IT'S TIME TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF FOREIGN WORKERS IN AMERICA

At a time when our federal government is reporting record numbers of job losses in all sectors of the economy throughout the United States, I believe it is time for the American government to protect the American citizen workers by slowing the massive importation of foreign workers into the United States.

According to recent government statistics, in November of 2008 alone, 533,000 non-farm jobs were lost in this country, while at the same time, the Department of Homeland Security issued 138,000 new work permits and green cards (not including replacement or renewal documents) to foreign workers.

As millions of American citizens are losing their jobs, their own government keeps importing 138,000 foreign workers a month into the country to compete for jobs with it own citizens. How does this make any sense? If you think the 138,000 monthly figures for foreign workers sounds too high, a recently published Department of Homeland Security report showed that in 2007 alone, the United States government granted 744,531 permanent green cards to working-age adults ages 20-64, and another 912,735 new employment authorization documents to temporary foreign workers. That adds up to an annual rate of 1,657,266 new foreign workers (not counting the millions of illegal workers) added to our economy each year.

Incoming President Obama has proposed a stimulus package that is expected to initially cost anywhere from $700 billion to well over a $1 trillion with a goal of creating 3 million jobs in the next two years. Whether or not you support his plan, if it works, the creation of 3 million new jobs will be a welcome relief to those American citizen families who are now unemployed due to the economy. Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in the overall plan. During the implementation of this two year plan to create three million jobs, our current immigration system is poised to bring in more than 3 million additional foreign workers in the same two year period. This means that the hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars spent on new jobs for Americans won’t even create enough jobs to keep pace with the number of foreign workers we will still be importing into our weakened economy. A large portion of the American taxpayers’ money might even be used to keep these foreign workers employed in the USA at the expense of American workers.

Our current immigration system is predicated on the false assumption that there are millions of jobs Americans won’t do at almost every level of the skill ladder. This is not a logical assumption in even the best of economic times. When American citizen workers are already suffering from an economy that is losing jobs at a phenomenal rate, it doesn’t make any sense for our own government to continue a policy of importing large numbers of foreign workers into the country to compete with its own citizens for jobs that are becoming scarcer.

In these tough economic times, when more and more American citizen workers are suffering and losing their jobs, our government needs to take two important steps to protect its own citizens. The first step is to put more emphasis on removing illegal alien workers from our country by actually enforcing our current immigration laws and the second step is to temporarily suspend the importation of millions of foreign workers into the country until the economy can support them.