Democrat Don Collins relates immigration to our poverty overload

By Frosty Wooldridge

My long time Washington DC friend Don Collins adds a bit of reality check to the current jobs bill being promoted by Barack Obama. Collins writes for www.Vdare.com.  In all the hoopla over getting Americans back to work, Congress and the president refuse to breathe a word of some startling facts:

·         8 million illegal aliens enjoy full time employment within the USA without being checked for legality or eligibility.  (Source: www.cis.org and www.fairus.org)

·         Congress imports 200,000 legal immigrants every 30 days that must be given jobs and most of the time they take jobs from Americans

·         At 14 million unemployed Americans, no jobs program can catch up to 14 million unemployed while we bring in another 1.1 million immigrants annually.

Could you give us some perspective on the ironic words being spoken by Obama?

“After years of writing sob-sister stories about illegal immigrant hardships, the Washington Post’s page one story today made the point which VDARE.com and others have been trying to make for years,” said Collins. “But, ironically, it fails to put the finger on the culprit!  Namely, the importation of tens of millions of unnecessary aliens since 1965.

“Titled, Nearly one in six in poverty in the U.S.; children hit hard, Census says [by Michael A. Fletcher, posted online September 13, 2011] the print version of the article has a picture right above it  in the center of page one labeled:

 “Maxine Thomas with grandson Kairee and daughter Stephanie.  She lives in Elkridge with two daughters and three grandsons.  The family income was $15,000 last year. During a period of joblessness, there was no power for two months this summer.”  

“You can see a photo gallery, On Recession Road, documenting poverty across America, on the Washington Post’s website. This devastating exposé begins.”

“Nearly one in six Americans was living in poverty last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, a development that is ensnaring growing numbers of children and offering vivid proof of the recession’s devastating impact.

“The report portrays a nation where many people are slipping backward in the wake of a downturn that left 14 million people out of work and pushed unemployment rates to levels not seen in decades.

“As poverty surged last year to its highest level since 1993, median household income declined, leaving the typical American household earning less in inflation-adjusted dollars than it did in 1997….

“Last year, 46.2 million Americans lived below the poverty line — $22,314 a year for a family of four — marking the fourth year in a row that poverty has increased.”

“Folks, is anyone still confused about what has happened to America?” said Collins. “We got snookered.  And now this is the price which we will be paying for years.  In 1965 with the US population virtually stabilized at 194 million, Congress changed the immigration laws, allowed this immigrant invasion of over 120 million, including children born to the new alien arrivals, to bring our population to its present level of 312 million. Based on the Census Bureau’s middle-series projections, the U.S. population is projected to increase to 392 million by 2050 — more than a 50 percent increase from the 1990 population size.

“Simultaneously, companies have been reacting to the global economic reality of cheaper labor overseas by sending our better paying jobs to Asia.  Many of those jobs ain’t never coming back, Red Ryder!”

 Deep down in the WAPO story was this paragraph:

“The news was particularly bad for blacks, Hispanics and women. The poverty rate for Hispanics climbed to 26.6 percent last year, from 25.3 percent in 2009; for blacks, it increased to 27.4 percent, from 25.8 percent. For whites, the poverty rate was 9.9 percent, a half-percentage point increase. Meanwhile, 12.1 percent of Asian Americans were living below the poverty line in 2010, a rate statistically unchanged from 2009.”

“Hispanics and Asians, of course, are heavily immigrant communities,” said Collins. “As VDARE.com’s Ed Rubenstein has repeatedly pointed out, immigration’s impact on the poverty level is two-fold: direct—many immigrants are themselves poor, adding to the poverty population.; and indirect—immigrants compete with and displace native-born Americans, driving them into poverty by bidding down their wages and taking their jobs.

“Bottom line: We are in what I have called “immigration overload”, big time. Absent a firm, fair and urgently needed moratorium on immigration, including enactment of legal employee verification by the permanent enactment of E-verify, we are headed down the dismal road to permanent depression and increasing poverty. 

“Finally, after years of crying about the plight of poor immigrants, WAPO tells the story of poor Americans—which is one reason the paper should have been on our side all along.  But the I-word—“immigration”—nowhere appears.  Talk about irony!  And bad citizenship.”

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