Posted on February 3, 2010

Don’t Let Immigrants Take US Jobs

David R. Francis, Christian Monitor, February 2, 2010

About 15 million Americans are unemployed. Yet Washington allows businesses to bring in about 1 million foreigners a year to take supposedly short-term jobs that many jobless would leap at taking if they could.

It’s a “ridiculous” situation, says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington think tank that generally urges a lower level of immigration into the United States.

This year, the H-2B program alone will let more than 100,000 lower-skilled foreign workers come to the US as “temporary, seasonal, nonagricultural guest workers.” Businesses like the program because the foreigners, who need the jobs in order to stay in the US, “shut up and do what they are told,” says Mr. Krikorian.

But H-2B operates under a flawed assumption, says David Seminara, a former US Foreign Service officer and author of a CIS study on the program. The flawed assumption is that “Americans don’t want to mow your lawn. They don’t want to serve you your lobster roll sandwich during your summer holiday in Maine. They won’t drive the trucks that bring food to the grocery store.” In fact, many Americans would welcome such jobs.

President Obama, as a candidate, promised to push for “comprehensive” reform of immigration law, probably including amnesty for some of the perhaps 11 million illegal immigrants plus a boost in legal immigration.

With the GOP’s victory in the US Senate race in Massachusetts Jan. 19, the chances of Congress tackling such a politically risky broad bill before the fall elections are about zero, Krikorian figures. One bill that might have a chance of passage is the DREAM legislation (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), which gives amnesty to illegal immigrants’ illegal children if they have graduated from high school in the US.

US immigration policy is extremely controversial because of the clash of business, labor, and humanitarian interests.

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