Wisconsin's GOP congressional delegation refuse to help unemployed Americans

Dave Gorak
Madison Immigration Policy Examiner
December 7, 2011

Why is Wisconsin's Republican delegation not demanding that the hypocritical House Speaker John Boehner bring the Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 2885) to the House floor, where it is expected to pass easily and start the process of putting Americans back to work? On Friday, Dec. 2, Boehner told House Republicans to focus on "jobs, jobs, jobs." So? How about Boehner & Co. putting their money where their mouths are?

In addition to ending the ban on allowing employers to use E-Verify to screen all their employees and not just new hires, H.R. 2885 also would permanently close the ID theft loophole through which many illegal aliens enter our workforce and steal jobs from Americans. The latter provision knocks the legs out from under those critics who have falsely charged that the program is "riddled with errors."

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are 7 million illegals working in the construction, manufacturing, transportation, and service and hospitality industries. (The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in a 2009 report said more than 70 percent of these jobs are already being done by Americans.) This bill would result in their firing so that their jobs could be given to the nation's long-suffering unemployed.

Thus far, James Sensenbrenner (5th) is the only member of our delegation to cosponsor H.R. 2885; Paul Ryan (1st), who refuses to explain his silence, is an especially curious case because in an earlier Congress he signed a discharge petition to force then Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring an E-Verify bill to the floor for a vote. The other indifferent Republicans in our delegation are Tom Petri (6th), Sean P. Duffy (7th), and Reid Ribble (8th)

These Republicans must be pressured to explain why they are ignoring the suffering of 22 million unemployed/underemployed citizens and supporting the Obama administsration's decision to allow 7 million illegal aliens to keep their jobs and know the dignity and satisfaction of bring home regular paychecks.

Pew estimates that the illegal population in Wisconsin, which has a 7.7 percent unemployment rate, to be about 100,000 people, 65,000 of them in the state's workforce.

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