If a Penny Saved is a Penny Earned, Then a Job Liberated is a Job Created: This is Why Our Immigration Laws Must Be Enforced

The common theme that runs through virtually every political campaign of nearly every candidate for public office on every level of government is the promise to create new jobs.

Nearly every poll makes it clear that the number one issue for voters this year, as it is for most years, is the economy.  When Bill Clinton ran for President it was claimed that his campaign headquarters had signs plastered on the walls stating simply, “It's the economy stupid!”

Record numbers of American workers are now either unemployed or underemployed.  Record numbers of Americans have fallen below the “Poverty Line” and as a consequence, record numbers of homes are being lost to foreclosure as homeowners lost their jobs and their tenuous grip on not only the Middle Class and the “American Dream” but solvency.

As the economy falters and more Americans enter the growing ranks of the poor in our country, more businesses find it more difficult to sell their products and services to our citizens who are finding it increasingly difficult to provide three square meals each day for themselves and to their children.

The White House is currently touting the "American Jobs Act" and while efforts to get create more jobs for Americans is important, there are currently millions of jobs that could be freed up tomorrow morning if our nation simply enforced the immigration laws that are already on the books but that the administration refuses to enforce.

On Sunday, December 18th, the CBS News program, “60 Minutes” ran an extremely disturbing report entitled “There Goes the Neighborhood”

While many homeowners are diligently paying off their mortgages they are finding that the values of their homes are declining for two reasons- the glut of empty homes on the market and the fact that no one wants to live in a community that has numerous vacated houses that were lost to foreclosure.  While these vacated homes are no longer occupied by their owners who, losing their jobs lost their homes, at least some of these foreclosed houses may now be used by drug dealers and prostitutes, further driving down the value of the communities in which these houses are located.

As the 60 Minutes report states.

“Across America, recession-fueled foreclosures and plummeting home values have left countless properties abandoned and vulnerable to looting. As Scott Pelley reports, the problem has gotten so bad in Cleveland, Ohio, that county officials have demolished more than 1,000 homes this year – and plan to demolish 20,000 more – rather than let the blight spread and render nearby homes worthless.”

This is just another example of how the growth of poverty among Americans who had been members of the Middle Class ripples throughout our nation's economy creating a series of vicious cycles.  The obvious solution is to get Americans back to work on jobs that will enable them to support themselves and their families.

While it may take a serious investment in time and money to create jobs, think about how many millions of jobs are currently held by illegal aliens whose presence in our country represents a violation of our nation's laws.  These jobs are available right now without any investment of money or time required.  These are jobs that can be liberated, literally overnight, if the immigration laws that are supposed to protect American workers were enforced.

Prior to the Second World War, the enforcement and administration of our nation's immigration laws was the responsibility of the Department of Labor.  Back then the members of “The Greatest Generation” demonstrated the straightforward commonsense that guided our nation through some of its darkest hours during the Second World War.  The Labor Department was charged with enforcing immigration laws to protect American jobs and American workers.  This gave rise to the largest, most vibrant, and successful Middle Class that made the United States of America the envy of the world!

This was the foundation for the American Dream!

Today the administration refuses to seek the arrest and removal of illegal aliens who, by working in violation of these immigration laws, deprives American citizens and lawful immigrants of all races, religions and ethnicities jobs that they desperately need to break the chain of unemployment and poverty.  These foreign workers, as might be expected, send as much of their earnings back to their families in their home countries draining tens of billions of dollars of money from the American economy.  This is money that is not earned by Americans and is money that is neither spent nor invested in the American economy- further hammering our nation's struggling economy.

Incredibly the administration has decided to not only not seek to arrest and remove illegal aliens from the United States who are working in violation of law, but has taken to the unprecedented tactic of providing illegal aliens with employment authorization even though nothing about their immigration status has changed other than the desire of the administration to find an administrative solution to a succession of failures to get the DREAM Act or Comprehensive Immigration Reform passed by the Congress, thereby achieving a piecemeal amnesty through policy directives.

When an illegal alien is granted employment authorization, that alien is no longer considered to be illegally present and has as much right to a job as any lawful immigrant or American citizen.  This process makes a mockery of the legal immigration system that provides more than 1.1 million aliens with lawful immigrant status each year, placing them, on the day they receive their Green Card, on a pathway to United States citizenship.

These actions by the administration have an additional impact on our nation- these actions and the statements made by the President as well as high ranking members of his administration and politicians from both political parties about the need to provide illegal aliens with pathways to legality if not citizenship, entices and encourages still many more illegal aliens to enter the United States illegally by evading the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens into our country whose presence would be harmful to our nation or our citizens, or by entering the United States with visas or under the auspices of the dangerous Visa Waiver Program and simply ignoring the immigration laws that require that these aliens not seek employment and leave the United States before their authorized period of admission expires.

If the federal government not only refuses to enforce these important immigration laws, but seeks to reward illegal aliens for violating these laws, why should aliens pay attention to these laws?

Under the administration's current policies, these illegal aliens will provide still more competition for jobs Americans must have if the cycle of unemployment and poverty is to be broken.