immigration officials as an invitation to terrorists looking to enter the United States," the Houston Chronicle reports. "It is ridiculous that five cities in the United States do not allow local police to cooperate with the federal immigration service," Lehman said.
"Arizonans Now Have An Opportunity to Help Protect Voters & Taxpayers"
PHOENIX - The committee formed to ensure passage of voter and taxpayer protections proposed by Proposition 200 is elated today with the results of the verification procedures implemented by both the Secretary of State and County Recorder's offices throughout Arizona. The official results indicate that by an overwhelming margin, enough signatures have been gathered for placement of Proposition 200 on the November election ballot.
Commented a jubilant Randy Pullen, Chairman of "Yes on Prop 200",
"We're showing overwhelming support in the polls and overwhelming support with our signature drive effort. I want to thank all of the registered voters across Arizona who invested the time and effort to show their support for Proposition 200. Now it's time to ensure an overwhelming victory in November."
Records obtained from each of the County Recorders offices indicate a signature validity rate of almost 85% for a total of about 150,000 valid signatures, nearly 30,000 more signatures than necessary.
According to the ballot description written by Arizona's Secretary of State Office, Proposition 200:
"Requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote, requires rejection of registration when not accompanied by poof of citizenship, requires identification before receiving a ballot, requires state and local governments verify identity of certain public benefits applicants, and requires government employees report to immigration law violations by public benefits applicants."
Said Pullen,
"Prop 200 protects voters and taxpayers by helping to enforce the laws that already exist. It is as simple and straight-forward as that, which is why an overwhelming percentage of voters from all parties, from both genders and from every demographic identified group support its passage."
Identification to be shown according to Prop 200 could be a driver's license, birth certificate or other commonly used government-issued identification.
Concluded Pullen,
"We all show our ID's several times a day…when we board a plane…enter a bar…or use a credit card. We do so for our own protections. Why shouldn't we protect voters and taxpayers by showing similar ID when we vote or when we ask for non-federally mandated financial benefits from Arizona's taxpayers?"
A recent survey conducted by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University indicated that Prop 200 had the support of 74% of Arizona voters, with every voter subset supporting its passage.
• Contact the media, particularly when you see the immigration or overpopulation aspect of a story overlooked. Write or phone the Washington bureaus of networks like CNN, Fox News, CBS and MSNBC inform them that they need to include immigration and population concerns where appropriate.
• Contact the President and your elected representatives in Washington, D.C., by phone or a brief letter to inform them on the issue of unending population growth as well as the national security aspect of open borders. Visit www.congress.org to find out who your representatives are.
• Educate candidates and people around you on the link between voters' concerns and population growth/mass immigration. Refer to Address Voter Concerns and Reject Mexico's Amnesty Demands for more information.
by Yeh Ling-Ling
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Americans' main concerns are jobs, the economy, homeland security and health care costs. Can any presidential candidate effectively solve those problems without drastically reducing the influx of temporary or permanent foreign-born workers and families?
In the last three years, this country has suffered a net loss of 2.3 million jobs. The new employment opportunities created during that period have not met the needs of native and foreign-born workers who have since joined the labor markets.
If we continue to massively export high-tech and manufacturing jobs and simultaneously import hundreds of thousands of temporary and permanent foreign nationals of working age every year, how can existing legal resident job seekers find work?
Instead of proposing a $250 million job-training program for community colleges and offering amnesty to an estimated 8 million to 11 million illegal aliens by granting them work permits, shouldn't President Bush advocate enforcement of our immigration laws and a moratorium on most legal immigration?
Immigration advocates argue that illegal immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don't want. But low-skilled natives, white and black, in areas that have low levels of immigration, are still holding those "unwanted" low-end positions such as at hotels and in construction.
Additionally, this country still has millions of low-skilled unemployed workers, able-bodied welfare recipients and nonviolent former prison inmates. Why not give them incentives to take those jobs? Is extending unemployment benefits or welfare the real solution? Instead of yielding to farm operators' demands for more low-skilled foreign-born workers, why not encourage them to mechanize further?
Promoters of mass immigration claim that immigration is needed to boost our economy. Why, then, is California, which receives more immigrants than any other state, on the verge of bankruptcy? The United States was very prosperous in the 1960s with far fewer foreign-born residents than today.
Currently, with 90 million more people since 1970, mostly due to immigration-derived growth, this country is experiencing its highest budget deficits. Low-skilled workers with limited incomes are not likely to pay enough taxes even to offset the cost of educating their children, which averages over $6,000 a child a year, let alone pay for other social services.
Presidential candidates should also realize that successfully reforming this nation's health care system must be coupled with substantial reductions in immigration. Many hospitals are near bankruptcy because of the care they are required by law to provide to illegal aliens. In addition, recent immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for more than half of the growth in our uninsured population. We simply cannot have long-term, fiscally responsible universal health care without substantially reducing immigration or raising taxes.
High illegal immigration also affects our homeland security. Since 9/11, well over $100 billion has been spent on measures supposedly to curb international terrorism. But our borders are more porous than ever. An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people continue to enter this country illegally every year. Do our presidential candidates believe that no terrorist would attempt to sneak across?
Our law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed, so is it wise to invite millions of legal immigrants and temporary workers, all of whom need screening, to enter this country every year? We should remember that Richard C. Reid, the British shoe bomber, is not an Arab, and that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were legal as well as illegal immigrants.
The United States has the fiscal, legal and technological means to control immigration. Reducing legal immigration requires only an act of Congress signed into law by the president, as was done in 1924. That law reduced immigration from about 1 million a year at the turn of the 20th century to an average of less than 200,000 a year between 1925 and 1965. If Congress sends a firm and unequivocal message that illegal aliens will never be amnestied and that they will not be able to work or receive benefits, how many could survive here and how many would want to come?
Many immigrants are assets to this country, but massive immigration hurts us all. Immigration reduction is the necessary first step in addressing our critical national problems.
--Yeh Ling-Ling is executive director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, a national nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif.
The Washington Times has a report on the growing dissatisfaction with President Bush among conservative activists. "Call them the anti-Bush Republicans: stalwart conservatives and formerly active Republicans whose anger over the party's tolerance of illegal immigration is prompting them to throw their votes behind write-in candidates, third-party candidates - or no candidate at all," the Washington Times reports. "This administration made a gross political miscalculation with its pandering to its cheap-labor constituency," Said Dan Stein.
The Chicago Tribune covers a lawsuit in Kansas that seeks to have a new law giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens overturned. "Kris Kobach, a former U.S. Justice Department official running for Congress in Kansas, is representing the students and several parents who joined the suit. The Kansas attorney general took the unusual step of recusing himself because he also thought the law was misguided," the paper writes. "Susan Tully, Midwest field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, sees the Kansas lawsuit as the first step toward challenging laws in other states, including Illinois. Organizers currently are searching for out-of-state plaintiffs to challenge the Illinois law, she said."
Columnist Vox Day says the Libertarian party should drop its support for open borders, because opening the border will increase state power. "Unfortunately, in the United States, de facto open borders have had the net effect of increasing central state power, as immigrants legal and illegal eagerly sample the many services provided by the state and federal governments," he writes. "Either the government has the ability to close the borders or it does not. Libertarians must remind themselves that they are not anarchists, nor do they hold to a mutant Trotskyite vision of world libertarian revolution. Protecting the national border is one of the few necessary and proper duties of a national government."
By Dan Stein
Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have unveiled remarkably similar immigration "reform" proposals that will essentially eliminate limits on the number of people settling in the USA. The Republican and Democratic plans are premised on two erroneous beliefs: Illegal immigration cannot be stopped, so we might as well let just about anybody who wants to come here do so legally. And virtually open immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens is the key to winning the growing Hispanic vote.
Both plans — which include amnesty for up to 10 million illegal aliens, substantial increases in legal immigration, which already exceeds 1 million a year, and massive new guest-worker programs — would signal the death knell of the middle class in America. Labor markets, public school systems and public health care, already overwhelmed by the impact of mass illegal and legal immigration, would be devastated by the proposals of the two presidential contenders.
Job growth in America, which has been robust in the past several months, as the Bush campaign repeatedly stresses, has failed to keep pace with the increase in the labor supply, as the Kerry campaign is quick to point out. As some 1.5 million new immigrants settle legally and illegally each year, immigration is a key reason we find job growth does not equal lower unemployment, and why the middle class is working harder and longer with less to show for it.
Similarly, no matter how much local communities around the country invest in new schools and teachers, because of mass immigration, they cannot keep ahead of the influx of new students. The immigration plans being proposed also would add people to the ranks of the 44 million who lack health insurance and further increase the number of jobs that don't offer coverage.
What all Americans — including Latinos — want is an immigration policy that puts the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests that see the policy as a pipeline for low-wage labor or a means to build a political constituency. And the recent release of the 9/11 Commission's report reminds us that our lax immigration laws continue to threaten homeland security.
Unfortunately, in "Hispandering" for votes in battleground states, both Bush and Kerry have lost sight of the interests of the middle class and the security of our country.
Dan Stein is executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Mr. Wooldridge says it's time to take another look at the overall subject of "anchor babies." He points to Ireland and notes that that nation, also facing an "anchor baby" invasion, got it right. It was happening there; children born to foreign parents in Dublin maternity hospitals accounted for 25 percent of total births in one year. People had come to Ireland to have an Irish child and therefore Irish citizenship.
Ireland was experiencing the same abuse of their immigration laws as the U.S. so they did something about it. In January 2003 the Irish Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision that immigrant parents of an Irish born child could be deported. It was the first reversal of Ireland's liberal policy of granting residency and possibly citizenship to anyone who had a baby in Ireland, including illegal aliens.
In June 2004 the Irish people took action: they voted birth right citizenship out of existence. The 27th amendment bill of the Irish Constitution now reads:
Notwithstanding any other provision, a person born on the island of Ireland who does not have at the time of birth of that person at least one parent who is an Irish citizen or entitled to be an Irish citizen, is not entitled to Irish citizenship or nationality unless provided by law.
If America followed Ireland's lead and ended birth right citizenship, we would be removing a huge incentive that lures illegal aliens to our country.
Today in America over 300,000 "anchor babies" are born on U.S. soil annually. We are a nation under siege by those who have no respect for our laws and no regard for our sovereignty. The costs of this incursion - mothers who come here for a taxpayer-funded free ride - steal the future from our own American children. While some 600,000 new mothers and anchor children gain access to free medical, schools, housing, food stamps, other welfare, etc., they create a nightmare for taxpayers who nonetheless continue to push for legislation that will end the flagrant abuse of the 14th amendment.
This problem cries for an amendment to the Constitution - H.J. RES. 42 -denying citizenship to individuals born in the U.S. to parents who are not U.S. citizens. Let's follow Ireland's lead. The Irish got it right!
By BOB HERBERT
A startling new study shows that all of the growth in the employed population in the United States over the past few years can be attributed to recently arrived immigrants.
The study found that from the beginning of 2001 through the first four months of 2004, the number of new immigrants who found work in the U.S. was 2.06 million, while the number of native-born and longer-term immigrant workers declined by more than 1.3 million.
The study, from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, is further confirmation that despite the recovery from the recession of 2001, American families are still struggling with serious issues of joblessness and underemployment.
The study does not mean that native-born workers and long-term immigrants are not finding jobs. The American workplace is a vast, dynamic, highly competitive arena, with endless ebbs and flows of employment. But as the study tallied the gains and losses since the end of 2000, it found that new immigrants acquired as many jobs as the other two groups lost, and then some.
Andrew Sum, the director of the center and lead author of the study, said he hoped his findings would spark a long-needed analysis of employment and immigration policies in the U.S. But he warned against using the statistics for immigrant-bashing.
"We need a serious, honest debate about where we are today with regard to labor markets," said Professor Sum, whose work has frequently cited the important contributions immigrants have made. The starkness of the study's findings, he said, is an indication that right now "there is something wrong."
The study found that the new immigrants entering the labor force were mostly male and "quite young," with more than one-fourth under the age of 25, and 70 percent under 35.
"Hispanics formed the dominant group of new immigrants," the study said, "with migrants from Mexico and Central America playing key roles. Slightly under 56 percent of the new immigrant workers were Hispanic, nearly another one-fifth were Asian, 18 percent were white, not-Hispanic, and 5 percent were black."
Those most affected by the influx of new immigrant workers are young, less well-educated American workers and so-called established immigrants, those who have been in the U.S. for a number of years.
Simply stated, there are not enough jobs being created to accommodate the wide variety of demographic groups in need of work. With that being the case, and with some employers actively recruiting new immigrants, the inevitable result has been the displacement of previously employed workers, especially in the less skilled and lower-income categories.
College-educated middle-class workers appear to be holding their own in the current employment environment, although significant numbers are underemployed. The situation is much bleaker for high school graduates and dropouts, especially for men, both black and white, and teenagers.
The new immigrants are not spread evenly across the U.S. The study identified 16 states that each had 50,000 or more new immigrants in the civilian labor force, ranging from slightly fewer than 55,000 in Colorado and Pennsylvania to 276,000 in Texas, and a high of 555,000 in California.
Professor Sum said he used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey, as opposed to its payroll survey (which is preferred by many economists), because it includes a number of categories of employment - contract workers, farm labor and others - that attract substantial immigrant labor but are not monitored by the payroll survey.
But even in the traditional area of manufacturing, for example, the employment of new immigrants has been significant. Referring to the period from 2000 to the fall of 2003, the study said, "Nearly 320,000 new immigrants obtained employment in the nation's manufacturing industries at a time when total wage and salary employment in these industries declined by more than 2.7 million positions."
If we are going to continue to encourage immigration, it's essential that we move once again toward full employment. Let the discussions begin now on how to get there. In the absence of full employment, an ugly face-off between American workers and newly arriving immigrants will be inevitable. That is not something we want or need to see.
E-mail: [email protected]
guys, why would you post stuff that doesn't pertain to the website's topic?
A new opinion poll of likely Hispanic voters shows President Bush trailing his challenger, Senator John Kerry, by a 62 percent to 32 percent margin. The poll was conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The survey found that the President’s amnesty/guest worker proposal has done little to boost his approval rating among the nation’s Hispanic voters. Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000. According to the poll, IMMIGRATION RANKED ELEVENTH on the list of issues that concern this segment of the electorate. Education, jobs and the economy were listed as the most important concerns among Hispanics.
OK, I contacted every member of TUSCL and we all agree with you. Now go away.