From NumbersUSA
By Roy Beck
Non-farm employers in the U.S. eliminated 533,000 jobs in November. At the same time, in a typical month the feds give out approximately 140,000 new work permits and green cards to foreign workers.
How can this make any sense for the American people's own government to be recruiting more competitors for a dwindling number of jobs? Month after month as hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their jobs, the feds keep pumping another 140,000 new foreign workers into the laborforce.
The new foreign workers compete with the laid-off and underemployed highly skilled Americans in most professions and occupations, but most foreign workers compete directly in the construction, service and manufacturing industries where unemployment is the highest and where Americans have the least margin of financial security.
The feds add workers in two major ways.
- The most recent government data show that the feds granted greencards to 744,531 new working-age permanent immigrants (age 20-64) in 2007. Every one of them can immediately apply for a job (as can many more immigrants who are below and above that age range).
- The Department of Homeland Security reports that in the fiscal year just ended it issued NEW work permits to another 912,735 foreign workers who are not permanent immigrants.
That adds up to an astounding rate of 1,657,266 foreign workers per year, and that doesn't count renewals on foreign work permits or the flow of illegal workers.
While the new Congress and President determine how to best spend a trillion dollars to stimulate more jobs, they should immediately in January suspend most foreign-worker importation. Limiting immigration mostly to nuclear families and our fair share of internationally recognized special needs refugees seems like the logical response to job-loss reports like the one today (Dec. 5).
Roy Beck is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
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