High joblessness, illegal immigration share cause
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Vexed by seemingly intractable high unemployment and illegal immigration, politicians might eventually need to consider the ultimate weapon.
That would be officially repealing the unofficial modern catchphrase that there are jobs Americans won’t do.
This writer finds it strange that a normally egalitarian democracy would come to such an elitist stance.
Especially since the jobs held by an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants would go far toward wiping out the multi-billion dollar taxpayer burden to support extended unemployment benefits. Americans would need only take them.
In older times, all honest labor was held to be ennobling.
That view, judging from current benefit law, is passé. It seems to have morphed into the idea that occupations fit for foreigners are somehow unfit for U.S. welfare recipients.
Such a culture change could never have taken root in the 1930s, when Americans, whether high-born and formerly rich or humble legal immigrants, took whatever jobs there were.
Down on their luck brokers, account executives, whiz insurance agents drove taxis, waited tables, cooked in restaurant kitchens, swung shovels, roofed houses.
It was truly a “Great Depression.” There was no reserve strata of foreigners in this country illegally, taking the first 12 million jobs to be had.
Nor was there a cushion of months or years with government checks coming to keep Americans from moving to places where work was available.
How many unemployed urban Americans today would have the starch to trade a year of government checks for work on farms or in mountain resort towns? It happened a lot in the 1930s. Probably not today.
We credit the idea that most jobless men and women are hardworking and want to work. Small, inexpensive but powerful computers might induce the less than hardworking to venture into America’s tax free but risky underground economy.
Unemployment checks can be a lure. No bosses to answer to. No great wardrobe needed. Reduced transportation requirements. For some, no alarm clocks.
But lengthy unemployment can come at a price. Unusual blanks in a job resume is a turn-off to employers. Skills can fade.
Government policy today allows unemployed Americans to refuse a wide variety of work for extended periods, much of it in essential services, especially in construction, agriculture and the wholesale and retail food industries. This work has to be done. Enter the hardworking, but illegal, immigrants who fill the bill.
In effect, our politicians have put the government at the throttle of two runaway systems, each dependent on the other.
If jobless Americans, after some reasonable time, but less than 99 weeks, were required to accept available work, 12 million illegal aliens would not be needed.
Prolonged unemployment could be a leveler. A bank president unable to find work in a year should accept other work, all the while keeping his resume in play for better times.
However, the big news out of Washington as we go to press Wednesday is that Congress is poised to extend jobless benefits to 99 weeks. President Obama is equally willing to sign the extension, even though the cost exceeds $3 billion and will, at his insistence, add to the deficit.
In an election season, most GOP members approve the extension. They simply want the costs to be paid for out of existing stimulus funds.
Immigrants have, and should, always be welcome in the United States. It’s a cliché that immigrants built America — and it’s true.
But they need to come in the front door with legal status.
Coming through back alleys and over rivers and deserts only adds to their physical peril and poses a national security threat. Bad people easily commingle with good people.
Keeping 12 million or more illegal immigrants on jobs Americans should take or else lose their benefits brings unsupportable costs to local, state and federal government.
It’s one thing for high-minded liberals to plead for open borders and limitless crossing. But the rural communities, cities, states and the federal government must live with the consequences.
They are required, often by law, to answer the health, educational, sanitation and security needs of the non-citizen immigrant population.
In 2010, they are overwhelmed.
July 23, 2010
