Hundred Power

The government class doesn’t grasp the reality of the typical, middle-class American. President-Elect Barack Obama states that his goal is to create 2.5 million jobs. With 10 million men and women in the official unemployment line, and millions more underemployed, a couple of million new jobs doesn’t cut it. If this is the serious economic crisis that the government class, the economists, and commentators accept almost unanimously, why should one adopt a goal that at best leaves us in a crisis? So let’s shoot for getting 10 million American men and women back to work. Here’s how.

First, the federal government has an obligation to remove the illegal immigrants from this country. There are at least 10 to 12 million illegals here. Let’s take a guess that at least 5 million have jobs that could
and would be done by Americans. Voila! Five million jobs.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) removed a record 349,000 illegal immigrants in 2008, a 21 percent increase over last year and a 77 percent jump since 2005 according to the San Jose Mercury News. That is an improvement. It sounds good. However, the influx of illegals is about 1,000 per day. So ICE is barely keeping even. There still remain over 10 million aliens who are subject to deportation.

Second, if you add in the LEGAL immigrants, there are over 38 million foreign-born people in the U.S. today. The rate of influx has been, and remains, a shock to the American system. There is an alphabet soup of
visas, e.g. H1-B, L-1, green card, etc., by which foreigners are allowed into the country to work legally. That can be stopped immediately by executive order. And, then there is the annual allocation of over 600,000 regular and permanent immigrants. (Annual means EVERY YEAR!) That could be stopped until every American (citizen and legal resident) has a job. Why continue to add to the employment problem in this country? A more detailed discussion of the immigration issue is found in “Illegal Immigration Is Bad For Americans”

Third, how many jobs have been directly and legally outsourced to foreign countries? Think of the call centers in India as just one example. One commentator put it this way, “If the data can travel down the internet, the job can be done just about anywhere in the world.” These are not manufacturing jobs. The global companies simply want to make an extra buck. All these jobs can be returned to the United States of America. The jobs belong to American men and women who deserve them.

Fourth, the U.S. has an enormous foreign trade deficit. It alone could bankrupt this country. The response of the Congress is simply to ignore the problem. To stop the hemorrhaging, the U.S. should and can take action. Let’s start with a 10% tariff on all imported goods and services and raise it until the U.S. at least has an even balance of trade. I can hear your objection that the the U.S. must respect the World Trade Organization rules which prohibit that. That’s not true. The WTO treaty says that no country should single out particular industries. As long as the tariff is applied to everything, each country is entitled to apply import taxes. Until Americans take this most basic step, we’ll continue to become weaker and weaker. Let’s call it a serious matter of national security.

Living in the U.S., do you ever feel that you’re in an asylum that’s being run by the inmates? Remember the oft-quoted definition of insanity?
It is “making the same mistake over and over again and expecting a different result.” The metaphor you can remember is: “When I find myself in an ever-deepening hole, the first thing I should do is throw down the shovel and stop digging.”

References:

“Illegal Immigration Is Bad For Americans”

“Know Nothing Party”

San Jose Mercury News, November 29, 2008
Border crossings shift back to California routes.