One might think that given more than 20 million Americans unable to find full-time jobs, and testimony by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that the American job market remains weak, that organized labor’s highest priority would be getting Americans back to work...

The highest priority for the labor movement is amnesty for illegl aliens, according to a statement by Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. “The labor movement has no higher priority in 2013 than a workable immigration system that will allow 11 million [to 40 million] aspiring Americans to become citizens,” Trumka said on May 21... Read more about AFL-CIO: We Have No Higher Priority than Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

...more than a third of working-age Americans are either out of work or have given up on finding a job. Also, last month’s hiring increase was almost entirely for receptionists, waiters, clerks, temp workers, car-rental agents and other low-wage positions with no benefits or upwardly mobile possibilities. On the other hand, manufacturing — generally the source of good, middle-class jobs — did not add workers in April and has cut some 10,000 jobs in the last year.

Especially problematic was the continued rise in underemployment — people wanting full-time work, but having to take part-time and temporary jobs. Underemployment is also pounding college graduates. While they’ve been more successful than non-grads at landing jobs, they’re not getting jobs that fit their career goals or even require the degrees they spent money and time to obtain. Indeed, many of those rental agents and restaurant employees you encounter hold four-year degrees, forcing everyone else to scramble for the few, even lower-paid jobs further down the skill ladder...

More than a third of our working-age population is no longer even in the job market, and only 58.6 percent of us are employed. Put the opposite way, 41 percent of the potential workforce is not working — about 102 million people. One more statistic, and it’s a chiller: More than one out of five American families report that, last year, not a single family member had a job...

CAIRCO notes:

And yet the Gang Amnesty will bring in 30 million foreign job seekers while forcing American citizens to pay the social infracture costs of $6.3 trillion dollars. Read more about The Chilling Reality Of America’s Worsening Jobs Crisis

While most of the focus has been on the multiple amnesties and other benefits that S. 744 bestows on illegal aliens, only scant attention has been paid to the strategy and tactics that powerful business interests will use to get a business-friendly amnesty bill passed that is not necessarily in the interest of the citizens or the nation.

S.744 is very similar in many respects to Utah's amnesty bill (HB116), which was passed in 2011 and has been touted as a model for the nation.

HB116 was largely developed and written by the powerful Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests all across the state of Utah and counts the Mormon Church among its "Chairman Level" sponsors. As such, the Chamber supported HB116's passage with the help of a wide range of Utah groups who never read the bill.

The Chamber was careful to have other groups take the public lead on the bill, even going so far as to use the Mormon Church as a front group, in order to ensure that its key role in getting the bill passed was largely hidden...

In order to pass its amnesty bill, the powerful Salt Lake Chamber created and masterfully used the disingenuous "Utah Compact" to garner religious and community support for HB116.

The Chamber focused on the broad, feel-good, outlines of the bill and never discussed its details. HB116, therefore, passed in spite of the fact that the vast majority of legislators and virtually none of the groups supporting it had ever read it...

Business interests that support S. 744 in the U.S. Senate are now following the same strategy that they used in Utah in 2011. Business lobbyists will do their best to get the public to focus on anything but the benefits for employers. They will use the "pathway to citizenship", the DREAM Act, and compassion for illegal alien families to distract attention away from what is in the bill for employers, including multiple amnesties, in order to get everything they want without anyone noticing it until it is too late...

it is important to read the entire bill in order to find out why business is so excited about it and what employers gain from it at the expense of illegal aliens, taxpayers, and national and public security... Read more about Schumer-Rubio Bill: Employer Strategies and the National Interest

In 1986, an amnesty law gave legal status and a path to citizenship to unauthorized residents. Today's mass legalization would occur in a much different economic and demographic climate.

Why are over 11 million foreign nationals residing illegally in the United States? If we can answer that question, then we can fathom the purpose of “comprehensive immigration reform,” and understand why special-interest groups mostly favor what the majority of Americans oppose. Illegal immigration goes on because, in the Roman sense, it serves the interest (cui bono?) of tens of millions of people. In practical terms, “comprehensive immigration reform” is a way not to end the present chaos but to legitimize it.

Let us count the concerned beneficiaries.

1) Mexico. Someday Mexico, a nation rich in natural resources, may achieve rough parity with the other North American economies and develop truly consensual and transparent government. Someday the declining birth rate in Mexico may make Mexico City husband its suddenly precious manpower...

That someday, however, is not now. At present, Mexico views the United States as a safety valve for potential social unrest, seeing it in much the same way as Easterners once envisioned the American West — a place that the impoverished but audacious might flee to rather than agitate against vast inequality at home.

No one knows how many billions of dollars illegal aliens annually send back to Mexico and other Latin American countries, but the figure may exceed $30 billion — a source of foreign exchange as valuable as oil exports or tourism. That Mexico’s own citizens residing in the United States often live in poverty in order to budget for their weekly remittances, or that U.S. taxpayers subsidize such beneficence through entitlements, is of little, if any, concern to Mexico City...

2) Business... In an economy of long-standing 7-plus percent unemployment, employers could surely find American workers, but not, by and large, workers as industrious as Mexican nationals, and not as low-paid, since the assorted costs of the Mexican workers’ achieving nominal parity with American citizens are borne by the society at large. Do not expect business to favor any reform that changes the advantageous status quo...

3) The elite...

4) La Raza. The presence of 11 million illegal aliens — largely from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the majority non-English-speaking and without high-school educations — warps all civic statistics about the upward mobility of Latinos...

5) The Democratic party. If it was true that under the 1986 amnesty, less than half of the concerned foreign nationals chose to become citizens, that would not be the case with an updated version. Much has changed politically in the last 30 years...

Solutions? Close the border. Deport illegal aliens who are not working and have been regularly on public assistance, have violated U.S. criminal laws, or have just recently arrived.  Read more about Illegal Immigration: Who Benefits?

Supporters of the Schumer-Rubio amnesty argue that the bill’s large increase in future legal immigration will have little impact on the employment of natives because immigrants do only jobs American’s don’t want. But a detailed analysis of 472 separate occupations by the Center for Immigration Studies shows there are only a tiny number of majority-immigrant occupations (legal and illegal immigrants combined). Thus, there are really no jobs that Americans won’t do. Further, the Center found no occupations in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants.

Co-author Steven Camarota, the Center’s Director of Research, notes, “When more educated and affluent Americans argue that immigrants only do jobs Americans don’t want, what they often mean is immigrants do jobs that they personally don’t want. They forget the millions of their fellow Americans who do precisely these same jobs.”

The millions of native-born Americans and legal immigrants already in the United States who work at low-paying and difficult jobs unfortunately do not seem to be represented in the legislation, which calls for a massive increase in immigration. The Schumer-Rubio bill creates a new guestworker program for less-skilled immigrants, it increases family immigration for a number of years, a large share of which is less-skilled, and creates new categories to admit additional less-educated workers.

The complete report can be viewed. Among the findings:

Of the 472 civilian occupations, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 46 percent of workers even in these occupations.

Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly immigrant (legal and illegal) are in fact majority native-born:
- Maids and housekeepers: 51 percent native-born
- Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born
- Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born
- Grounds maintenance workers: 64 percent native-born
- Construction laborers: 66 percent native-born
- Porters, bellhops, and concierges: 72 percent native-born
- Janitors: 73 percent native-born

There are 67 occupations in which 25 percent or more of workers are immigrants (legal and illegal). In these high-immigrant occupations, there are still 16.5 million natives — accounting for one out of eight natives in the labor force.

High-immigrant occupations (25 percent or more immigrant) are primarily, but not exclusively, lower-wage jobs that require relatively little formal education.

In high-immigrant occupations, 59 percent of the natives have no education beyond high school, compared to 31 percent of the rest of the labor force.

Natives tend to have high unemployment in high-immigrant occupations, averaging 14 percent during the 2009-2011 period, compared to 8 percent in the rest of the labor market. There were a total of 2.6 million unemployed native-born Americans in high-immigrant occupations.

Some may think that native-born workers in high-immigrant occupations are mostly older, with few young natives will­ing to do such work. But 34 percent of natives in these occupations are age 30 or younger, compared to 27 percent of natives in the rest of labor force.

It is worth remembering that not all high-immigrant occupations are lower skilled. For example, 36 percent of software engineers are immigrants, as are 27 percent of physicians.

A number of politically important groups tend to face very little job competition from immigrants (legal and illegal). For example, just 10 percent of reporters are immigrants, as are only 6 percent of lawyers and judges and 6 percent of farmers and ranchers.

We find that there are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants work mostly in construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and ag­ricultural occupations. However, the overwhelming majority of workers even in these areas are native-born or legal im­migrants.

Although illegal immigrants comprise a large share of workers in agriculture, farm workers are only a tiny share of the total labor force. Consistent with other research, just 5 percent of all illegal immigrants work in agriculture. Read more about There Are No Jobs Americans Won’t Do

[US Sen. Michael Bennet says that] Colorado has developed a reputation as a beacon of innovation ...

Under the immigration reform bill, some employers would have an incentive of up to $3,000 per year to hire a newly legalized immigrant [illegal alien] over a U.S. citizen....

The bipartisan legislation released Wednesday dictates that those granted provisional legal immigrant status would be treated the same as those "not lawfully present" are treated under the 2010 health law.

That means they would neither be eligible for ObamaCare tax credits nor required to pay an individual tax penalty for failing to obtain qualifying health coverage. It also means some employers would face no penalty for failing to provide such workers affordable health coverage...

...employers who do offer insurance also can face fines. If the coverage costs a worker more than 9.5% of pay, it is deemed unaffordable and the worker becomes eligible for ObamaCare's exchange subsidies.

These employers would have to pay the government up to $3,000 per full-time worker who receives ObamaCare subsidies.

Some employers have said they would seek to limit ObamaCare fines by shifting some workers to part-time, which the law defines as fewer than 30 hours.

The immigration bill, as written, would provide another path for avoiding fines by hiring of legalized immigrants [illegal aliens] as full-time employees, since they wouldn't be eligible for ObamaCare for a decade or more... Read more about Immigration Bill Gives New Legals $3,000 Hiring Edge

The Senate immigration bill formally unveiled at this afternoon's news conference does not reflect the realities of the U.S. labor market, according to data compiled by the  Center for Immigration Studies.

If you’re a recent college graduate, a doctoral candidate, or a highly-skilled professional who has been in the job market the past few years, you know it’s rough out there. But if the immigration overhaul proposed in the Senate this morning becomes law, it’s likely to get a lot rougher.

  Read more about Immigration Reform May Make Your Job Search Much Tougher