BLACK AMERICAN LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE TO HOLD D.C. RALLY TO PROTEST AMNESTY ON JULY 15TH
BLACK AMERICAN LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE TO HOLD D.C. RALLY TO PROTEST AMNESTY ON JULY 15TH
07-02-2013 12:17 am - Greg campbell - Tea Party News Network
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Plans for amnesty for the millions of illegal immigrants who are here already are encountering tough pushback across the board from conservative leaders and groups. While many are vehemently against the immigration reform package recently passed by the Senate, the Black American Leadership Alliance has come out strongly against the calls for amnesty or “earned pathways to citizenship” altogether and is hosting a rally to demand action from Congress.
The Tea Party News Network sat down to discuss the issue with Charles Butler, talk radio host of The Take and a spokesman for the Black American Leadership Alliance, who is organizing the DC March for Jobs on July 15th, 2013, in Washington, D.C.
While Americans struggle to make ends meet, lawmakers in Washington are pushing for immigration reform that would add between 11 million to 20 million new workers to the job market at a time when an estimated 23 million Americans are out of work. With such a tremendous influx of unskilled labor, the introduction of millions of previously-illegal immigrants into the job market will create a massive crisis for the lower and middle class.
“Everything that is being put forth in the news media and by both parties is about the positive effects of bringing, what amounts to, 20 million illegals into this country out of the shadows and another 33 million per the Senate bill,” Butler began. “We are opposed to anymore immigration- period. Our current immigration policy allows for 125,000 people per month into our country. In April, we created 88,000 jobs. In May, we created around 120,000 jobs; where are the rest of these people going? They are going on public assistance, public benefits on the taxpayer dollar.”
The Black American Leadership Alliance is opposing the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill as well as any bill that doesn’t include border security measures as a first priority, that offers amnesty or citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country, that has not been read by Congress before passage or that put political or corporate interests ahead of the American people.
Though illegal immigration affects all Americans, Butler notes that the rise of unskilled labor threatens the livelihood of black Americans particularly:
“[Illegal immigration] disproportionately affects black Americans because still, in 2013, black Americans are at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum… Those entry level jobs and those lower-skilled jobs go to people who fit those profiles and they happen to most often be black Americans and poor Americans. We have enough poor people here already.”
While the immigration discussion largely revolves around economic considerations, the cultural implications cannot be ignored. Butler observes that other nations, including Mexico, enforce their immigration laws, but that America tolerates not only a continued breaking of our laws, but a routine refusal by many illegal immigrants to assimilate to American values and customs.
“We should enforce our immigration laws. Mexico enforces its immigration laws. If you, as a young person, were to go down and work into one of the Mexican resorts- and first of all, you have to have a work permit-… and you go down there on a work visa for the summer and you think, ‘This is a great job, a great hotel, I love the people; I’m going to stay down in Cancun and snorkel and scuba dive for a semester and I’ll just go back to school after fall quarter.’ Guess what? About October or November, they’re going to come and arrest you and put you in prison.”
Butler continued,
“It’s impolite to speak a foreign language when you’re in the presence of people who only speak one language and that primary language is English- not Spanish. These people are so presumptuous, they sued Whole Foods over speaking English in the workplace, because they wanted to communicate between themselves and that sounds very subversive to me… We are not getting people who want to be Americans, we are not getting people in this country who aspire to be Americans; we are getting people in this country who want to usurp the basic foundations of what has made our nation great.”
The Black American Leadership Alliance and its coalition partners are holding the DC March for Jobs rally on July 15th, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. at Freedom Plaza between 13th and 14th Streets on Pennsylvania Ave. Speakers will include Butler, former Congressmen Allan West, Congressman Mo Brooks, Kevin Jackson, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, C.L. Bryant, Leah Durant, William Gheen and other black conservative leaders.
The stated purpose of the rally is to call upon Congress to:
Recognize the devastating effects illegal immigration and amnesty have on low-skilled workers, particularly those in minority communities, enforce current immigration laws and fulfill their duties to the millions of Americans struggling to find work by opposing amnesty and supporting policies to reduce overall levels of legal and illegal immigration, and to protect American jobs from irresponsible immigration legislation.
For more information about the DC March for Jobs, please visit DCMarchforJobs.com or visit Charles-Butler.com
http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_33518.php
Left Behind by the Recovery, Inner City Teens Struggle to Find Jobs
Left Behind by the Recovery, Inner City Teens Struggle to Find Jobs
VIDEO:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/busin...nse_07-05.html
The jobs report for June 2013 found that among teens alone, the jobless rate was almost 25 percent -- more than three times the rate for the nation as a whole. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to young people struggling in their search for work in his report on the bleak job picture for inner city youth.
Transcript
JEFFREY BROWN: And we come back now to the unemployment picture, with a spotlight on one of the hardest-hit groups in recent years: the young.
Last month, the official jobless rate for teens alone was nearly 25 percent, more than three times the rate for the country as a whole. For perspective, that was the official unemployment rate for the entire population in 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression.
IN-DEPTH COVERAGE
NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at the particular challenges facing inner-city youth. It's part of his ongoing reporting “Making Sen$e of Financial News.”
ZAHQUIRA THOMAS, Seeking Work: It's really hard, because it's either, we have too many people, we don't have enough money, our budget's not right, you're not experienced enough, or it's just, we just don't want to hire you.
PAUL SOLMAN: 20-year-old Zahquira Thomas estimates that only 15 percent or so of her friends have jobs, but it's not for lack of trying.
CHRISTIAN RAMOS, Seeking Work: I have been looking everywhere for a job, everywhere.
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EXTENDED INTERVIEW: Jobless Rate for Poor Black Teen Dropouts? Try 95 Percent
PAUL SOLMAN: Christian Ramos is looking for restaurant or retail work.
How many hours a day do you spend looking for a job, I mean, calls, on the Internet, whatever?
CHRISTIAN RAMOS: Sometimes, like, the whole day.
PAUL SOLMAN: Nothing?
The Great Recession robbed jobs from everyone, but the unkindest cuts of all have been to America's youth.
ANDREW SUM, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University: The younger you are, the more likely it is that you have been thrown out of the labor market. High school students working today work at less than a 50 percent rate they did back in 2000, less than 50.
PAUL SOLMAN: Economist Andrew Sum has researched teen unemployment and found that the earlier you leave school, the dimmer your prospects.
Other handicaps: being male, African-American, a child with unemployed parents.
ANDREW SUM: You find low-income kids work at the lowest rates by far. When you combine them, take a young black high school dropout low-income male, you're talking five percent employment.
PAUL SOLMAN: Five percent?
ANDREW SUM: Five.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, a 95 percent jobless rate?
ANDREW SUM: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: Boston's Dorchester Youth Collaborative provides mentoring, job training and a safe haven to low-income youth like Christian Ramos, who never graduated high school, Zahquira Thomas, who has a GED, and 17-year-old George Huynh, a high school junior.
After his father's suicide a few years ago, and with his mother too ill to work, Huynh was forced onto welfare and food stamps. Last year, he beat the odds and landed a summer finance gig at John Hancock.
GEORGE HUYNH, Seeking Work: It taught me how to be a -- what they call a professional. It's how you treat adults when you see them, how to say good morning, how to be just a good worker.
PAUL SOLMAN: How to look them in the eye?
GEORGE HUYNH: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: So how did you used to be when you would be talking to somebody like me?
GEORGE HUYNH: Like this.
PAUL SOLMAN: Huynh has had more success than most here.
Wallace Vick, 19:
WALLACE VICK, Seeking Work: I went to Marshalls, T.J. Maxx. I had some interviews, but I haven't gotten any, like, went to the next step.
PAUL SOLMAN: Vick graduated high school. Christian Ramos dropped out in 11th grade.
CHRISTIAN RAMOS: I don't have no job experience. And it's hard trying to get a job with no resume or no work experience or any of that.
PAUL SOLMAN: In fact, it's hard for anyone these days. Even George Huynh didn't have anything lined up for this summer yet. And he thinks that's in part because, increasingly:
GEORGE HUYNH: Older people are taking the jobs that younger people should have.
PAUL SOLMAN: Yes, says Andrew Sum, that's exactly what employers report when they're interviewed.
ANDREW SUM: They have got choices about whom to hire, and teenagers just unfortunately are at the very back of that queue. Like, when we were talking to employers and I asked them on customer service, why were you hiring younger college grads, rather than teenagers? They said, for one reason, because I can.
PAUL SOLMAN: Emmett Folgert runs this center.
EMMETT FOLGERT, Managing Director, Dorchester Youth Collaborative: It's so competitive out there for a teenager to try to find a job because now they're competing with adults.
Also, you see those FedEx trucks and the UPS trucks going to everybody's house? Well, the biggest employer of teenagers are retail stores, and I don't know if you have been in lately to the retail stores. There aren't that many people working anymore, and there are much fewer customers. So kids are up against it in terms of finding jobs right now.
PAUL SOLMAN: Zahquira Thomas is applying to college, as do about two-thirds of young Americans with high school diplomas. But employers tell her, that's not enough.
ZAHQUIRA THOMAS: You don't have the experience we need. You don't have the degree we want you to have. You don't have the things that are required to have this job. So why don't you let me get the job so I can gain the experience that I should have to get a better job? But they don't think like that. They just -- you don't have the experience, so you're not welcome.
PAUL SOLMAN: And, says Andrew Sum, for your economic prospects as an adult, nothing is more important than having a job when you're young.
ANDREW SUM: There's a recent study that shows if you have spent six months unemployed as a teenager, that's going to carry forward for the next 10 years of your life, because you lose experience. Plus, you get the negative social behaviors. Young kids who don't work are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. Young woman who don't work are more likely to become pregnant.
CHRISTIAN RAMOS: If people can't get jobs, then they going to do what they got to do to get money, and that's either committing crimes or just -- that's it.
PAUL SOLMAN: Is that true, Wallace?
WALLACE VICK: There's a lot of people out here where that's why they're in jail, or that's why they're in the situation that they're in. No money, you don't eat, could be homeless. Can't live on the street. They got do whatever they got to do.
PAUL SOLMAN: Zahquira Thomas says her mother threw her out of the house before she hit her teens. Her response?
ZAHQUIRA THOMAS: I didn't do the right things at the age of 11, going to the stores, stealing whatever I need to eat, whatever, any means necessary I needed to take care of myself. I didn't have nobody to take care of me.
And in the daytime, I would see people I knew, go to their house, eat when they're eating, do things like that, but at the end of the day, at nighttime, I would sleep on the train, sleep in the park, sleep outside, sleep wherever I had a chance, because I had nowhere to go.
PAUL SOLMAN: Today, Thomas lives with her aunt, just finished an internship, and is looking for work, as are Wallace Vick and most of the kids he knows.
Roughly, how many of your friends have jobs?
WALLACE VICK: Not a lot, like -- probably like two or three of my friends.
PAUL SOLMAN: And Vick himself? We learned after our visit that he's facing armed robbery and assault charges. He's pleaded not guilty, but declined to discuss the situation.
Emmett Folgert tries hard to keep his jobless teens out of a trouble, but, he says, the competition is brutal.
EMMETT FOLGERT: We're not the only youth program in town. Gangs are a youth program. They organize kids, too. It's just a bad youth program.
PAUL SOLMAN: But a program that more than a few turn to when barely 25 percent of all teenagers in this country have a job of any kind at all -- a legal one, that is.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/busin...nse_07-05.html
