Monday, May 30, 2011

The jobs crisis in America - ISN'T THE JOBS "CRISIS" REALLY AN OPEN BORDERS & JOBS TO ILLEGALS FIRST CRISIS?

The jobs crisis in America

The jobs crisis in America

30 May 2011
Amid the worst mass unemployment in the United States since the 1930s, states throughout the country are cutting benefits to jobless workers. Arkansas, Michigan and Missouri have already implemented cuts to unemployment payments, and Florida, Pennsylvania and South Carolina are preparing to do so.
Michigan and Missouri have cut the usual 26 weeks of state-financed unemployment payments down to 20. The Florida state legislature, meanwhile, has passed a law that would cut benefits to as low as 12 weeks, depending on the official unemployment level in the state.
These vindictive and punitive measures—which threaten jobless families with destitution—are part of an ongoing drive by the ruling class, led by the Obama administration, to eliminate every social gain won by the working people of America.
They come at the same time as government austerity measures, the closure of schools, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of government employees on both the state and federal levels. The ultimate aim is to create conditions in which millions of people have no access to even the most basic government assistance, to create such levels of economic desperation that workers will take any job, at any wage.
Whatever the talk of an “economic recovery,” the jobs situation is disastrous. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia had official jobless rates of 9 percent or more in April, while real unemployment is much higher. There are currently 24 million people in the United States who either want to work but can’t find it, or are working part-time involuntarily. This figure is larger than the populations of Chile or the Netherlands, and is twice the population of Cuba.
Some 5.8 million US workers have been out of work for over 27 weeks or more. Economists estimate that one million people lost all federal unemployment benefits last year after being unable to find work for 99 weeks. Nearly two million people total are among this group of “99ers.”
The portion of working-age people who are employed is 58.5 percent, the lowest level since 1983. This means that the transformative effect of women entering the labor force over the past two-and-a-half decades has been fully counterbalanced by the disastrous rise in unemployment. The employment-population ratio for men is at its lowest level in records dating back 40 years, and no doubt longer.
In another period, such conditions would have been treated as a national scandal, and the political establishment would have felt some obligation to take government action. On January 11, 1944, as the United States was wrapping up the war in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave an address to Congress, in which he proclaimed that the political rights guaranteed in the American Constitution had proved inadequate, requiring an “economic bill of rights.”
The first of this “Second Bill of Rights,” said Roosevelt, was that to “a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation.”
Roosevelt’s proposal was dead on arrival. American capitalism proved incapable of eradicating poverty and unemployment, even in boom years of the postwar period. But for decades afterwards, American politicians gave lip service to the concept of full employment as a basic goal of domestic policy.
Unemployment insurance was introduced in some states in 1932 and expanded throughout the country in the 1930s, in response to the Great Depression. This was part of a general program of social reform driven in no small part by fear within the ruling class of social upheaval and revolution. Roosevelt himself was speaking only a few decades after the Russian Revolution.
The entire direction of American policy today is toward the elimination of whatever remains of the reforms of the postwar period, including unemployment benefits. The political establishment has abandoned even the vaguest suggestion that people have the right to a job.
This past week, the administration released the centerpiece of its new “jobs” policy—a program of corporate deregulation to eliminate existing constraints on corporate profit. The extra profit, Obama claimed, will be used to hire workers. This under conditions in which corporations are sitting on the largest cash hoard in history, refusing to hire, waiting for wages to come down even further.
The cause of this transformation is to be found in the transformation of American society. The industrialists of Roosevelt’s age were people who largely made their money from the productive process. But in the past two decades, under conditions of economic decline, the American ruling class has split its attention between dismantling domestic industry and creating the giant Ponzi scheme that toppled in 2008.
The American ruling class has pursued a policy of deindustrialization, with banks flourishing to the point where, by the late 2000s, finance and real estate generated 40 percent of all corporate profits.
The vast increase in the wealth of the financial aristocracy over the past three decades has been bound up with this process. Now, three-and-a-half years after the beginning of the recession, not a single social program or measure to alleviate unemployment has been introduced. Instead, the economic crisis has been seen as an opportunity to throw back the conditions of the working class a century.
Obama, in his 2010 State of the Union address, pledged to double exports within five years. The only way this will be possible is through the reduction of wages to the point where they compete with those of the developing world. The driving force in this transformation is high unemployment, which is forcing workers throughout the country to accept lower and lower wages.
These conditions are not unique to the United States. In all the major capitalist countries, the ruling class has embarked on a program of austerity aimed at forcing workers to pay for the economic crisis.
The right to a job, with a livable income, is a basic social right. Indeed, as the program of the SEP states, “the right to employment is the most basic of all,” as “without a steady, good-paying job, it is impossible to satisfy all other needs.” The fight of workers to realize this right, however, brings them into conflict with both the Democrats and Republicans, and with the capitalist system that they defend.
The Socialist Equality Party calls for a public works program to ensure a high-quality job for everyone. There is no lack of work to be done. The social infrastructure of the US lies in ruins. Roads and bridges are in a state of disrepair, and the public transportation system is unreliable where it exists at all. As the most recent bout of tornadoes has revealed, millions of people live in ramshackle mobile homes that leave them exposed to the elements. The country’s levee and flood prevention system are so archaic that entire cities can be inundated with water, like New Orleans was in Hurricane Katrina.
To implement such a program requires not only the seizure of the wealth of the financial and corporate elite, but the transformation of all the major corporations and banks into publicly owned enterprises, under the democratic control of the working class.

Andre Damon

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Is This Our America Anymore?


Buried in the Oct. 30 Washington Post was a bland headline: "Report Points to Faster Recovery in Jobs for Immigrants."
The story, however, contained social dynamite that explains the rage of Americans who are smeared as nativists and xenophobes for demanding a timeout on immigration.
In the April-May-June quarter, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs. And native-born Americans lost 1.2 million.
From July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010, foreign-born Hispanics gained 98,000 construction jobs. Native-born Hispanics lost 133,000. Black and white U.S. construction workers lost 511,000 jobs.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, from Jan. 1, 2000, to Jan. 1, 2010, 13.1 million immigrants, legal and illegal, entered the United States, a decade in which America lost 1 million jobs.
From 2008 and 2009, the figures are startling. In 24 months, 2.4 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrived, as U.S. citizens were losing 8.6 million jobs.
Query: Why are we importing a million-plus workers a year when 17 million Americans can't find work? Whose country is this?
Why do we not declare a moratorium on all immigration, until our unemployment rate falls to 6 or 5 percent? Charity begins at home. Ought we not take care of our own jobless first before we invite in strangers to take their jobs?
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, each year between 300,000 and 400,000 "anchor babies" are born to illegal aliens. These newborns are entitled to citizenship, free health care and education, welfare and food stamps
Their parents -- almost all are poor or working class -- rarely pay any state or federal income tax.
How long can we keep granting citizenship and full social welfare benefits to the children of people who break our laws and break into our country or overstay their visas? How long can we keep bringing in workers to take jobs when our unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent?
Again, according to the Pew Center, the number of anchor babies here now is about 4 million. Add to that 3 million to 4 million born each decade, and it will not be long before Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Texas resemble California, which is on the brink of default.
If no action is taken, the Republican Party will soon be unable, even in wave elections, to win the presidency, as it won nothing and indeed lost state legislative seats in California in 2010.
The border will disappear, and America will be a geographical expression, not a country anymore.
Legal scholar William Quirk describes a new phenomenon in the invasion of America: "maternity tourism." Pregnant Asian women pay $15,000 to agents to ensure they are in the United States when their child is born so that they can return home secure in the knowledge he or she will be a U.S. citizen with the right to a U.S.-taxpayer subsidized education in college.
Though the nation has awakened to the threat to social cohesion and national solvency, Harry Reid is still attempting to ram through a lame-duck Senate an amnesty for illegal aliens up to age 30 who claim they were brought here before they were 16, have a high school diploma or GED and state that they intend to go to college within six years.
An estimated 2.1 million illegal aliens would be amnestied, put on a path to citizenship, and be eligible for student loans and more.
According to Alabama's Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee:
"Aliens granted amnesty by the DREAM Act will have the legal right to petition for entry of their family members, including their adult brothers and sisters and the parents who illegally brought or sent them to the United States, once they become naturalized U.S. citizens. In less than a decade, this reality could easily double or triple the 2.1 million green cards that will be immediately distributed as a result of the DREAM Act."
Lawbreaking would be rewarded. Chain migration would continue. A permanent powerful magnet would be provided to all foreigners to sneak into the United States and be sure to bring the kids.
As Rep. Dana Rohrabacher argues, one effect of the DREAM Act will be to move illegals applying to college ahead of many Americans, as 80 percent of illegals are Hispanics and eligible for affirmative action.
U.S. soldiers coming home from Afghanistan will "sit in back," as Obama puts it, when competing against amnestied illegals.
Several days ago, UCLA's Kent Wong addressed a pro-amnesty rally in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park. Wong turned the race card face up.
When Reid's bill passes, said Wong, "the young people of the DREAM Act movement will go on to accomplish and do great things. ... You will go on to become lawyers, teachers, doctors and members of the U.S. Congress to replace those old white men ... ."
If the DREAM Act passes, Wong is right about whose time has come and gone. May the tea party take names at the call of the roll.
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BY Edwin Loftus on 05/09/2011 at 15:57
The DREAM is just another form of amnesty, pure and simple. Americans have opposed it for 10 years yet the Dums keep pushing the issue along with CIR (which will also never happen). Americans want our immigration laws enforced and those who violate them to be deported, along with their anchors. The illegals should not be allowed to break so many laws and be rewarded for that. Deport all illegals !
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OBAMA’S SELLOUT OF A NATION; FIRST TO HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS, NEXT TO LA RAZA!

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WHAT’S LEFT FOR AMERICA? THE BILLS TO PAY FOR THE CRIMES OF THE ABOVE THREE ENTITIES!

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ON 5-10-2011, OBAMA HEADED TO EL PASO, NOW UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION, TO PROMISE ILLEGALS THAT IF HE COULDN’T HAND THEM AMNESTY IN ANY FORM, INCLUDING LA RAZA ENDORSED “DREAM ACT”, HE WOULD KEEP HIS PROMISE OF CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT.

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THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH UNEMPLOYMENT FOR OBAMA TO STOP HISPANDERING, SABOTAGING E-VERIFY, NEUTERING I.C.E, OR KEEPING HIS ADMINISTRATION LA RAZA INFESTED.

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OBAMA’S DEPT OF LABOR IS OPERATED BY ANOTHER OPEN BORDERS LA RAZA SUPREMACIST, HILDA SOLIS.



http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/obamas-la-raza-dept-of-illegal-labor-la.html

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WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/obamas-jobs-success-over-one-million.html

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The DREAM Act: Causing, not solving, a problem
By Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) - 05/09/11 02:42 PM ET
A recent editorial, “The fight for the DREAM Act: Faltered but not fallen,” tells only one side of the story.
It’s easy to be sympathetic to illegal immigrant children who were brought here by their parents. Because their parents disregarded America’s immigration laws, they are in a difficult position. But by granting citizenship, the United States would actually reward their illegal immigrant parents who knowingly violated our laws.
The DREAM Act perpetuates the problem it claims to solve and penalizes citizens and legal immigrants. Once they become citizens, illegal immigrants could petition for their parents to be legalized. The parents could then bring in others in an endless chain. 
This would undoubtedly encourage more illegal immigration.
If the United States grants amnesty to those who were brought here illegally by their parents without first enforcing our immigration laws, we will have to deal with this problem again in the future.
The president wasn't able to pass the DREAM Act when he had large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate because of bipartisan opposition. And American families opposed it, too.
The American people want Congress to focus on creating jobs and getting Americans back to work. For the past 22 months, the unemployment rate has stayed around 9 percent. At the same time, seven million individuals work illegally in the U.S. Amnesty will only give illegal immigrants a legal right to scarce jobs and encourage more illegal immigrants who are hoping for yet another round of amnesty.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. 

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“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”
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“Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.” WSWS.ORG
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More than a million immigrants land U.S. jobs
Stepped-up enforcement is not deterring trend of foreign-born employment
By Ed Stoddard
Reuters
updated 31 minutes ago 2011-01-21T01:03:27
DALLAS — Over the past two years, as U.S. unemployment remained near double-digit levels and the economy shed jobs in the wake of the financial crisis, over a million foreign-born arrivals to America found work, many illegally.
Those are among the findings of a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data conducted exclusively for Reuters by researchers at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Often young and unskilled or semi-skilled, immigrants have taken jobs Americans could do in areas like construction, willing to work for less wages. Others land jobs that unemployed Americans turn up their noses at or lack the skills to do.
With a national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, domestic job creation is at the top of President Barack Obama's agenda and such findings could add to calls to tighten up on illegal immigration. But much of it is Hispanic and the growing Latino vote is a key base for Obama's Democratic Party.
Many of the new arrivals, according to employers, brought with them skills required of the building trade and found work in sectors such as construction, where jobless rates are high.
"Employers have chosen to use new immigrants over native-born workers and have continued to displace large numbers of blue-collar workers and young adults without college degrees," said Andrew Sum, the director of the Center for Labor Market Studies.
"One of the advantages of hiring, particularly young, undocumented immigrants, is the fact that employers do not have to pay health benefits or basic payroll taxes," said Sum.
From 2008 to 2010, 1.1 million new migrants who have entered America since 2008 landed jobs, even as U.S. household employment declined by 6.26 million over that same period.
But in a sign of the times, the pace of job growth for new arrivals has also slowed, to an average of 550,000 a year from 2008 to 2010 from over 750,000 a year from 2000 to 2008.
Sum said it was fair to estimate that around 35 percent of these workers were undocumented or illegal.
Many immigrants acquired jobs in traditional low-wage work associated with foreign, undocumented and especially Mexican labor: hotels and food services, retail trade, sanitation, cleaning and construction.
There are a number of programs by which the United States lets foreign workers into the country to fill gaps in its domestic labor market but employer groups complain little is done in this area for legal, unskilled workers.
"There is basically no unskilled immigration that is legal. There are basically no provisions in the law for unskilled immigrants," said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business.
Farm workers in particular argue that Americans would not do the tough field work that is rife with undocumented workers, titling one recent union campaign "Take Our Jobs". The slogan meant that if Americans wanted their jobs, then take them. But it is likely they don't.
Immigrant hiring also comes despite stepped-up workplace enforcement against companies that hire illegal immigrants and the rapid expansion of the online E-verify system used by employers to check immigration status.
Some of those who entered the country since 2008 were employed in sectors that generally require a high level of skills and education, such as finance and insurance.
But the 28,500 new arrivals since 2008 who found work in the finance and insurance sector only comprised 2.6 percent of the 1.1 million migrants. Over 90,000 of the newcomers since 2008 got work in health care and social services, a fast-growing sector where skills are in demand.
Young, educated and willing to work But the demographic profile of the immigrants who are still landing jobs is slanted to the young, uneducated, unskilled or semi-skilled. Accommodations and food services, for example, was a sector that employed over 144,000 new arrivals -- the biggest group of employed new immigrants. These would be jobs such as hotel maids and dishwashers.
And 42 percent of the 1.1 million were under 30.
The unemployment rate for all Americans without a high school diploma in this age group is about 27 percent to 29 percent -- a level that Sum says is "Depression scale." And in sectors such as construction the unemployment rate is almost 21 percent.
Asked about hiring, industry sources say there is little.
"What hiring? Our guys laid off another 16,000 people in December," said Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America.
Yet the analysis by Sum and his colleagues shows that over 86,000 foreign-born workers who arrived in America since 2008 have been employed in the construction sector.
Sum said the whole situation was creating a deeper domestic labor glut at the bottom of the workforce ladder, depressing wages and sharpening already widening income disparities.
But Ezequiel Arvizu, the compliance and diversity representative with federal contractor Sundt Construction in Arizona, said his company had hired new arrivals over the past three years simply because they often have experience that native-born Americans lack.
"People often think construction is unskilled but the trades are very skilled and we need cement masons, carpenters, equipment operators," he told Reuters in a phone interview.
"We are looking for qualified candidates and it just so happens that some of the candidates who we select are legal immigrants. It means they have the skills we are looking for," he said.
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Obama soft on illegals enforcement


Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
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MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA – THE MEXICAN FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY. THESE FIGURES ARE DATED. CNN CALCULATES THAT WAGES ARE DEPRESSED $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR!
“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor

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