by Leah Durant
This week marks the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 41st Annual Legislative Conference, which was be held on September 23, 2011, in Washington, D.C. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas served as the host. The title of the conference was, “African-Americans: Joining the Leading Edge of the High Tech Boom!” and the conference was slated to touch upon a number of high tech subjects. Unfortunately, the conference would not address mass immigration, a policy that has had many negative repercussions for the black community.
The Congressional Black Caucus and its partners in the Obama administration are both guilty of pursuing immigration policies that worsen the country’s economic crisis. The Obama administration announced last month that it will adopt a case-by-case review process for the approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants currently facing possible expulsion from the U.S. The administration will concentrate its efforts on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal convictions and will essentially pardon what it deems as “low-priority cases.”
Jackson-Lee and her colleagues in the CBC have also supported a number of wrongheaded immigration policies in the last decade. In 2005, Jackson-Lee supported “Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act” (H.R. 2092), a bill that would have granted legalization to aliens who have resided in the U.S. for five years, who demonstrate knowledge of English, who have no criminal convictions, and who complete 40 hours of community service. This bill has been resurrected in subsequent years while maintaining strong electoral support from CBC members. The “Comprehensive Immigration Act” is just another egregious attempt to court a subset of voters while creating programs that reward unlawful behavior and further endanger American workers.
African-American workers are likely the demographic group most harmed by our failure to protect the borders and enact aggressive workplace penalties. The unemployment rate for African-Americans surged to 16.7 percent in the month of August, the highest rate since 1984. Unemployment rates in some inner-city regions topple an outstanding 40 percent.
A number of studies support the premise that massive immigration has influenced the employment prospects of African-Americans from a variety of occupational sectors. A report by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 40 percent of the decline in employment for low-skilled black men in recent decades was due to immigration. Another recent study by Harvard scholars George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson entitled “Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities,” found that one third of the decline in the employment rate of black male-high-school drop-outs between 1980 and 2000 was due to immigration. The authors write, “As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, we find a reduction in the wage of black workers in that group, a reduction in the employment rate, and a corresponding increase in the incarceration rate.”
Just last month a number of members of the CBC concluded a progressive listening tour in which they hosted town hall meetings in economically distressed urban areas throughout America. By avoiding the topic of immigration, these leaders hardly scratched the surface of the major causes behind African-American distress. The Congressional Black Caucus seems intent to skirt the issue in its current and future conferences. The CBC seriously neglects its leadership role if it continues to stick to talking points without seriously investigating and examining the ways in which immigration is hurting its primary constituency.
Leah Durant, Ms. Durant is Executive Director of Progressives for Immigration Reform, a non-profit organization seeking to educate the public on the unintended consequences of mass migration through research, advocacy and engagement. E-mails may be sent to Ldurant@pfirdc.org.
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American is broke, busted, so how can we imprudently repeat the same old performance of bringing in one million legal immigrants a year? How can we substantiate this, when we have a rising unemployment rate for average Americans of all races? This is not even counting the 20 million plus illegal aliens who are already here. It occurs to me and a good portion of the lawful populace, that illegal immigrants are receiving a better deal than lawful Americans. Its beyond most people’s comprehension that entitlements being collected by illegal aliens, were diverted to our Social Security fund, could make a difference to senior’s life’s; the homeless, the sick, veterans and towards the U.S. Treasury deficit. Just take a look of Rick Perry providing illegal alien student taxpayer tuition, when US citizens Out-of-State must pay full fees in Texas? Perry also disapproved of constructing the fence, which most certainly all RINO’s object to; they need those discount illegal laborers.
We deserve a President that upholds our laws, instead of bypassing Congress with Executive directives. He must be willing to protect America from its internal enemies, and sustain the 1986 Immigration laws against all entities who are pushing for wide open borders and allowing uncountable amounts of poverty-stricken people to enter this sovereign nation.
Dr. Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies finds that 81% of the jobs created in Rick Perry’s Texas between the years 2007 and 2011 went to newly-arrived immigrants. Something is seriously wrong here, but it will never change in the deep seated GOP members or the far left or Democratic leadership. The only chance of a different path to America’s rebirth is to stifle the powerful influences of both political parties and their campaign contributors. The TEA PARTY has a massive growing membership with real new ideas, such as moving back education to the states; dismantle the federal government to its original purpose as in the living Constitution.
Scrap and draft a new fair Tax code as expressed by businessman Herman Cain, who is a very elegant orator and has a real plan for America. Cain also promises to enforce immigration laws, build the double layer fence with no endorsement of another amnesty. I am sure TEA PARTY leading voice of Cain would approve of is Rep.Lamar Smith’s mandated E-Verify bill H.R. 2885, known as the “Legal Workforce Act.” would reduce the illegal aliens stealing through our porous border. This would also cause a reduction of numbers cutting-back significantly on family members coming here, as if the illegal bread winner cannot get settled and find a job; why bother.
E-Verify will join the highly controversial “Secure Communities”, The Halt Act (Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation Act), The Save Act (The Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act) and the 287 G police laws that are as necessary as authorized restraint against the decades of abandonment. When nationwide E-verify becomes law, then it will strengthen the state laws of Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and those who want to save their states from—ECONOMIC—illegal immigrants and migrants.
Then we have an escalation of whistle’ Blowers who are connecting with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division at 1-866-DHS-2ICE (866-347-2423). SEE SOMETHING? DO SOMETHING? With no questions asked about personal information, you can contact ICE and inform agents about your suspicions of foreign nationals working illegally in the USA. This is a sure way to aid your fellow Americans, who cannot get a job. Yet we have seen on many occasions unemployed Americans flocking to suddenly open jobs, where illegal aliens have been apprehended and detained by ICE.
After these lightening sweeps in northern Nevada in September, ICE agents raided 11 McDonald’s restaurants and arrested dozens of workers. On August 30, (ICE) agents converged at a supermarket parking lot in Maywood, California. Hundreds of sweeps have been conducted, under President Obama’s presidency, but currently these sweeps are only being ordered to–ONLY–arrest and deport criminal elements. An executive order adverse to the US Constitution was signed allowing allegedly for people without records to be released on the streets again.
With so many illegal aliens squatting here, we must be very attentive in Future election cycles. It has been proven with no room for doubt that hundreds of thousands of foreigners voted in the midterm election. Fraudulent registrations and criminals providing absentee ballots will do our Democracy harm and as yet the federal government has not demanded a mandatory ID identification for “Citizens” Voting. ACORN, that was supposedly disbanded and yet alive and well, under assumed business names was a mastermind in cheating the system, on behalf of the Democrats.
We must return our country to a zero-tolerance policy, that doesn’t deport just criminals, but every person who cannot prove he has a right to live and work in the United States. THIS IS WHY WE NEED A CONGRESS THAT WILL AMEND OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS, MAKING UNLAWFUL ENTRY A STRICT FELONY. These simple commentaries cannot hope to supplement the information contained at NumbersUSA, Judicial Watch and American patrol websites. The web contains thousands of grass root organization that can assistant you in your search for the truth, not the engineered information publicized by the Liberal backed press.
Why do Farmers and large industrial agriculturist appose E-Verify? For years since the “Bracero program” was eliminated in 1964, they have had unfettered recruitment of illegal workers; a convenient way of hiring people to work the land. With E-Verify, every worker must be verified and cannot be exploited for wages, health treatments or conditions as it’s always been asserted. The agrarian community will no longer be able to drop off an injured or sick worker at the emergency room, leaving the uninsured for taxpayers to pick up the bill.
The CBC is all the proof needed to anyone with eyes wide open that the Democrat party is pure racist and that black leaders in that party are race baiters and qill sacrefice their own race for power! They take every advantage of the ignoprant and propagandized black populace which is harmed most by their socialist agenda, especially as long as they are the minority in every aspect accept race, and Obama’s policies will see to that. Obama is not a black man, he is a socialist and a Muslim. Wake up Black America and help us, Americans , rid ourselves of this destructive anti-American force in our midst!
[[[ Congressional Black Caucus Ignores The Damage Illegal Immigration Does To Blacks ]]]
They ignore it for one reason…… they dont have to pick cotton, work the fields, do scut work they used to do, cause the Mexicans will do anything for a buck and work they do. That race of people is not lazy… I’ve got to hand that to them… the blacks are – big difference. The blacks have more jobs along side of the whites now, they’re ‘uptown’ now… doing work the mexicans now do.. is beneath them. They dont care how many comes over here as long as they can tell the GOVT that ” I can’t find a job cause the mexicans have taken over.. so I need more handout money from you… Mr Government..” and it’s given to them. Blacks and Mexicans hate each other….. always have and always will.