NWV News - Obama's amnesty will undermine American workers

OBAMA'S AMNESTY WILL UNDERMINE AMERICAN WORKERS

By NWV News writer Jim Kouri
Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
April 3, 2010
© 2009 NewsWithViews.com

In the aftermath of signing the most far-reaching health care law in U.S. history, President Barack Obama is already planning his next sweeping change for American society: fulfillment of his campaign promise to revamp U.S. immigration policy as part of his fundamental transformation of the United States.

On Thursday, Obama mentioned a proposal by Democrat Senator Charles Schumer and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, that features a first-ever national identification card for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want a job.

As President Obama and the congressional leadership revive efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S., a new report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform concludes that such policies would severely undermine the interests of American workers. Amnesty and the American Worker also finds that record levels of immigration during the 2000s - both illegal and government mandated - have added new workers to our labor force faster than our economy has been able to create new jobs.

At a time when some 25 million Americans are either unemployed or involuntarily working part-time, amnesty legislation would legally entitle the estimated 7.5 million illegal aliens in our workforce to keep their current jobs, and compete with distressed American workers for any new jobs that are created. Proposed legislation, billed as "comprehensive immigration reform," would also increase the flow of legal immigrants who would compete for jobs in the U.S., while offering no concrete initiative for stemming the tide of new illegal immigration.

Among the key findings of Amnesty and the American Worker:

-- Driven by record levels of immigration, the U.S. economy would need to
create 100,000 new jobs a month just to maintain current unemployment
levels. The Obama administration optimistically expects its own
policies to create only 95,000 new jobs each month.
-- The U.S. economy has lost about 8.4 million jobs since the onset of
the recession. At current immigration levels, the economy would need
to create 400,000 new jobs each month between now and 2013 to return
to pre-recession unemployment levels.
-- Illegal immigration has been a primary factor in the growing income
gap in the U.S. and has undermined the economic standing of many of
America's working-class families.
-- Amnesty for illegal aliens would disproportionately harm America's poor
and less-skilled workers.

"Advocates for illegal aliens are trying to sell amnesty as a shot in the arm for the U.S. economy," said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "Even if the amnesty lobby's assertions are taken at face value, the overall benefit to GDP would amount to about 1 percent a year. The benefits of that modest increase would accrue almost entirely to the amnestied aliens and their direct employers, while devastating America's most vulnerable workers and would likely be more than offset by huge increases in social costs."

"Amnesty and the American Worker asks the critical questions about a mass illegal alien amnesty that the president and many in Congress refuse to even acknowledge," continued Stein. "It is unconscionable that at a time of devastatingly high unemployment, our nation's leaders seem determined to forge ahead with legislation without even considering the harm it might cause. Amnesty and the American Worker provides an in-depth look at the extent to which these policies would hurt millions of American workers," Stein concluded.

The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants who actually do pay taxes go to the federal treasury.

The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.

This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant.

Californian officials have estimated that the net cost to taxpayers in order to provide government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates existing today.

In addition, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, even with free trade, the United States continues to enjoy a higher real wage than other nations, due to the superiority of US technology. If taken to an extreme and the US removed all barriers to migration, most foreign workers would move to the United States, lured by the higher wages available here; Foreign labor would essentially cease to exist.

However, with all labor now in the United States, the prices of goods would return to their level of self-sufficiency, prior to the opening of trade. That is, perfectly free migration entirely eliminates the gains from trade that US natives had enjoyed. World income rose with the migration, but the natives of foreign countries in this case received more than all of this rise, since the income of US natives declined. With the world's majority of low-wage workers in the US, there would be tremendous damage to free trade and its benefits, with US middle and upper-middle class workers suffering the brunt of declining wages.

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"The urge for a utopian state of existence and a desire to make all things equal by the American Left has given way to a desire simply to make all things equal sans utopia. In their passion for a neo-Marxist level for the masses, they've decided consciously or subconsciously that if they could not bring the World's population up to the American level of prosperity and wealth, then they will bring US citizens down to the World's level of poverty and misery. For this is a result of seeing free trade as a zero-sum entity, and self-alienation of the American Left from their own country, the USA," stated political strategist Mike Baker.