American Workers Put Last in Obama's Amnesty

The word is Obama at all costs is going to grant work permits along with amnesty to millions here illegally in the United States.  This is when the jobs market still has not recovered.  The latest leak shows Obama plans on giving amnesty and work permits to another 4.5 million illegals and U.S. permanent resident status to over half a million imported workers currently on guest worker Visas.  In a nutshell if any of this plan is true, once again the U.S. worker will get the shaft.

Doesn't it seem no matter what, which party, which President, they are determined to screw over the American worker?  Yeah, seems that way to us too.  Obama and the corporations who fund these politicians really must hate U.S. workers.  They seem bound and determined to give American jobs to anyone but U.S. workers.  This is when America just gained the same amount of jobs she had in 2007, now almost seven years ago.  From this time last year, the United States has gained 2.6 million jobs, obviously not enough to employ yet another 4.5 newly minted legal workers if Obama gets his way.  Tech jobs are even more obscene.  Workers are brought in on temporary Visas, they are supposed to go home.  Yet Obama wants to give permanent legal status to half a million of them.  Now that doesn't sound so bad until once realizes all of those guest worker Visas will be suddenly freed up to pull in yet another half a million guest workers to take....you guessed it, American jobs.  There are only 1.77 million computer design and related jobs in the United States, clearly not enough jobs to accommodate Americans plus the massive labor increases Obama's executive orders would bring.

The money pouring into amnesties, green cards and more foreign workers is obscene, yet the New York Times doesn't acknowledge the corporate money pushing for more cheap labor and outsourcing being at the forefront of the push:

Silicon Valley, led by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, has poured in millions for amnesty legislation to secure high-tech guest-worker visas even though America has a surplus of high-tech workers. The pro-amnesty Chamber of Commerce has spent $50 million over the last two years pushing for amnesty legislation. Hotel and restaurant industry lobbies that want cheaper labor have also poured in millions. Moguls like Warren Buffett, Sheldon Adelson, and Bill Gates have called for an unlimited number of guest-worker visas. Gates and his wife Melinda have donated millions to a scholarship program for DREAMers. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who owns a stake in the New York Times, has funded a program to help DREAMers get jobs in America. The Ford Foundation even chipped in $2.3 million in 2013, according to the Times, to help illegal immigrants received Deferred Action under Obama's 2012 temporary amnesty program that he instituted by executive fiat.

This is incredible but then since when does D.C. do anything for main street and the U.S. worker?  Poll after poll shows the American people are opposed to Obama's amnest.  Obviously the American people do not matter in politics, only big money special interests do.  Yet, there might be some hope.  Conservatives like Senator Jeff Sessions point out the destruction of American jobs through foreign labor importation and vow to defund Obama's efforts via the budget:

The WSJ reports that the President is ‘expected to benefit businesses that use large numbers of legal immigrants, such as technology companies.’ Those changes include measures to massively expand the number of foreign workers for IT companies—measures aggressively lobbied for by IT giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Yet we have more than 11 million Americans with STEM degrees who don’t have jobs in these fields. Rutgers professor Hal Salzman documented that two-thirds of all new IT jobs are being filled by foreign workers. From 2000 through today, a period of record legal immigration, all net gains in employment among the working-age have gone entirely to immigrant workers.

And now, in order to help open borders billionaires, President Obama is going to deny millions of Americans their shot at entering the middle class.

The world has turned upside down. Instead of serving the interests of the American people, the policies of President Obama and every Senate Democrat serve the needs of special interests and global CEOs who fail to understand the duty a nation owes to its own people. But the citizens of this country still hold the power, and through their voice, they can turn the country right-side up again.

There were Democrats who also tried to block Obama but generally speaking it is the Republicans who reap the benefits of the never ending illegal immigration and foreign guest worker favoritism shown by this administration.  That's all kind of ironic since most Republicans will sell the U.S. worker down the river with more foreign workers and offshore outsourcing just as much as any Democrat would.  The one saving grace has been the two parties fighting for the mythical Hispanic vote ended up causing gridlock on the great cheap labor flooding of the United States.  Yet, one would think Democrats would get it that not supporting the U.S. worker would cause voters to stay home.  They did just lose both houses of Congress due to their refusal to put the U.S. worker and middle class first.  Yet in spite of the exit polls and state ballot measures of election 2014, the only concern seems to be winning the next election with new amnesty bought voters.

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Comments

Bypassing Congress with GOP 2014 win

Pat Choate wrote an article predicting all of the nasty things that will happen economically as this President bypasses Congress. Of course it is the worst of the worst corporate agenda that will be passed since they own both parties and set the agenda.

Immigration Reform

I couldn't help but laugh at the part of your article that reads:
"But the citizens of this country still hold the power, and through their voice, they can turn the country right-side up again."
And just who the hell are we supposed to vote for... Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck???

Same issue with H1B

Same problem with H1B, both parties love it, yet half my friends that I graduated with in CSC can't find jobs because employers are unwilling to train junior level developers if they can get workers from overseas for cheap...I wish I had majored in something other than STEM.

Obama's amnesty program

Would the GOP pass a better and more suitable immigration bill? They're talking about building bigger and better high-tech fences (but only along the southern border). How will this be paid for? By cutting food stamps for the poor?

The bright light in Obama's amnesty program might be if we better used e-verify to bring more workers out of the shadows in the labor market — because employers won't be able to use the threat of deportation to depress wages and engage in wage theft by using "independent contractors".

And if "undocumented workers" became "documented", maybe real unemployment numbers could be better analyzed (after bringing these workers out of the "shadow economy").

These workers might also tend to be Democratic and pro-union as well, and might help organize for better wages — thereby putting upward pressure on everyone's wages overall.

This is only referencing CURRENT non-visa workers, as the guestworker visa programs should be eliminated until the labor market improves (as employers abuse these programs to undercut domestic wages with their false claims of "lacking skills"). H-1B visa workers taking domestic tech jobs should be abolished completely.

As far as farm workers (or other jobs that "Americans don't want to do"), this might also raise their wages as well, and might drive up the cost of food or other services (like the guys that do your landscaping — or the women that clean your homes, cares for your elderly or watches your kids).

If immigration is down and deportations are up, this amnesty program might work to some degree if we better secure our borders and better enforce current immigration laws by punishing employers that illegally use these workers for jobs (e.g. construction, etc.) that can't be offshored to low-wage countries.

The current labor market is over-saturated for many reasons, such as: 1) employers making current workers do more 2) computers, automation and robotics 3) offshoring. A flood of "new labor" might not materialize if they are already working under the table. But yes, NEW guestworker visas should be stopped dead in its tracks until we have REAL full employment and workers are paid better wages.

Also (as an aside) if these workers were permitted to get a driver's license, more could purchase auto insurance, and maybe bring down insurance rates. And if they were "legally" employed with valid Social Security numbers, more taxes might also be collected.

* This comment does not even touch on the "humanitarian" or "moral" aspects of splitting families apart — the "Dreamers", those who came here as children, who might only speak English, have already fully integrated in the country as ordinary Americans (many times, as role citizens), have gone to college, and have served in our military. Does this country tell them all to “go home” when they believe they are already home?

nice Obama apologist there Bud

This simply isn't true, especially on guest workers. It will FLOOD the U.S. market with already so many talented U.S. workers displaced and now either out of work or significantly underemployed.

Driver's licenses have been proved to be used for identity theft. That is why Oregon stopped giving illegals driver's licenses, they had a flood of identity theft going on.

Please don't bring the Obama kool-aid here. This is just the same ole special interests and corporate big money wanting their massive cheap labor supply, open border nonsense. It DOES displace U.S. workers and repress wages, and flooding the labor supply, legal or not, does the same thing. There is no high demand for labor, the U.S. cannot absorb millions of workers and all that is happening is Americans are out of a job.

Ya know meatpacking used to be a union, good job? Now it is minimum wage almost, all done by use of illegal labor. List goes on and on.

I said "might"...

My comment was more or less wishful thinking (I didn't necessarily mean anything was "true").

This immigration debate has been raging for years, and I haven't seen either party address it in any meaningful way. So what is the answer?

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” depicted a bourbon summit between President Obama and future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) where the two get massively drunk.

McConnell warns Obama about his planned executive action on immigration, but when Obama asks whether he has a plan, McConnell insists Republicans will pass immigration reform. The two then burst out laughing at this suggestion.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/11/16/SNL-Envisions-Drunk-McC...

corporate controlled, special interests

Ok, but even in very too the left liberal la la land we smoke pot and it's legal law Oregon voted something like 77% no on driver's licenses for illegals. Pretty obvious who controls even the dialog. No matter what happens you can bet that the U.S. worker will lose on anything passed since cheap labor is such a huge part of this and they write in cheap labor into every bill "amnesty o no".

Amnesty Undermined by Least Likely Source

Thanks for writing this,

Thanks for writing this,
a hundred years ago we would have revolted till death,
today they will take until we are all dead.

Did you know USA has the largest active mass grave.

Every major city in this country has millions burnt and thrown in a pit together.

They are called homeless and its what happens when you cant afford to work in America anymore
you die outside in the streets, you get robbed of id and you at end a john doe
at the city morgue being cooked in mass grave with millions of others in the city.

Over ten million a year. That would make the USA the largest mass grave in the history of mankind.

You want to know where the poor end up? In a mass grave, burnt by the federal government.

Weird how the poor disappear every season after sleeping outside in the snow.

Nobody cares where they go cause the all die outside as john/jane does. Millions!

Economic Policy Institute on Obama's Ammnesty

Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration Will Improve the Wages and Working Conditions of Unauthorized Immigrants and U.S.-Born Workers Alike

http://www.epi.org/blog/president-obamas-executive-action-on-immigration...

quite a lie going on there

Unfortunately good mathematics goes out the window when it comes to immigration. The EPI is funded by labor unions and for God knows why, they want to unionize the illegals and thus push for amnesty.

So, this is full of it, not worth posting. It is so frustrating to see statistics, labor economics perverted for political purposes.
roblem is most of the GOP is bought and paid for and wants cheap labor globalization, outsourcing just as much as Dems do.

Both parties abandon the U.S. worker per their corporate donor demands.

As an American worker, I have

As an American worker, I have considered 'many times',
changing my name to kumar, so that I would be able to get a job in this country. Who cares if its low wage, I just want anything and willing to take below minimum wage.

Can a American citizen, leave the country and reenter as an immigrant? I would think I would not only get more benefits, rushed to the front of every line, but also given a job.

The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist

BusinessWeek -- "Only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook and Microsoft would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage...

What Tech-Worker Shortage?

Noah Smith makes a futile attempt in this article "What Tech-Worker Shortage?" (at Bloomberg -- November 26, 2014) trying to debunk this article "The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist" (at BusinessWeek by Josh Eidelson -- November 24, 2014).

Noah Smith's first absurdity: "Low-skilled workers will benefit if we let in skilled immigrants. The skilled immigrants will shop at the grocery stores, take cab rides and get their lawns landscaped, thus putting money into the pockets of the low-skilled American workers."

Noah Smith's second absurdity: "Meanwhile, some native-born tech workers will be put out of a job, but since the number of jobs in the world isn’t fixed, they will find new jobs at new companies -- possibly for a bit less money than they earned before, but they will be OK. And with the creation of those new companies, the economy will grow."

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-26/what-techworker-shortage

Comment from Mark Thoma's blog

Darryl FKA Ron said in reply to this comment at Mark Thoma's blog
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/11/links-for-11-27...

I had high hopes for Noah Smith when he started blogging not long after the financial crisis. The timing appeared perfect for an open-minded heterodox economist to come onto the stage and tear down the old myths. Well perhaps it was the perfect time, but Noah was not nearly the man for the job. He is a newbie PhD and has no legs. He can be funny at times, but should never be taken seriously. Nonetheless, I would imagine he still has to do what he can to earn a living. I cannot imagine how he will ever pay off his student loans. Absurdity is the cornerstone of Noah's economic analysis. It is a geeks without borders kind of thing about worldly wonder. If you continue to attack Noah then people will think the worse of you, like a man that steals candy from small children or bullies cripples. "A man's greatness can be measured by his enemies.” ~ Donn Piatt

yup idiot

Please don't link to idiots and there are many....with PhDs. Salzmann is correct and does apply econ 101 correctly. The claim that skilled "lifts all boats" of unskilled becomes absurd when that job is displacement, not even added. There's some econ 101 fer ya, 1-1 = 0 net gain.

Heritage Foundation Makes Shocking Admission!

It seems the unemployed aren't lazy after all! The Heritage Foundation just admitted that extended unemployment benefits doesn't cause unemployment.

From the Wall Street Journal: "What’s Causing the Increase in Long-Term Unemployment?" (by the senior policy analyst in macroeconomics at the Heritage Foundation)

"Some economic indicators, including the short-term unemployment rate, have recovered to levels associated with “normal times.” But long-term unemployment remains high ... The persistence of long-run unemployment in 2014 is something of a surprise. Many economists, myself included, expected that the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits at the end of 2013 would sharply lower the long-term unemployment rate ... The extension of unemployment benefits does not appear to be the answer. Nor is it merely a holdover from the Great Recession: Few of the long-term unemployed report being out of work for more than two years. The majority are still in their first year of joblessness. [I question that last assertion as most are just not counted anymore and are no longer in the labor force.]

SOURCE:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/03/whats-causing-the-increase-in-l...

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-michele-bachmann-steve-ki...

don't link to New York Times

Any site that is behind a paywall, firewall, requires cookies, tracking, etc. like the New York Times, just don't link to their stuff.

It's irritating as hell to people to follow links that want to track, money, deny reading and so on.

You can quote them, small amounts, just don't put the URL.

Well, I'm sure Democratic operatives will deny what illegal immigration has done to Blacks in terms of jobs, wages but it's factually true. It has decimated many areas of employment as it has done for meatpackers, all sorts of jobs which used to be union and high paying.

It's true and unfortunately the $$$$ behind this crud will not let objective labor economics come into light. They even have bought and paid for "economists" spinning out propaganda.

Similar to "climate change" denial activities.

NYT links

there arent many sites that dont use cookies to track you, but most browsers have the equivalent of "in private" browsing or incognito windows if one really wants to avoid that....NYT limits one to 10 articles a month, which i already exceeded for December yesterday...however, if one arrives at their site through an external link, you can read those additional articles free...so by linking to them, Bud has given us a free read of their paywalled article..

rjs

not so, not true

They want to track you and put their spyware crud tracking. So if you don't allow their cookies they will not let you read their stuff.

Ridiculous and annoying.

Amnesty is not the same as importing new workers

Yes, our representatives are selling us out, because they always believe the corporations when they say they need cheaper labor while ignoring the workers who say they need more high paying jobs.

But the 2 types of immigrant workers are very different. An imported worker fills a job in the domestic market, no question. And in Silicon Valley, the imported workers generally cost less, even with the extra paperwork. But, I hate to break it to you, the undocumented who have been living here for years, um, many of them already have jobs. Most are already working here, especially the ones who will take advantage of the chance to work legally. So, giving them permission to work might actually help raise wages, increase social security payments and increase tax revenues.

Workers need government to stop wage theft, and hiring "illegals" is wage theft that hurts all workers. The government needs to jail and/or deport the CEO's who benefit from hiring undocumented workers. Doing nothing to help the undocumented workers (who have been working here for years) just perpetuates a low wage underclass that benefits the rich at the expense of the working class.