OK, I'm having a little fun with the famous headline from another NY paper in the 1970s about Pres. Ford's reaction to NYC's request for a bailout. But essentially "Drop Dead" was the NY Times editorial board's response to rising American unemployment on Friday. The callousness of the media elite toward U.S. working stiffs continues to amaze me.
(PLUS, WHY DID THE HISPANIC CAUCUS & THE IMMIGRATION REFORM CAUCUS COMBINE TO DEFEAT THE BAIL-OUT?) The Bank Bail-Out Crisis should teach us two very important things relevant to the immigration debate: (1) Not all economic growth is good (that is, it doesn't necessarily serve the public good). (2) It's a whole lot less painful to act when a problem is festering than after it becomes a full-blown crisis. To avert immigration crisis in the future, this was the year to pass the SAVE Act (Rep. Shuler's H.R. 4088) and finally start our immigration mess on the road to recovery. Extreme partisan politics kept it from coming to the floor for a vote where it most surely would have passed overwhelmingly.
Senate Majority Leader Reid has two honorable choices: (1) Bring Sen. Menendez's backroom filibuster to the Senate floor for a vote. If he does this, there easily will be the 60 votes necessary to stop Menendez and allow a vote to pass H.R. 6633 (a clean E-Verify reauthorization). (2) Avoid a vote altogether by talking to Menendez privately, persuading him that what he is doing is threatening the reputation of the Democratic Party just before elections and get him to withdraw his "hold" on H.R. 6633.
Just as we had seemed to push back attempts for massive increases in foreign workers by the U.S. House last week, we now learn the danger has risen to Orange Alert level in the Senate. Let's take a look at some of the millions of Americans who are being ignored by Senate staffers as they negotiate behind closed doors to bring in additional permanent immigrant workers next year:
Great news from Capitol Hill - I'm doing a series of radio shows all day at the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" event, and talking on my cell phone in between with our Hill lobbyists, but I am pleased to hear that the House Judiciary Committee is not returning today to pass a giant foreign worker increase.
Remember all the rhetoric at the two Presidential nominating conventions about standing up for America's workers and their families in tough times? Well, the House Democratic Leadership (with support from a lot of Republicans) plans this week to move forward a bill (H.R. 5882) to permanently give away even more U.S. jobs to an additional half-million foreign workers next year! With the corportate special interests calling shots, the only way to stop this callous move is if hundreds of thousands of you reading this decide to send a fax and make a phone call.
In dissecting the Postville raids, many news stories, and even the Governor of Iowa, Chet Culver, have likened the working conditions in the Agriprocessors plant to those depicted in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Having recently reread The Jungle, I find it unfortunate that none of the news stories I have read touched on an obvious and important message of the revolutionary tome: that an influx of too many immigrants is the biggest contributor to such unspeakable working conditions. There were too many people for too few jobs.
As we prepare for the expected Congressional battles over immigration numbers this fall, it’s a good time to take stock of the urgency of our cause and the tools we have available to help fight for lower immigration numbers. This video captures the essence of NumbersUSA and is a must-see for anyone who wants to fully understand the basic information behind our work.
We hear so much these days about the separation of families due to immigration raids, but no one seems to mention the family separation as a result of both legal and illegal immigration to the United States and other parts of the world. Statistics on how many children are left behind around the world – especially in Latin America – are difficult to find, but what numbers I could find, are disturbing.
Wealthy advocates of H-1B visas have industriously worked to keep this employer-designed program hidden from middle-class Americans, who are outraged when they learn how it harms them.
In 2002, Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman correctly identified the 1990 H-1B visa program as a "government subsidy" because it allows employers access to imported, highly skilled labor at below-market wages.