WHY DOES THE Senate Stimulus Bill Provide 300,000 Jobs for Illegal Immigrants IS THIS EVEN LEGAL ?

• If enacted, the Senate stimulus bill would fund over $100 billion in new government construction projects with the goal of providing additional jobs to unemployed Americans. The House-passed stimulus bill contains explicit language to bar employment of illegal immigrants in these construction projects. However, the Senate bill deliberately omits this language. If the Senate version of the bill becomes law, a great number of the workers employed in government construction programs will, in fact, be illegal immigrants. About one out of seven (or 15 percent) of workers employed in construction in the U.S. is an illegal immigrant.[1] Unless strong mechanisms are put in place to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants, it is reasonable to expect that a similar proportion of workers hired for construction projects under the stimulus bill would be in the country illegally. Construction Funding and Employment of Illegal Immigrants The Senate stimulus bill would provide roughly $104 billion in funding for a variety of construction projects including highways, schools, and renovation of public housing. This funding will be spread over five to seven years. Normal government estimates indicate that each $1 billion spent on construction will create around 19,500 construction jobs, each lasting a year.[2] Thus $104 billion in funding in construction projects would ostensibly create construction-related jobs for about 2.04 million workers over several years. Without specific mechanisms to ensure that workers are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants authorized to work, it is likely that 15 percent of these workers, or 300,000, would be illegal immigrants.The stimulus bill currently being debated in the Senate deliberately omits the E-Verify provision from the House bill. Later this week, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will introduce an amendment to include the House E-Verify language in the Senate bill. However, if the current Senate bill were to become law without language requiring contractor use of E-Verify, the inevitable result would be billions in federal funds spent to employ illegal immigrants.

• Answer:

  The US lost 101,000 construction jobs in December, and unemployment rates for white males increased the most, followed by black males. Unemployment rates for women and other minorities changed the least. I would guess companies laid off their legitimate employees first, keeping their lower-paid illegal aliens. It is time to put Americans who have lost their jobs or are entering the job market to work, and then base legal immigration on actual need. E-verify should be used on every job.