[StBernard] Hire Americans First!

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - September 13, 2009

Hire Americans First!
by Pat Buchanan

September's unemployment figures were not only disappoint-
ing -- they were grim. For the 21st straight month, 
Americans lost jobs. Fifteen million are out of work -- 
5 million for more than six months. 

But as The Washington Times asserts, "America's jobless 
crisis is much worse than the 9.8 percent unemployment 
rate." 

The U.S. economy actually lost 785,000 jobs in September, 
which should have pushed the 9.7 percent August unemploy-
ment figure far higher than just 0.1 percent to 9.8 
percent. 

What kept the increase to 0.1 percent?

Over 800,000 people quit the labor force in September. They 
packed it in. They stopped looking for work. That is six 
times the number who quit looking in August and five times 
the monthly average of those who have given up the search 
for work in the year since Lehman Brothers died. 

Adding to the near 15 million unemployed those who have 
given up looking for work and those who have taken low-
paying part-time jobs, the Times estimates the true employ-
ment rate at 17 percent. We used to call that a depression.

Yet, with nearly 25 million Americans unemployed, or no 
longer looking for work, or in low-wage part-time jobs, 
8.5 million U.S. jobs are believed to be held by illegal 
aliens who broke into the country or overstayed their 
visas. 

Why is this not a matter of national outrage?

For every job opening in the country, there are six 
unemployed Americans. With this surplus of idle labor 
and shortage of jobs, the men who do the hiring are in 
the catbird's seat. They can cut wages in the knowledge 
that desperate Americans will have to accept what is 
offered. 

Comes the rote response: Immigrants and illegal aliens 
only take jobs Americans do not want and will not do. 
But, last month, a front-page article in USA Today 
demolished that argument. 

When a 2006 raid on six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants 
rounded up 1,200 illegal aliens, 10 percent of the work-
force, Swift was up and running at full staff within 
months. How? Native-born Americans in the hundreds came 
out and took the jobs.

Says Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain, "Whenever 
there's an immigration raid, you find white, black and 
legal immigrant labor lining up to do these jobs Americans 
will supposedly not do." 

At one of the Swift plants out West, a workforce that had 
been 90 percent Hispanic, legal and illegal, before the 
raids is now a mixture of white Americans and Hispanic-
Americans. Illegal aliens lost the jobs, and American 
citizens got them. 

A House of Raeford Farms plant in North Carolina that 
was more than 80 percent Hispanic before a federal 
investigation now has a workforce 70 percent African-
American. 

Illegal aliens gravitate to jobs in construction, farming, 
fishing and forestry. Yet native-born Americans outnumber 
immigrants three to one in construction and two to one in 
farming, fishing and forestry, according to Steve Camarota 
of the Center for Immigration Studies. Illegals are thus 
taking jobs Americans not only will do, but Americans are 
doing. 

The crackdown on businesses that hire illegals that has 
only just begun is not only enforcing federal law, but 
ending the exploitation of illegal aliens and opening up 
jobs for Americans -- black, white, Asian and Hispanic 
alike. 

Since the 1960s, there has been a bitter battle -- breaking 
down along ideological and racial, ethnic and gender lines 
-- over affirmative action, quotas, preferential hiring, 
promotions and admissions to college and graduate schools, 
and contract set-asides. 

Conservatives have insisted that if discrimination is 
wrong, it is not made right by making white males the 
victims and women and minorities the beneficiaries. 
Liberals argue that to advance economic equality and 
ethnic diversity, and compensate for past injustices, 
temporary discrimination against white males is an 
unfortunate necessity. 

White fireman like Frank Ricci must be denied promotions 
they have won in fair competition, as African-Americans 
were not among those who passed the tests. 

As votes on referenda in California, Washington and 
Michigan have shown, the American people reject affirmative 
action and preferences in hiring, promotions and admissions 
that are based on race, ethnicity or gender. 

Americans believe no discrimination should mean no 
discrimination. 

But there is a form of discrimination, a form of 
preferential treatment, which left and right, it would 
seem, may both support. It is based not on color or creed, 
but on nationality and citizenship. 

If jobs are available in the United States, Americans 
should go to the front of the line to get them, ahead of 
illegal aliens. And as there are six Americans out of work 
for every job opening, it is time to call a moratorium on 
immigration. Why are we bringing into the United States 
over a million legal immigrants a year to compete for 
jobs against 15 million to 25 million Americans who can't 
find work or full-time jobs to take care of their families?

Who is America for -- if not for Americans first?