jobs

The economy created 165,000 jobs in April...

About 90,000 legal immigrants are allowed into the country every month. This means that more than half last month’s job gain is needed just to absorb new legal entrants...

Over the past 12 months:

• Immigrants gained 673,000 jobs, a 3.0% increase; native-born workers gained 1,056,000 positions, an 0.9% increase. ADVANTAGE: IMMIGRANTS
• The immigrant unemployment rate fell by 0.7 percentage points – or by 9.3%; native-born unemployment fell by 0.6 percentage points – a 7.7% decline. ADVANTAGE: IMMIGRANTS. In addition:
• The labor force participation rate—a measure of worker confidence—increased for immigrants but declined for the native-born. At 66.0%, the immigrant participation rate in April was 3.4% points above the native rate.

Overarching everything is the inexorable rise in foreign-born population. It grew 1.7% over the past 12 months, or at nearly twice the 0.9% growth of the native-born population (which, of course, includes the children of legal immigrants—and illegal aliens’ anchor babies).

This is the dismal employment environment into which the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill proposes to legalize 11-20 million illegals—and double the rate of legal immigration. Read more about April Jobs: Immigrants Gain Jobs Three Times Faster Than Americans Since Last April

In the third installment of my four-part series of some of the myths by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) about the Gang of Eight immigration bill, I take a deeper look at his claims that the bill modernizes our legal immigration system and grows our economy.

Modernizing our Legal Immigration System Will Grow our Economy and Create Jobs

Rubio Speak

The Truth about Rubio Amnesty

Their argument is immigrants make the population grow which makes the economy bigger which increases the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Any increase in the GDP is always good. Ipso facto, all immigration is good for the economy. While it is undeniably true that growing the U.S. population makes the economy larger and that usually results in an increase in the GDP, it does not necessarily result in a per capita increase in GDP, meaning the benefits that accrue to each individual.

The U.S. immigration system over the last 30 years has functioned in a way that the economic benefits of immigration accrue to immigrants and those who employ immigrants (both legal and illegal – including guest workers).

Furthermore, immigrants send part of their wages back to their home countries, taking that money out of the U.S. economy. In 2011, remittances to Latin America alone totaled $61 billion. [See the article: Remittances - a Massive Transfer of Wealth.]...

Illegal immigration, and amnestying low-skilled illegal aliens, hurts the most vulnerable Americans, taking away job opportunities for the less-educated and disproportionally hurting minorities...

CAIRCO Notes

On a more serious note, opening the floodgates to more foreign job seekers will harm, not help American unemployment.

It has been revealed that the Gang of 8 amnesty bill will add 33 million people in first decade alone. The Senate amnesty bill will be equivalent to adding Top 20 U.S. cities full of foreign workers in first decade.

A look at immigration reform being proposed by the bipartisan "Gang of 8". Panelists include Colorado University Professor Philip Cafaro (with Progressives for Immigration Reform and Immigration Environmental Impact Statement), and former Congressman Tom Tancredo. Panelists also include an immigration attorney and a former illegal alien who was amnestied in 1986 who now uses eVerify in her business.

Watch the video (27 minutes). Read more about Video: Immigration Reform - Colorado State of Mind

President Barack Obama will host a White House meeting today with progressive immigration advocates and the AFL-CIO’s leader, Richard Trumka, highlighting the deep divide among union leaders, workers and business leaders over immigration policy.

Shortly afterwards, the president is slated to meet with a panel of business leaders eager to import immigrant [illegal alien] workers and customers.

The events are intended to tout Obama’s push for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws. AFL-CIO bosses say their highest priority in the controversial debate over immigration is to get citizenship for roughly 11 million [to 40 million] illegal immigrants.

But union members are far more concerned about excluding low-wage immigrant [illegal alien] workers, says a Jan. 29-30 poll of 1,000 likely voters by Rasmussen.

Approximately 90 percent of union members said the reduction of illegal immigration was important to them, while only 9 percent thought it was not important.

Unions members also split 51 percent to 47 percent against an amnesty for illegal immigrants, the poll showed...

Industry’s aversion to federal regulations is a potential deal-breaker for the unions, despite their shared interest in amnesty, said Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan group that wants to shrink the inflow of immigration workers.

“Even though [union leaders] they say they want this amnesty, I’m not sure they agree with [business-backed proposals] to greatly increase the number of legal worker and the numbers of guest workers,” he said. “I think there’s a decent chance they will end up not supporting this [pending immigration] bill.”...

[The] SEIU union is one of the fastest-growing unions, and has almost 2 million members — many of them immigrants [illegal aliens] — working in health care, government agencies and property maintenance.

The SEIU has strongly pushed for amnesty, and is backing pro-amnesty groups...

The SEIU is not part of the 11-million strong AFL-CIO, but the two groups frequently cooperate.

The AFL-CIO isn’t talking in public about the so-called “Future Flow” or immigrant [illegal alien] workers. Instead, in public, it is only backing amnesty.

‘“Our top priority in the immigration debate is to make sure that all the people who are American — except on official documents^* — have a path to citizenship so they can have equality and so they can stand for themselves in the workforce,” AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Hauser told The Daily Caller...

For 100 years, the unions “has always stood on the principle of tight labor markets because that is was the best way to improve wage and conditions of American workers,” Beck said.

“Now they’re pushing for looser markets“ that reduce workers’ economic and bargaining power, he said...

CAIRCO notes:

* Perversion of terminology is a commonplace tactic of special interests who wish to undermine the rule of law and the principle of citizenship in America. By definition, an American is a United States citizen - either by birth or by naturalization of a legal immigrant. 

An illegal alien is someone who snuck into the United States ("entered without inspection") and evaded capture at America's border. Illegal aliens have all kinds of documents; it's just that they are forged or stolen. Read more about Progressives, union members are sharply split on immigration, poll shows

Illegal immigrants might be put on about a 10-year path toward a green card under legislation taking shape in the Senate.

  Read more about Senators see path to immigrants' legalization

It’s a sick labor market, with immigrants are already displacing Americans, into which our bipartisan political elite is inexplicably planning to amnesty 12-20 million illegal aliens and increase legal immigration, the January jobs report revealed last Friday.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in January. It has made no progress since September 2012 and is still about where it was when President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.

American employers added 157,000 jobs in January, compared with a revised 196,000 jobs the previous month. For perspective (which you never see supplied by the Main Stream Media or, for that matter, by Establishment economists) about 90,000 legal immigrants arrive each month. Or about 1.062 million per year: see the DHS’s report U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2011.

(But the economy did add one-third of a million more jobs in 2012 than previously estimated, with a large chunk coming in the final months of the year).

This generally unimpressive assessment is based on the survey of employer payrolls. But the “other” employment survey, of households, finds a mere 17,000 jobs were created in January. (For a discussion of the differences between the Employer and Household surveys, click here).

The Household Survey reports immigrant and native-born employment. In January, there was record immigrant displacement of American workers:

Total Household survey employment rose 17,000 (+0.01 percent)
Foreign-born employment increased by 112,000 (+0.48 percent)
Native-born employment fell by 95,000 (-0.08 percent)

...we do know that data published over the course of Barack Obama’s first term show foreign-born workers relentlessly gained jobs, while native-born Americans lost them.

From January 2009 to January 2013:

Total household survey employment rose 1.101 million (+0.77 percent)
Foreign-born employment increased by 1.721 million (+7.95 percent)
Native-born employment fell by 620,000 (-0.51 percent)

...With this weak labor market, Washington should be considering an immigration moratorium, until unemployment is back down to acceptable levels. Instead, it’s proposing the exact opposite... Read more about January Jobs: Immigrants Displace Natives at a Record Clip—And That’s Even Before Amnesty!

Pledge of Allegiance really means something when you achieve long-term goal ...

Tordoff, 42, a ski instructor at Aspen Highlands, was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in Denver last Monday after years of submitting to background checks, filing endless paperwork, waiting patiently during a probationary period, then passing a civics test and — mostly importantly to her — swearing allegiance to her new country.

“I thought, ‘This is it. I'm now becoming a citizen of America,'” Tordoff recounted about the ceremony ...

But earning a green card isn't easy or cheap. “There's no way we could have done it without a lawyer,” Tordoff said. “She guided us through all the paperwork.”

They started the process in 2000. It became more difficult after Sept. 11, when the U.S. started screening applicants more closely and the process became even more time-consuming. Tordoff recalled long periods where she wouldn't sleep at night, convinced something would go haywire and they would be deported.

“We were in tenterhooks the whole time — just hanging there,” Tordoff said, using a term from South Africa.

Their green cards finally arrived in April 2005, securing their status in the U.S. as long as they didn't mess up and commit crime or dodge taxes. They were required to wait five years before they could apply to become U.S. citizens.

After that probationary period, they paid a $680 fee each to the Department of Homeland Security and went through extensive background checks with the FBI. Once cleared, they were given study guides in preparation for a test on U.S. history and civics. Tordoff said there were 100 possible questions on her test. She was asked only six in a verbal quiz with an interviewer ...

She estimated they spent $30,000 combined pursuing their green cards and citizenship. Read more about New U.S. citizen reflects on her long journey