598,000 U.S. Jobs Lost in JAN — Will Senate Today Go Through With Plan to Give Stimulus Jobs to Illegal Aliens?

The feds’ monthly report was even worse than expected: 598,000 jobs cut in January. And, yet, Senate leaders have still not given permission for a vote on a Stimulus Bill amendment that would keep illegal foreign workers from getting jobs created by the massive taxpayer effort.

How many Americans have to lose their jobs before they are given priority over illegal aliens and the outlaw companies that hire them?

The government says employers slashed payrolls by 598,000 in January, the most since the end of 1974, catapulting the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent.

The Labor Department’s report is grim proof the nation’s job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight. Job losses were far worse than the 525,000 economists expected. So was the rise in the unemployment rate, now at the highest since September 1992.

— Associated Press, 6FEB09

America’s newspapers, for the most part, continue to do the work of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protecting the hiring of illegal aliens instead of the rising armies of unemployed Americans. USAToday ran an article primarily devoted to stating the Chamber of Commerce’s distorted criticisms of the E-Verify program.

It carried the typical lie that E-Verify threatens to mis-identify legal residents as illegal aliens and erroneously ordering them fired.

As I have noted previously, NumbersUSA has issued the challenge to find even ONE case of such a thing happening after milions upon millions of transactions over the last 12 years.  To date, not one has been produced.  E-Verify is one of the most accurate programs ever run by the government.  (Click here to read a NumbersUSA factsheet on E-Verify.)

One of our staff phoned a pro-illegal-alien Senator this week to note the recent Heritage Foundation study that predicted the Stimulus Bill as written in the Senate would give about 300,000 new construction jobs to illegal aliens. The Senate staffer replied that, oh, no, that was not possible because it is illegal to hire illegal foreign workers.

Oh, my,  I need a lot of those uproarously laughing smiley faces on this line! 

Well, yes, it has been illegal to hire illegal aliens since 1986 when an amnesty brought our illegal population close to zero.  But we now have an estimated 7.7 million illegal foreign workers in jobs. Obviously, simply saying something is illegal doesn’t stop it.

Requiring every government and business to run new hires through E-Verify is absolutely necessary if Americans and authorized immigrants already here are to get the new jobs being created as rather minor relief to monthly collapse of U.S. jobs. (Click here to read a press release by Rep. Lamar Smith, urging that the stimulus protect American workers)

If the Senators decide to pass the Stimulus Bill, they have 598,000 more reasons today to include an E-Verify requirement.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA