FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘immigration’ Category

One of the points that I have repeatedly made in the blog is that we could solve a major part of our unemployment problem were we to fix the illegal immigration mess.

Well, Alabama passed a law effectively criminalizing working if you’re here illegally, and guess what happened?

Unemployment rates have fallen in Alabama amid new legal pressure on companies to comply with a popular immigration reform law.

September was the first full month that the reform was in force, and the unemployment rate fell from 9.8 percent in September to 9.3 percent in October, according to a Nov. 18 report from the state government.

The rates fell from 9.9 percent to 9 percent in Etowah County, from 8.8 percent to 8.1 percent in Marshall county, and from 11.6 percent to 10.6 percent in DeKalb county.

More to the point the unemployment rate fell in every county.

Nationally, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% in October, while the decreases in Alabama as a whole was dramatically greater – five times greater.

Again: If you want to take a big bite out of our rampant unemployment problem stop coddling illegal invaders and instead prosecute both them and the employers of those illegal invaders so our citizens can have the jobs.

By Edwin S. Rubenstein

President Obama’s July 1 speech reaffirming his commitment to “comprehensive immigration reform” a.k.a. amnesty completely ignored unemployment, needless to say.

But unemployment is not ignoring him and his Administration. The June employment data, released the next day, were bad—and immigrant displacement of American workers appears to have resumed with a vengeance.

Nonfarm payrolls shrank by 125,000 in June. After adjusting for the downsizing of government census takers and other public sector jobs, the June job count was up by 83,000.

Even that is disheartening: the median forecast from economists and economic forecasting firms was that the U.S. would add 110,000 private-sector jobs.

The economy needs to add about 130,000 to 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with new workers entering the market (still including, incredibly, an estimated 40,000 immigrants). The labor pool is already overflowing with about 15 million unemployed job seekers.

The average duration of unemployment is now 35.2 weeks. A year ago it was 24.4 weeks.

The “other” labor survey, of households rather than businesses, was even more downbeat. It reported a June job loss of 301,000. Here is the action for the month:

• Total employment: -301,000  (-0.22 percent)
• Hispanic employment: -99,000 (-0.50 percent)
• Non-Hispanic employment: -202,000 (-0.17 percent)

Our measure of native labor displacement, the VDARE.COM American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI), uses Hispanics as a proxy for immigrants because some 40% of them are immigrants, retreated to 125.7 in June from 126.1 in May:

VDAWDI is calculated like this:

• For every 100.0 Hispanics employed in January 2001 there were 123.2 in June 2010
• For every 100.0 non-Hispanics employed in January 2001 there were 98.0 in June 2010
• June’s VDAWDI equals 125.7 (=100 X 123.2/98.0)

We’ve always said Hispanic employment is an imperfect proxy for our primary interest: foreign-born employment and its implications for job prospects of native-born workers. In recent months the employment report has (finally!) begun tracking foreign- and native-born workers. The data are not seasonally adjusted, making month to month comparisons tricky. But we can compare this June with last June:

In other words, over the past 12 months:

• Foreign-born employment rose by 754,000, or 3.5%; natives lost 1,697,000 positions—a drop of 1.4%.
• The immigrant unemployment rate fell by 1.0 point, to 8.7%; native unemployment rose 0.1 point, to 9.8%.
• The immigrant labor force grew by 2.3%; the native labor force shrank 1.3% – a sign of discouragement.

This suggests that our VDAWDI measure has actually understated the displacement impact of immigration.

It occurs to us that the absence of seasonal adjustment does not negate the validity of month to month comparisons, so long as the bias affects native and foreign-born workers equally. After all, our interest is not just economics but fairness—i.e., how native workers fare relative to their foreign-born counterparts.

That said, June was particularly bad for native-born workers:

While (seasonally unadjusted) foreign-born employment rose 416,000, or nearly 2 percent, native-born employment declined by 30,000 in June. Native unemployment rose by 0.3 points, while foreign-born unemployment was up by 0.1 point.

Overarching everything is the burgeoning population gap between these groups.  Over the past year the foreign-born population of working age rose 2.5%—more than four-times the 0.6% rate for natives.

It’s interesting that June appears to have been a relatively poor month for Hispanics but a very good one for foreign-born workers. One possibility: native-born Hispanics are losing out to foreign-born Hispanics.

Why shouldn’t Hispanics get to share in this quintessentially American experience—being displaced by immigrants?

Edwin S. Rubenstein (email him) is President of ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis.

VDare Archives

So THAT’S Who The Violent Protestors Are!

Posted by Karl Denninger

We keep hearing from the “useful idiots” in the media that the “Tea Partiers” are interested in violence.

Never mind that I’ve yet to meet a violent Tea Partier, or a bigoted one for that matter.  Having spoken now twice at Tea Parties in Niceville as well as in Tallahasse and Ft. Lauderdale, there has not only been no indication of violent tendencies (e.g. no threatening signs, nothing that could be called racist beliefs, etc) but in point of fact the speaker that drew the loudest applause in both Niceville and Ft. Lauderdale was a black American (and veteran, if it matters.)

But if you look at a different group of people who are protesting – hard-core lefties who are upset at the rule of law as passed in Arizona, you find this:

GIVE US FREE (insert the list) OR WE WILL SHOOT MORE POLICE?

If Janet Napolitano is looking for violent home-grown terrorism, the Tea Partiers aren’t the people she needs to be looking at.  It would seem to me that someone carrying a sign declaring clear intent to kill law enforcement officers would be on the top of the list, no?

Have you seen this reported in the mainstream media?

No, you have not.

Gee, I wonder why?

Update: There are reports that this photograph may have been tampered with.  I have as a consequence taken the time to examine the copy that I have under significant pixel magnification.  Here are my findings:

1. The lower part of the sign DOES show what looks to be a staple attachment to the pole, which some have said isn’t evident.  The resolution is insufficient to be CERTAIN it’s a staple, but it’s in the right place.

2. The anti-aliasing in the upper and lower signs looks to be a good match.  Also, the stylizing of the “W”s and “E”s match.  The anti-aliasing and edge noise, by the way, strongly implies that it was NOT digitally doctored.

3. The anti-aliasing and noise profile in the sign reasonably matches that in the other elements of the image.  This also implies that the image is in fact a photograph and was not tampered with.

4. The SIZE of the picture has been altered from the original.

Verdict: Inconclusive, but the sort of things that would immediately mark this as a doctored fake (e.g. someone inserting the lower panel onto someone else’s sign) are MISSING.

Attached are two snippets from some of the enhanced sections that I looked at; note the anti-aliasing is an exact match, implying strongly that either (1) the same device was responsible for ALL source images or (2) there is only one source image.  It’s not proof, but typically when someone tampers with an image using something like Photoshop the differences in anti-aliasing are instantly noticeable as the original pixel counts do not match and as such the anti-aliasing doesn’t either!