Immigration Policy Shuts Veterans Out of the Job Market

By Joe Guzzardi
November 14, 2011

On Veterans Day, no matter where you live, your local newspaper printed a story about the returning military’s unemployment plight. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, thousands of our armed forces personnel are coming home and looking for jobs. To their dismay, they’re learning what Americans have known for the last five years—there are no jobs. Despite their training and heroics, the vets have joined the unemployed. In fact, their situation is worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics established the October unemployment rate for veterans who have served since September 2001— referred to as Gulf War II-era vets—at 12.1 percent, nearly 3 percentage points higher than the national average.

Last week President Obama and United State Marine Corps Captain Aloysius Boyle, made patriotic, gut-wrenching pleas to employers to hire troops, a noble but elusive goal. Washington D.C. paid lip service to the unemployment crisis by drafting lofty sounding but doomed legislation that wouldn’t make a significant difference even it passes.

Here are three examples. First, the Hire Heroes Act invests in a study that would effectively translate military skills to civilian equivalents. Second, the Veterans Opportunity to Work Act seeks to catalyze veteran employment, training and job placement. And, third, in August President Obama outlined his strategy to provide tax incentives to organizations that hire veterans. The White House proposals would provide businesses a $2,400 tax credit for hiring any unemployed veteran, a $4,800 tax credit for hiring a veteran who has been out of work for at least six months and a $9,600 tax credit for hiring a veteran with a service-connected disability who has been unemployed for six months. But these bills, no matter how well intended, don’t create jobs.

The biggest hurdle facing veterans is the federal immigration policy that invites over 1 million people to the United States annually—and issues many of them work permits. Since the Gulf and Afghanistan Wars began a decade ago, 10 million legal immigrants have arrived, all of them authorized to work and each potential job competitors with Americans.

Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies, said this about the impact of legal and illegal immigration on American workers: "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.”

Based on Sum’s analysis, what would open up jobs for struggling veterans, as well as the 14 million unemployed Americans, would be to stop handing out visas. A determined Congress could call a screeching halt to the hurtful legal immigration system in a matter of weeks. The most effective job creation program would cut off visas and also pass the Legal Workforce Act, stalled in Congress, which would remove thousands of illegal aliens from their payroll positions and prevent others from applying.

As Veterans Day ceremonies fade from the news, don’t expect to hear much more about the vets painful transition back into mainstream America. The least likely development is that Capitol Hill will acknowledge the link between over-immigration and American unemployment and act in Americans’ best interests.

Joe Guzzardi is a Senior Writing Fellow at Californians for Population Stabilization. His columns have been syndicated since 1986. Contact him at [email protected].