At the end of 2014, President Obama boasted that the year was the strongest for job growth in the U.S. since the 1990s and “businesses” have added 11 million new jobs over 57 months, and the Washington Post’s “The Fix” fact-checker concluded his statements mostly were true.
But unmentioned by Obama was another federal report concluding that all net employment gains since the Obama recession have gone to foreign workers while 1.5 million fewer U.S.-born Americans have jobs now. The report is cited by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., in a plan he is delivering to GOP members of Congress to restore Washington’s representation to Americans, to whom its loyalty should be directed.
“While the media celebrates the recent jobs numbers, little-noticed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was nowhere to be seen in the big papers or the nightly news,” he said in his new “Immigration Handbook for The New Republican Majority.”
He described it as a memo for Republican members prepared for the upcoming GOP retreat.
“So too has it been absent from the official broadcasts of the Republican Party. Yet the finding was remarkable: according to the BLS, all net employment gains since the recession have gone to foreign workers while 1.5 million fewer U.S.-born Americans hold today than did then – despite the total population of U.S.-born adults increasing by 11 million over that same time.”
He continued: “On no issue is there a greater separation between the everyday citizen and the political elite than on the issue of immigration. For decades, the American people have begged and pleaded for a just and lawful system of immigration that serves their interests – but their demands are refused. For years, Americans have been scorned and mocked by the elite denizens of Washington and Wall Street for having legitimate concerns about how uncontrolled immigration impacts their jobs, wages, schools, hospitals, police departments, and communities, but those who do the mocking are often ensconced behind gated compounds, guarded private schools, chauffeured SUVs, and fenced-off estates.”
The House Republican leadership’s capitulation to Obama regarding immigration and health care prompted a campaign to enable constituents to urge their representatives to replace House Speaker John Boehner, who last week overcame a challenge to his position.
Jump aboard the “Don’t Be Yellow: Dump Boehner Now!” campaign.
The campaign points out that under Boehner’s leadership, the GOP majority in the House agreed before Christmas to continued funding for Obamacare and Obama’s amnesty program – two issues on which voters across America showed opposition in the 2014 midterms.
Sessions’ outline says the GOP message to the American people should be: “You are right. And you’ve been right from the beginning. We hear you and we will deliver.”
“Exit polls were unequivocal,” Sessions continued. “More than 3 in 4 voters cited immigration as an important factor in their vote, believed that U.S. workers should get priority for jobs, and opposed the president’s plans for executive amnesty.
“We may have won an election, but the American people will only win when we honor the trust placed in us and use the powers they have lent to us to champion their interests. Congress has the power to stop this action by denying funds for its implementation. Surely, Congress must not allow the president a single dime to carry out an illegal order that Congress has rejected and which supplants the laws Congress has passed. A constitutional breach of this magnitude demands nothing less than a vigorous, public, disciplined campaign to rally the nation behind a Republican effort to deny the president the funds he would need to carry it out.”
He said: “This effort could be complimented by common sense enforcement-only measures like universal E-Verify, ending catch-and-release, mandatory repatriation for unaccompanied alien minors, ending asylum loopholes, and closing off welfare for illegal immigrants. No enforcement plan can be successful that does not block the president from continuing to release illegal immigrants into the United States and provide them with immigration benefits; a ‘border security’ plan that does not include these elements may end up as nothing more than a slush fund used by the administration to resettle illegal immigrants in the U.S. interior.”
Sessions’ outline said the problem is huge.
“In 2012 alone 250,000 individuals are estimated to have overstayed their visas and remained in the country unlawfully. Overall, in 2014 only a miniscule 0.05 percent of the nation’s roughly 12 million illegal immigrants were removed who were not explicit agency ‘priorities.’ If you don’t meet a ‘priority,’ you are basically immune from enforcement. Even including ‘priority’ cases, 99 percent of illegal immigrants were still placed beyond the reach of immigration law,” he said. “Even the removal of criminal aliens has continued to freefall. … DHS documents show that the administration freed 30,000 convicted criminal aliens into U.S. communities in 2014. Overall, there are about 167,000 convicted criminal aliens who were ordered removed that are now at large in the United States.”
The president’s response?
Sessions wrote: “In recent months President Obama has also unilaterally removed restrictions on admission of foreign nationals with limited terror ties; increased the admission of foreign workers by 100,000; expedited chain migration from Haiti; extended amnesty provisions for Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals; and attempted to recruit illegal immigrants for military positions even as American service members are being laid off.”
The result is that a huge number of immigrants, including those in the U.S. illegally, are taking jobs from American workers and driving down wages, he said.
“We need to get our workers off of unemployment and into good-paying jobs that can support a family – but Democrats voted to double the number of workers brought in for employers to hire in their place. Every Democrat senator backed a plan for lower wages and higher unemployment.”
And what can Congress do?
Make mandatory E-Verify to protect American jobs and wages, end tax credits and welfare for illegal immigrants, close asylum loopholes, cancel federal funds for sanctuary cities, authorize local officials to coordinate with ICE, make overstaying a visa a crime, ending catch-and-release with expedited deportations and more, Sessions said.
Sessions explained: “From 2000 through 2014 – when 14 million new permanent legal immigrants were admitted to the U.S. in addition to the illegal immigration flow – all net employment gains went to immigrant workers. This trend occurred even as the population of U.S.-born workers climbed by 16.4 million. … Perhaps unsurprisingly given the slack labor market, median weekly earnings today are lower than in 2000. … The U.S. Department of Commerce informs us that ‘today’s typical 18- to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year (adjusted for inflation) than their counterpart in 1980.'”
He said since that year, through 2013, the “immigrant population tripled from 14 million to more than 41 million.”
“Simply put, we have more jobseekers than jobs,” he said. “Republicans have a historic obligation – and opportunity – to right that wrong, to return this government to its people, and to tell the special interests: Get lost.”
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