Particularly in this perilous era, could you imagine any American not wanting to prevent criminals or terrorists from entering the United States?
Yet under Comprehensive Immigration Reform, aliens who evaded the vital inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens including fugitives from justice, terrorists, criminals and others who would pose a severe threat to national security and public safety would be granted lawful status and official identity documents. Furthermore, because of the huge number of aliens who would likely participate in Comprehensive Immigration Reform there would be no face-to-face interviews or resources to conduct field investigations to verify information contained in the applications.
There would be no way to verify the names, backgrounds, countries of citizenship or even dates of entry into the United States for these aliens.
Furthermore, each and every year the United States admits more foreign workers who are legally entitled to work than the new jobs that are being created. This is without including illegal aliens who easily enter the United States and find gainful employment.
Each year more than one million lawful immigrants. These aliens are given Green Cards (Alien Registration Receipt Cards) that signify that they are lawful immigrants. They can work on any job for which they are qualified to do and are immediately placed on the pathway to United States citizenship. This number of lawful immigrants is greater than all of the other immigrants admitted by all of the other ountries on this planet, combined.
In addition, each year the United States admits nearly a half million foreign students, many of whom ultimately are given permission to work under the aegis of “practical training.” Then there are the Exchange visitors, aliens with various work visas including high tech H-1B visas, etc.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform would permit three times the current number of H-1B visas to be issued to foreign workers and would, for the first time, as permitted in the Senate immigration bill, S. 744, permit the wives and adult children of H-1B visa holders to be granted Employment Authorization Documents (EAD's). These cards signify that they have as much right to nearly any job in the United States as any American or lawful immigrant.
The consequence is that in addition to suddenly dumping unknown millions of authorized foreign workers into an already overflowing labor pool of unemployed and underemployed American workers, we would be importing many more additional authorized foreign workers.
The United Nations estimates that while some $200 billion was wired out of the United States last year by foreign workers in the United States, this number would rise. Because of the “multiplier effect” this is the functional equivalent of more than a half-trillion dollars being siphoned out of the American economy.
If you wonder why the administration would want to do all this, consider that on April 30, 2009 the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Immigration, conducted a hearing on the topic: “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?” Among the witnesses called to testify before that hearing was Alan Greenspan, arguably one of the key architects of the economic crisis, who, in his testimony called for greatly increasing the number of H-1B visas and also stated, in part:
“First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.”
Clearly Greenspan demonstrated unmitigated chutzpah, referring to skilled Americans as the “privileged elite!” His infuriating goal of reducing skill-based income inequality is nothing short of anti-American in both ways of interpreting that statement. It flies in the face of the American Dream and would pull the floor out from under American middle class workers and their families!
Comprehensive Immigration Reform meet Greenspan's demand for greatly increasing H-1B visas, resulting in significant wage reductions for American middle class workers for those fortunate enough to not lose their jobs.
Additionally, Greenspan also wants to move foreign workers into the vacant homes or, in the dispassionate and sterile language of Greenspan, “housing units” to increase the value of the mortgage-backed securities held by banks to increase their profitability.
This is about importing a huge labor pool that would drive down wages for highly skilled American workers and greatly increasing the wealth of the true “Privileged Elite!”
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