Monday, February 03, 2014

Unemployment And Illegal Immigrants

We’re told our unemployment rate is 7.2 percent. How can that be when there are 92 million Americans who can work but who have dropped out of the work force? Because they’re not counted, we’re told. Why aren’t they counted? They’re unemployed, right? Why aren’t they figured into the unemployment rate? They’re not too old or too young to work. They’re not disabled. They’ve just given up looking for work, but they’re still unemployed. If you ask me, the unemployment rate is really about four times higher than we’re told. It’s really about 30 percent or even higher, isn’t it?
In his State of The Union Address, the president talked about immigration reform and  income inequality. That’s good because they’re closely related, only not the way he tells it. Illegal immigrants have been pouring into the United States - about 12-20 million of them. Half or more work under the table for less than Americans who are on the books are paid. That depresses wages and drives up unemployment, worsening income inequality President Obama claims he wants to fix.
Now the president wants to grant them amnesty - and Republican leaders in Congress agree. More and more illegals are encouraged to sneak in, depressing wages further, and driving up unemployment, creating more income inequality the president claims he doesn’t want.
He says immigration laws are broken and need fixing. Which ones? All of them? Some of them? He won’t say, but he decided not to enforce them. He’s not going to deport illegal aliens who get caught after sneaking in here. Why not? Didn’t he twice swear an oath on the Bible “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”? The Constitution requires him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

He isn’t.
It’s not our immigration laws that need reforming. It’s the president that needs reforming. He only enforces laws he likes and ignores laws he doesn’t like. And, he promises to make new laws whenever he feels like it. “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” he says. He’ll write executive orders. He’ll call people and tell them to ignore existing laws and do things for which there are no laws.
That’s not the way our Constitution was set up, and he taught constitutional law so he should know that. I think he does know it, but he doesn’t like the way the Constitution was set up - so he ignores it and does what he wants.

So far he’s gotten away with it. Will he continue to? Looks like he intends to keep going unless Congress does something. What can Congress do? Only two things: It can defund his initiatives and it can impeach him. They’ve been toying with the first, and rumbling about the second.
Congressman Trey Gowdy

The Constitution says: “The House of Representatives shall…have the sole Power of Impeachment.” If Congress decides to do something, that’s where it would start - specifically, in the House Judiciary Committee where they’re already talking about it. The committee held hearings in December in which Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) asked an expert witness if the president, since he was dispensing with laws on immigration, marijuana, and other things, “Could he dispense with election law?”

The witness said no, but Gowdy pressed him: "Why not? If he can suspend mandatory minimum [sentencing laws] and immigration laws, why not election laws?"

"Because we live in a government of laws, and the president is bound to obey them and apply them,” [the witness] answered.

Well he's not applying the ACA [Obamacare], and he's not applying immigration laws, and he's not applying marijuana laws, and he's not applying mandatory minimum. What's the difference with election laws?" Gowdy said.

Another expert, Georgetown University professor Jonathan Turley, told the committee this: “The president is required to faithfully execute the laws. He's not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same resources to them, but I believe the president has crossed the constitutional line.”

Things are stirring in the House. It’s controlled by Republicans, but who controls them? Republican leadership obeys corporate leaders like Mark Zuckerberg who want amnesty. The Tea Party Caucus represents small business and ordinary people who oppose amnesty for the reasons I outlined. 

Pat Buchanan
In a recent column, Pat Buchanan claims Republicans lost middle America when they worked with Democrats to pass free-trade laws that shipped American jobs overseas. “While manufacturing sought to move production abroad,” he wrote, “hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.” 

How can they do that? Illegal immigration. It’s supported by Democrats because they want more voters dependent on government. Republican leaders support it because big corporate donors own them, just as they do Democrat leaders.


Tea Party Republicans, however, are in their way. They’re the only friends unemployed Americans have right now.

14 comments:

Alex said...

Slightly related, but if you have the time I strongly suggest reading this piece about State Disability Benefits: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Unknown said...

Tom you have hit the nail on the head again! Lets hope that the House has the backbone to impeach this imposter.

Aaron said...

Oh, Tom. Haven’t you learned by now not to get all your “facts” from biased sources who have agendas? Search through some neutral sites, such as PolitiFact, and you’ll get a more balanced picture.

"ICE … has limited resources to remove those illegally in the United States. ICE must prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency's enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system,".

In other words, Tom, we simply don’t have the millions of immigration workers, nor the means to simply round up and throw out all illegal aliens.

Experts also told PolitiFact that Obama has ramped up enforcement on some avenues of immigration law.
the Obama administration put renewed emphasis on identifying "dangerous criminal aliens" for deportation. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute, said the program was used in about 3 percent of U.S. jurisdictions when Obama took office and is in about 97 percent today.

PolitiFact also reports that overall deportations of illegal immigrants have increased during Obama’s term.
ICE deported 409,949 immigrants in the 2012 fiscal year, up from 396,096 immigrants in FY 2011 and more than 392,000 immigrants in FY 2010. Those figures all show a steady increase over every year of the Bush administration.

At PolitiFact, we have also noted that personnel and other resources to stop illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have increased dramatically in recent years. The number of border patrol officers more than doubled from about 10,000 to about 21,000 between 2004 and 2012.
In 2011, the New York Times reported that ICE started 2,746 workplace investigations, more than double the number in 2008. Fines totaling a record $43 million were levied on companies in immigration cases.

You see, Tom? Instead of sounding like a dimwit squacking ridiculously about impeachment, settle down, get the real facts, and do some actual thinking.
Is Obama perfect on Immigration? Of course not. But let’s get real.

Anonymous said...

Really, Tom, what good is researching when you only use sites who tell you what you want to hear? I see you used the following sources.

Mail Online – a right wing British tabloid with a history of reporting inaccuracies.

American Thinker – described as Ready-made Propaganda For The Ditto Head Conservative

WorldNetDaily - The CEO of this trashy company said "Admittedly, we publish some misinformation by columnists"
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/11/joseph_farah_wnd_misinformation/


Expand your horizons, Tom. Break out of your self-imposed exile in your Right Wing Opinion Only bubble.

Most importantly, think for yourself. Quit rehashing and dittoing goofy propaganda.

Anonymous said...

Gosh, I guess our host just isn't citing the authorized "official" version from the Ministry of Truth.

There IS THIS

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/townhallcomstaff/2014/02/05/immigration-enforcement-in-sharp-decline-despite-obama-administrations-claims-n1787377

How come food and fuel "don't count" in figuring average national expenses.?

At what point does "the annual defict" become "all better" by simply transferring it to the ASTONISHING "national" debt?

CaptDMO

Tom McLaughlin said...

Thanks CaptDMO. That was a good link. I've been too busy to argue here lately.

Aaron and Anonymous suggest I'm a lazy researcher and that I'd be better off relying on Media Matters or MSNBC I guess.

To learn what was happening on the border, I went down there to see for myself. Two columns I wrote then can be found here:

http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

Anonymous said...

No, numbnuts, nobody told you to rely on MSNBC or Media Matters. Just another example of your habit to twist everything. What was suggested were neutral fact finding sites, including PolitiFact which gave you the unarguable fact of deportations increasing under Obama.

Such a shame when facts get in the way of your confused view of the world, huh?

I see you just do what all radical extremists do - ignore reality and create your own.

Thanks for the entertainment.

Douglas said...

The concept of being neutral, or fair, or balanced when it comes to poitics is not a concept people like Tom grasp easily. To them there are two sides, and each side should lie, twist, spin, and fabricate whatesver is necessary to "win". A sad mindset, but one that is way too prevalent.

Anonymous said...

A townhall piece to try to back up your arguement? Really? That is just another site that is admittedly biased towards conservatives views. Numbers and stats can be spun any way you want. That is why you need to checki with non-partisan Fact Checking sites.

What? But they don't verify the claims you are making?

For some, truth is a real bummer.

Anonymous said...

Tom said "Tea Party Republicans, however, are in their way. They’re the only friends unemployed Americans have right now."

What a crock! Tea Partiers could give a rat's ass about those "lazy" unemployed people. In fact they do all in their power to worsen the situation.

They have repeatedly passed bills that would put more Americans out of work. Just look at the facts:

Since the tea party took over the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2011, they have pushed legislation which, if enacted, would have added more than 6.5 million additional workers to the unemployment rolls:

• The Economic Policy Institute estimates that nearly 1 million jobs would have been lost if their 2011 appropriations bill had been enacted.


• And the Ryan Budget they passed, which destroys Medicare and Medicaid, student loan programs and health care research, would put as many as 3 million more workers out of their jobs during the next five years.

Thankfully, President Obama and cooler heads in the Senate have kept these job-killing bills from becoming law. But they all passed the tea party-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

Tea party politicians have been ramming through similar misguided bills at the state and local level. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio, Chris Christie in New Jersey and Rick Scott in Florida are just a few of the elected officials who have pushed policies to put people out of work. All of them turned down federal funding for transportation projects that could have produced hundreds of thousands of jobs. And they have ruthlessly cut budgets rather than ask billionaires in their states to pay their fair share of taxes. Their actions are hurting job creation, even in the private sector. As economist Adam Hirsch noted on the website Think Progress last month: “States that cut spending are seeing significantly more job losses in the private sector than states maintaining or increasing spending levels.”

In the last Congress, tea party Republicans consistently voted to increase unemployment. In August of 2010, for example, every tea party-backed politician in Congress voted against legislation to provide assistance to the states to pay for teachers, firefighters and vital public services. If they had their way, 300,000 additional jobs would have been lost, adding to the more than 500,000 state and local jobs that have been lost in recent years. The next time a tea party politician tells you that jobs are what they care about, remind them that if it had been up to them, every auto worker at General Motors would be out of work today. And what about the jobs saved or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? They opposed the bill kicking and screaming, yet every thinking economist in the country agrees that it saved or created anywhere from to 2 to 4 million jobs.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm, right wing sites side with Tom. Left leaning sites disagree. Neutral fact finding sites also disagree with Tom.

I wonder which side is more accurate?

lol

Tom McLaughlin said...

"Neutral" fact-finding sites? Glenn Greenwald disagrees:

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/politifact_and_the_scam_of_neutral_expertise/

Anonymous said...

Here is another piece from Salon which totally wipes out your whole goofy column.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/23/immigrant_families_live_in_fear_while_obama_breaks_a_record_in_deportations/

Anonymous said...

Poor Tom.