Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321749837573290
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Economy: At least 300,000 of those stimulus jobs will go to illegal aliens who are likely to send that money home to their native countries. Just whose economy are we stimulating?
IBD Exclusive Series: Inside The Stimulus
The stimulus package is supposed to stimulate the American economy and create American jobs, but missing from it are measures to guarantee that. As a result, say both the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies, hundreds of thousands of these jobs will go to illegal aliens, and much of the money they earn will not be spent here.
The original House version included a provision requiring employers to check registration status with the E-Verify system before hiring. This provision was missing from the Senate bill and was not in the final version sent to President Obama.
The Obama administration has also delayed at least until May 21 a Bush administration executive order requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify. It was supposed to take effect in January.
Last Tuesday, 75 representatives of both parties sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner urging them "to protect taxpayers and legal workers by including these critical jobs protection provisions in any future economic recovery legislation."
In a February report by the Heritage Foundation, senior research fellow Robert Rector looked at the 2 million construction jobs the stimulus is supposed to create. "Without specific mechanisms to ensure that workers are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants authorized to work," he concluded, "it is likely that 15% of these workers, or 300,000, would be illegal immigrants."
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, comes up with the same figure for construction jobs 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 U.S. are illegal aliens.
Camarota says the total number of stimulus jobs going to illegals may be higher. At least a million more jobs are said to be created by the stimulus, and with 5% of the overall U.S. work force consisting of illegals, they could get another 50,000 non-construction jobs.
Rector sees another downside. "The fact that illegal aliens send a substantial portion of their earnings abroad reduces the stimulus effect that their employment has in the United States," he says.
Remittances, Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income after oil, dipped 3.6% to $25 billion in 2008, compared with $26 billion the previous year, according to Mexico's central bank. Will our stimulus improve Mexico's economy?
"It's outrageous that in a bill designed to provide employment for Americans, Congress has deliberately chosen to allow jobs to be given to illegal immigrants," Rector adds.
We think so too.
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