I’d like to alert you to a great column by Joe Guzzardi today, which explores two key aspects of the immigration debate as it’s currently unfolding in the United States. The dearth of jobs for Americans in this country, which is experiencing its most prolonged economic slump since the Great Depression, is something that everyone is aware of.
Guzzardi describes the opportunities that are being provided to Americans through tougher work site enforcement at factories that have heretofore relied upon illegal aliens as the bulk of their workforce. However, he also delineates the robust attack SEIU-one of the most politically powerful unions in the nation-has launched against the federal government, specifically, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for deploying its resources to ensure that these companies abide by federal immigration law.
The extensive support SEIU has given to efforts at legalizing millions of illegals has been well documented in the past, but what hasn’t been explored sufficiently is the harm these attempts at forcing amnesty down the throat of the American populace has inflicted on the American workforce. Guzzardi does a brilliant job of illustrating the connection between millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans and the glut of illegal alien labor supplied by previous amnesties, e.g. the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, and the de facto amnesty that currently exists. An amnesty that big labor-including SEIU-supports and wants to expand upon in order to swell the ranks of its political lobbying operation.
Read the piece in its entirety; you won’t regret it.