Jobs On The Way...For Illegal Aliens

The unemployment rate in America right now is 8.1%, up from about 5% throughout the Bush presidency.  On a related note, it sounds like hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the way...for illegal aliens.  That should be helpful, don't you think?

Studies by two conservative think tanks estimate immigrants in the United States illegally could take 300,000 construction jobs, or 15% of the 2 million jobs that new taxpayer-financed projects are predicted to create.

They fault Congress for failing to require that employers certify legal immigration status of workers before hiring by using a Department of Homeland Security program called E-Verify. The program allows employers to check the validity of Social Security numbers provided by new hires. It is available to employers on a voluntary basis.

...An advocacy group for immigrants, illegal and legal, did not disagree with the 300,000 estimate. Camarota says the estimate is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and other independent findings that 15% of all construction workers in the USA are either illegal immigrants or lack the status of legal immigrant authorized to work.

Ace of Spades offers the obvious analysis:

Heh. I thought the only point of the so-called "stimulus" was to create jobs for Americans. It seems this is one case where it is a zero sum game between illegals and citizens/legalized aliens.

It's also amusing that the Democrats put a 'buy American' provision in this bill but won't put in a 'hire American' provision. By shutting out foreign suppliers we risk a disastrous trade war that would hurt American workers but there's only benefits to American workers by ensuring only legal workers can be hired on federally funded projects.

And these construction and other jobs won't be cheap day labor jobs hired out of the parking lot of a Home Depot. They will be government funded projects meaning the pay scale will subject to the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act.

So how exactly is hiring non-Americans directly or indirectly on the public payroll helping to put Americans back to work, which was supposedly the whole point of this trillion plus dollar exercise?

Wow, thanks, Congress.  That's just great.

This shouldn't come as any big surprise, however.  Democrats have been putting illegal aliens above Americans for decades.  Case in point is the current battle in Colorado, where Democrats are pushing through a law giving illegal aliens in-state tuition.  Excuse me??  They're illegal and shouldn't even be there, so that means they're going to get tax benefits over and above legal American citizens?!

This sort of casual disregard for both common sense and the rule of law is what's wrong with the Democrat party today.

There's my two cents.