If Congress won’t reduce new foreign workers to help jobless Americans, how about to help jobless immigrants?

Immigrant unemployment is now soaring.

During 18 months of recession as millions of Americans lost jobs, Congress has resolutely refused to reduce immigration and the importation of foreign workers. Scores of our elected officials appear to feel much more obligation to immigrants than to vulnerable Americans among their constituents. Now, a new study shows that the recession has finally begun to hit immigrant workers really hard. With legal immigrants who are already here suffering major job losses, is it possible that Congress can begin to see the need to stop bringing in more foreign workers?

The study by the Center for Immigration Studies is based on government statistics for employment at the end of the first quarter (March 31) of this year.

It found that official unemployment among immigrants in this country was 9.7%, the highest level since data has been collected for immigrants.

For the first part of the recession, unemployment for immigrants was lower than the rising unemployment for U.S-born workers.  But immigrant unemployment is now higher.

Job losses have been most rapid among immigrants, rising 5.6 percentage points since the third quarter of 2007, compared with a 3.8 percentage point jump for natives.

So, for those politicians who have shown no interest in the plight of jobless Americans, do they at least care enough about immigrants to wonder if it still make sense to keep bringing in new immigrants when the ones already here are losing their jobs at such a fast rate?

The jobs collapse is even worse for households with immigrants who arrived recently:

Among immigrants who arrived in 2006 or later,  unemployment is 13.3%.

This information knocks the last props out from under the lobbies that are screaming for more foreign workers. Even though their cries of labor shortages are ludicrous — given that 14 million workers are seeking jobs but can’t fine one — these lobbies claim that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that won’t be filled except by foreign-born workers.

Well, we now know that the country is full of foreign workers already here who can’t find a job.  Could Congress at least stop importing foreign workers until unemployment among the foreign workers already here is down to 2-3%?

This information may also be helpful when you talk with religious advocates for more legal foreign workers.  Many of the open-borders religious leaders have shown their disdain for unemployed American workers while claiming that the moral priority is to help foreign-born workers take U.S. jobs.  Now, you can ask them why they insist on bringing in more immigrants which will make it incredibly more difficult for immigrants already here to find and keep jobs.

Personally, I am a big believer in community and the responsibility for communities to take care of their own members. Thus, I have called for a nearly full suspension of immigration since last November because of unemployment among jobless Americans. But for the rabid immigrationists who feel the American community owes nothing special to jobless U.S. workers, do they feel just an ounce of special sympathy for jobless immigrants here over people in other countries still wanting to enter?

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA