Please support H.R. 2164, the Legal Workforce Act

LINK:
http://www.numbersusa.com/dfax?series=08AUG11hl

Fax & Urge your U.S. Representative to Support National E-Verify Legislation

Dear [This fax will go to Your U.S. Representative]

Please support H.R. 2164, the Legal Workforce Act, so that jobless Americans and legal immigrants can fill those jobs currently held by illegal workers.

This legislation, in addition to requiring employers to run new hires through the E-Verify system, would gently move illegal aliens out of U.S. jobs. Over time, the 7 million illegal aliens in non-agricultural jobs would be replaced by unemployed Americans and legal immigrants. While not solving America's unemployment problem, H.R. 2164 would certainly lessen its severity.

This legislation is able to coax out these illegal workers by requiring the Social Security Administration to send out "no match" letters to employers if the name and Social Security number of a current employee do not match. The employer is required to run "no match" employees through the E-Verify system to determine if they are eligible to work in the United States. Clearly, this is an easy and effective way of putting unemployed Americans and legal immigrants in jobs currently held by illegal aliens.

Please support H.R. 2164, the Legal Workforce Act, and help Americans get back to work and help employers stay on the right side of the law.

Sincerely, [Your name will appear here]


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Please support H.R. 2164, the Legal Workforce Act, so that jobless Americans and legal immigrants can fill those jobs currently held by illegal workers.
"No" to Immigrant Bashing

Message from Roy Beck, Executive Director:
The chief difficulties that America faces because of current immigration are not triggered by who the immigrants are but by how many they are.

The task before the nation in setting a fair level of immigration is not about race or some vision of a homogeneous white America; it is about protecting and enhancing the United States' unique experiment in democracy for all Americans, including recent immigrants, regardless of their particular ethnicity.
-- Roy Beck, "The Case Against Immigration"

Nothing about this website should be construed as advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans; illegal aliens deserve humane treatment even as they are detected, detained and deported. Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.

I encounter too many immigrants and children of immigrants in daily affairs where I live in northern Virginia to take those risks lightly. From five continents, members of immigrant families have passed through my home, especially in the persons of friends of my sons. They are among the physical therapy patients of my wife; they are participants in youth activities which I lead; they are friends at my church, which has received national recognition for creating local service to new immigrants; they are neighbors; they are business clerks and owners where I trade.

Thus, as is the case for millions of other Americans, I have a very personal stake in not wanting to provoke hostility or discrimination toward the foreign-born who already are living among us.

But our kindly feelings toward immigrants must no longer stifle public discussion about the effects of immigration numbers.

To talk about changing immigration numbers is to say nothing against the individual immigrants in this country. Rather, it is about deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future.

None of this is to suggest that no immigrants are scoundrels or contribute to problems of immigration because of their bad personal behavior. It is not unfair, nor does it constitute immigrant bashing, to criticize the behavior of specific immigrants who violate our laws or otherwise behave in a manner unworthy of guests who have been invited into this country.

It IS immigrant bashing, however, to ascribe those bad characteristics to whole groups of people based on their ethnicity or foreign-born status. All of us should be careful of the language we use so as not to inadvertently appear to be making such negative generalizations.

Not only is it ethically wrong to engage in such stereotyping, it is tactically short-sighted. There is much to suggest that most immigrants already among us would support reductions in immigration numbers. The reasons are not surprising. Virtually any reduction designed to help native-born Americans would be even more beneficial to foreign-born Americans. That is why so many immigrants are supporters of NumbersUSA.com.

Perhaps the greatest "immigrant bashers" are those Members of Congress who refuse to look at the abysmal conditions of so many immigrant Americans and who every year insist on adding more than a million more immigrants into their occupations, schools and communities.



LINK:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about-us/no-immigrant-bashing/no-immigrant-bashing.html

Slavery is alive in the US with employer hiring illegal aliens

I recognize that illegal aliens are be exploited by employers every day of the week in your comfortable middle-class community. Look at the street corners for that proof. Many limoLiberals expoused run-of-the-mill progressive talking points about illegal aliens. Those boring false points have been "busted" by the media voters and officials for many months now. Illegals don't do jobs American won't do, especially in this harsh ecomony. Slavery is alive in the US. Americans spend months at a time at sea fishing for crab or drilling for oil; two of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Americans clean bathrooms, subway stations and crime scenes. Americans man toll booths, pave roads, embalm bodies and inspect sewers. Yet people really expect us to believe that they won't pick strawberries or oranges?

It just doesn't add up.

Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal published a story about a shortage of H-2B visas, which are issued twice a year to nonagricultural seasonal employees. Because our government can't get out of its own way, they recently let an important "returning workers" provision expire resulting in thousands of foreign workers being shut out of the country this summer.

That's inexcusable. I know this will come as a huge shock to those who only like to hurl insults, but I think we should be issuing more work visas, more student visas, and more green cards. And I think we should cut the red tape and bureaucracy that's constantly blocking the front door.

But until that happens people are left looking for loopholes and excuses, and "jobs Americans won't do" is the gold standard.

The Journal article offered an example of a couple that sells food at fairs around California each summer. They say that because of the H-2B visa shortage most of their seasonal employees aren't able to enter the country.

So why don't they just hire Americans instead? Good question. Her answer? "This is a hard job."

I find it pretty hard to believe that there aren't a few college students who wouldn't want to drive around California and work outdoors all summer, but let's assume that's true. Let's even assume that none of the other 1.1 million Californians who were unemployed as of April are interested in the job either. Isn't anyone wondering why?

Well I'm not a labor consultant, but I am a thinker. Maybe the problem isn't that the job they're offering is "too hard," maybe it's that the wages they're offering are "too low."

No one paints the undersides of bridges for fun, they do it for the money. That's how capitalism works.

How capitalism does NOT work is when we collectively look the other way as companies exploit illegal labor for their own benefit.

The unspoken truth is that these businesses don't hire illegal aliens because they can't find American workers, they hire illegal aliens because they don't want American workers. And it has nothing to do with wages.

Illegal aliens mean no workers' comp claims, no age, race or sex discrimination lawsuits, no healthcare premiums, no unions, and no demands for raises, vacations or bigger offices. In fact, illegal immigrants are the perfect employees because they're not employees at all; they're corporate slaves.

Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell once said, "Blacks were not enslaved because they were black, but because they were available." Can't the exact same thing be said for illegal aliens? They're available and we're allowing them to be exploited in the name of cheap groceries.

Is the price of fruit really the standard we want to live up to as a country? Is that really who we've become?

Many Americans believe that cracking down on the businesses that hire illegal aliens (the current maximum federal fine was recently raised to a laughable $16,000) would hurt these hardworking people too much. A bad job is better than no job, we tell ourselves. But that's catalogue compassion. If you want to understand the real impact of these decisions you've got to get off the couch and go see it for yourself.

Back in 2005, Newsday did an investigation of the living conditions of immigrants in the New York area. In the city of Westbury (median income: $83,000/year) officials found twelve immigrants living in a basement flooded with sewage.

In Southampton (median income: $64,000/year) officials found immigrants living in sheds with no plumbing or heat.

In New Cassel (median income: $62,000/year) officials estimated there were dozens of "shift-bed houses" where immigrants literally rent mattresses for a few hours a day to catch some sleep.

Is compassion looking the other way while immigrants who come here for the dream end up living a nightmare smack dab in the middle of some of our wealthiest communities?

Is compassion ignoring stories that reveal the truth, like the recent raid of a squalid "drop house" in Los Angeles where 57 illegal aliens were being held against their will?

Is compassion not wanting to hear that a woman was raped in that drop house, or that many more would have been if not for the screams of their children disrupting the attackers?

If that's compassion, then I guess I'm happy to be accused of having none.

The problem with the debate over illegal immigration right now is that special interests have been successful in making us think with our hearts instead of our brains. We've been persuaded to believe that real compassion can only be achieved by following their agenda. But look where that's gotten us. And more importantly, look where that's gotten the people they're supposedly trying to help.

If you really want to be compassionate, then help immigrants get jobs here the right way. Help put crippling fines on the employers who knowingly hire illegal workers, help expand and simplify the visa process, and, most importantly, help get people to start thinking with their brains again.

After all, compassion without common sense may feel good but it doesn't achieve anything. If you need proof then go out and give $1,000 to every homeless person who asks you for change. I bet your heart would be full, but your wallet would soon be empty. And all those people would probably still be homeless.