Politicians need to listen
April 03, 2008 10:30 am
— The Indiana Legislature failed to enact legislation this year which would begin to address the illegal alien problem we have in this country. The U.S. House of Representatives has legislation pending that the speaker is refusing to bring to the floor for a vote. It appears the tide is turning and states and local governments are beginning to address the problem that the federal government has overlooked for many years. One of the key elements in many of the state and federal legislation initiatives, either enacted or pending, has been requirements put on employers to check the legal status of new hires using the E-Verify system (formerly called the Basic Pilot/Employment Verification Program), a free, Internet-based system. While not a perfect system, it’s being used by more than 90,000 businesses and is adding clients at a rate of 1,000 per month. Many of the government officials, federal, state and local, opposed to such legislation contend that if a program curbing the hiring of illegal aliens was passed, it would devastate the economy with business closings, mainly because they couldn’t find replacement employees. They have no statistical data to back up these claims so I would challenge them to prove it. They are listening to the lobbyists who are hired by the business community which hires the illegal aliens. Factual data is scarce but in May of 2007 Roy H. Beck testified before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. He questioned whether our economy would collapse if the estimated 7 million illegal foreign workers were to self-deport over the next decade, primarily due to enactment and implantation of laws that denied them U.S. jobs. He looked at the numbers to prove his point. There are an estimated 142 million people (including 7 million illegal aliens) holding paying jobs. These workers support 160 million people who do not hold paying jobs (including 5 million illegal aliens). That’s 142 million supporting 160 million others. Of the 160 million, there are 70 million people who have no jobs but are of the same age as those who are working. So that means there are 70 million working age people who are either looking for a job and considered unemployed, or have dropped out of the labor force all together. That means there would be 70 million Americans without a job from which to find the 7 million to replace the illegal foreign workers — do the math, that’s 10 available legal residents without a job for every illegal foreign worker with a job. It’s taken us 20 years to get ourselves into this situation and it’s not going to be resolved overnight so it’s time for you to tell our politicians they need to start doing the people’s will and not the will of special interests. — Bob Schrameyer Goshen
_________________ Bob Schrameyer
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