Posted on 10/09/2010 10:06:11 AM PDT by AuntB
For several years, Mexico has been solving their own unemployment problem by sending their jobless citizens to the United States. The result has been a low, steady rate of unemployment in Mexico since 2000. Of course, the unimpeded flow of cheap labor headed north, has had a disastrous effect on U.S. workers.
Consider the following facts:
-Between 1991-1999, Mexico had an average unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. Now, as economies around the world are falling apart and experiencing record joblessness, Mexico still has a relatively low unemployment rate of 5.5 percent (July 2010).
-While the U.S. currently has an anemic GDP (Growth Domestic Product) rate of 1.6 percent (September 2010), Mexico has a GDP rate of 3.2 percent (July 2010).
-As millions of illegal aliens entered this country from Mexico annually, the rate of U.S. unemployment has continued to rise, and now stands nearly double the average rate in 1995 of 5.5 percent.
In Feb. 2009, the financial institution Merrill Lynch announced that the nations actual unemployment rate had reached 13.9 percent. A year later, that number had risen to 17.3 percent. This figure represents Americans who have been laid off from full-time positions and are now working part-time, as well as those who have simply stopped looking for work, and workers whose unemployment benefits have run out.
The official unemployment figure given monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is now listed at 9.7 percent (September 2010), but represents only those Americans currently receiving unemployment checks, and is not truly indicative of the dire employment situation now facing the U.S.
The nations actual unemployment rate is now close to 18 percent.
A recent study conducted by the Chicago Urban League and the Alternative Schools Network showed the tremendous impact illegal aliens are having on the employment levels of low-skilled American workers, particularly for young workers.
The study revealed a rather shocking revelation, in that, the unemployment rate among teens and young adults is soaring to unprecedented level, while millions of illegal aliens continue to hold jobs.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) released the following joint statement on the studys findings:
During the course of the 2007-2009 recession, the employment rate of the nations teens fell steeply to 26.2% by October-November 2009, setting new record lows each year. No other age group has experienced employment declines of this magnitude in the current recession. Young adults 20-24 years old in both Illinois and the nation also have been adversely affected by the deterioration in labor market developments in the state and nation in recent years, especially men, Blacks and Hispanics, and non-college graduates.
Rep. Smith went on to say: The fact is that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers, particularly poor and disadvantaged citizens and legal immigrants. The best outcome for low-skilled citizen and legal immigrant workers is the removal of the illegal immigrant population. The very jobs that illegal immigrants occupy rightfully belong to out of work citizens and legal immigrants.
At home in California, almost weekly I hear from my constituents that illegal immigration is exacerbating the unemployment crisis.
Congressmen Smith and Miller have recently formed the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus.
In early 2010, the California Immigrant Policy Center released a study revealing that 84 percent of Latino and Asian immigrant men were employed, as compared to 78 percent of American men of Latino and Asian descent. The report also found that 12 percent of Latino and Asian immigrants are actually self-employed, as opposed to 8 percent of their U.S.-born counterparts.
In short, the study conducted by the University of Southern Californias Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, found that currently, immigrants (both legal and illegal) are as a group, more likely to have a job than are American workers.
These studies provided further proof for what many of us have been saying for years That contrary to what open borders politicians such as Barack Obama want us to believe, illegal aliens are taking jobs away from American citizens.
In 1931, the second full year of the Great Depression, the average rate of unemployment was 16.3 percent, with U.S. unemployment peaking at 25 percent in 1933. We now sit in between those two disastrous figures, with an ever-worsening economy.
With U.S. unemployment now at depression levels, we simply can no longer tolerate an illegal alien population numbering in the tens of millions.
This problem cannot be fixed with more useless so-called Stimulus bills which do nothing more than increase the national debt. Nor, do American workers need handouts, we simply need jobs, and those jobs will not be forthcoming as long as illegal aliens are doing them.
For far too many years, Mexico has been allowed to dump their economic problems on the United States, and instead of being punished, they have been rewarded with one-sided trade policies such as NAFTA as well as even a provision in the USA Patriot ACT which dictates that U.S. banks accept their Matricula Consular cards as identification for the millions of Mexican nationals living illegally in this country. Illegal aliens use the cards to secure loans and bank accounts, even though Mexican banks consider the cards to be unacceptable forms of i.d.
While the U.S. will see record foreclosures, repossessions and bankruptcies this year, illegal aliens will send more than $20 billion back to Mexico in ill-gotten wages.
Illegal immigration is no longer a political issue, but one which threatens our national survival.
Even some open border fools like Lugar get it.
Lugar: Mexican drug lords 'most immediate' threat to U.S. security http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2596614/posts
The reason for low unemployment in Mexico is a lack of social safety net. Starvation is a strong motivator for taking any job available—— or swimming a river and taking any job available. Do away with lifetime unemployment and food stamps and see how quickly the unemployment and illegal immigrant problems shrink.
Want to do business in Mexico? Pay them "fees". Then you get to exploit the peon class. Peons don't like it? Push them North on threat of starvation, then send "Consularios" into the sucker country (uh...the U.S.) and use them to marshall the peons into an angry rabble demanding Mexicanization and freebies.
Seems to work pretty well. The dumbest generation in American history rolled over for it.
What is an appropriate penalty for the hiring of an illegal alien?
"Get off our land. We own your so-called American nation, today. This is Aztlan We have taken over all your construction jobs, restaurant jobs, landscaping and farming jobs. And we want all your jobs !"
The article provides more stats to support what we've known for some time. And I think Mexico has been solving their unemployment problem by sending illegals north for several decades, rather than several years. The numbers and negative impact on US unemployment has just become much more severe since the early '90s.
Can America Stay Out of Mexico’s Drug War?
It’s the war no one wants to talk about. It has been raging on the U.S.-Mexican border for three and a half years and until recently neither the media nor Washington has given it the attention its alarming casualty numbers demand.
Since 2007, nearly 23,000 people have died in Mexico’s war with the drug cartels, nearly three times U.S casualties in Iraq and the Afghanistan conflict combined.
The violence is closing in and on occasions spilling onto U.S. soil. The murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz in March of this year ignited a revolt among Arizonans that has burst onto the nation stage and polarized opposing sides in the immigration debate. Yet it has spurred little action by the U.S. to aid Mexico in its struggle.
For the cartels, America’s quibbling over “immigration reform” presents a welcome diversion for their lucrative businesses. The U.S. has an insatiable demand for their drugs and they are filling it faster than the DEA can close the wormholes they use to send them into the country.
In play may be the very future of U.S. relations with its southern neighbor. In 2006, pro-American moderate Felipe Calderón barely defeated a leftist populist in Mexico’s presidential election, and the national mindset is desperate for solutions to the country’s abject poverty, government corruption and mounting violence.
For the United States, the question is no longer whether it will take action against narco- and human-traffickers on the border, but when it will deploy troops. The U.S. can ill afford an anti-American leftist government similar to Venezuela on its southern border, and it will happen if the Washington doesn’t act soon.
Both parties in Washington have failed to recognize the disastrous consequences to U.S. interests, should Calderon lose his fight, either with the cartels or leftist political opposition. If the U.S. procrastinates on increasing financial aid, eventually it may find itself in the position of having to invade the country to prevent a government overthrow. It is that serious.
Since 2008, the U.S. has allocated only $1.6 billion aid for Mexico in its drug war, as opposed to over $10 billion in Afghanistan for civil stabilization programs alone.
Mexican cartels are already active in California and other parts of the U.S., and Washington must move quickly if it is to stem the tide of the advancing cartels before they inflict widespread damage on Americans living in the Southwest
http://www.banderasnews.com/1010/edop-americastayout.htm
The only 'lifetime' unemployment I know of is being independently wealthy, winning the lottery, etc.
The major cause of our 'illegal' immigrant problem is the MINIMUM WAGE Law.
I know there's one here who doesn't care that they're squatting on his land.
‘Rats love the illegal votes and welfare babies and the CC ‘Pubs love the cheap illegal labor. Time for a third party.
Unfortunately, the higher penalties only end up raising the cost of goods or services, and don't solve the problem.
If it was legal to pay someone in the unskilled/inexperienced labor market less by removing the Minimum Wage Law, there would be no market for those who will take less because they are illegal.
Report the hiring of illegals and check your local businesses at the link. Not that ICE cares, but it might get your frustions out for a few minutes.
I agree that using illegals as employees is good for the consumer. It really sucks for the taxpayer, though.
And what about the case where the consumer and taxpayer are one and the same?
Far better to let wages among the legal population be determined by the market, and for the government to reduce or end many of the low wage subsidies such as the so-called Earned Income Tax Credit which now costs $60 billion per year, not to mention the additional billions of all government support programs that go to lower wage earners.
And my thoughts on the minimum wage is that it is about right, and that our nation and our economy is not especially well served by "entrepreneurs" whose enterprises cannot even pay the minimum wage to the employees they might need. Better off without them.
Why not be more to the point and say: drive wages in the US so low that they won't be attractive to the poor in nations that supply our illegal aliens. That's the only way your scenario would ever address the "cause" of the illegal alien problem.
They are always one and the same, just not always in the same proportions. So, if you can avoid income taxes by not having income and avoid property taxes by not owning any property, then the employment of illegal aliens isn't such a bad deal.
But, the rest of us get screwed. Tolerating the employment of illegals is like a welfare subsidy for employers who violate the immigration laws.
So, anyone who likes welfare should like illegal immigration.
‘Lifetime’ may be a little hyperbolic, but the fact is that Congress continues to increase the maximum and the average period of time spent on unemployment increases right along with it.
I’ve been in the construction business for 30 years and I’ve never seen anyone, legal or not, who was willing to work for the minimum wage. It hasn’t been a factor in my experience. I have gone through periods when I could not hire able bodied young men to take a job paying 200% of the minimum at the time because they preferred making burgers for the minimum to sweating in the hot sun for twice the pay. Our problems lie with a national character and ethical deficit, not illegal immigration.
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