President Barack Obama is renewing his two-year amnesty for at least 550,000 younger illegal immigrants, and is rolling back education requirements and anti-fraud measures.
“Obama’s extension of his unilaterally-created immigration program not only violates his constitutional duty to enforce the law, but the changes he made to it proactively invite fraud and abuse,” said a June 5 statement by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House judiciary committee.
“By loosening the education standards, potentially millions more unlawful immigrants who do not meet even basic educational requirements will be able to apply for the [amnesty] program,” he said.
Goodlatte, however, did not criticize the administration for disadvantaging U.S. workers. In fact, he has pushed a House bill that would allow companies to employ 750,000 foreign workers during each year in the food sector. So far, his guest-worker bill has not moved because GOP leaders are blocking the Senate’s June immigration bill, which would double the annual inflow of almost 2 million immigrants and guest-workers.
Obama announced his amnesty program in June 2012, shortly before the 2012 election. Under the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” Obama directed officials to stop applying immigration law against younger illegals who don’t commit major crimes, and to award work permits to those illegals.
So far, the amnesty has been used by at least 520,000 illegals to win two-year residency and work permits. That quantity of foreign workers is more than all jobs created in April and May.
Obama’s renewed amnesty announcement comes at the start of summer, when roughly 4 million Americans graduate from high-schools or colleges and search for decent jobs.
Younger Americans are the least likely to be be employed in the slack economy, partly because they face competition from each other, plus roughly 600,000 working-age immigrants and 800,000 guest-workers each year.
The inflow has added 10 million guest workers and 12 million immigrants to the economy from 2000 to 2013.
Nationally, the percentage of the 156 million Americans aged 16 to 65 with full-time jobs has dropped to 62.8 percent. That’s down from 65.7 percent in 2009. Today’s level is the same as in 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president and relatively few women chose to work.
For more than two decades, the immigration-boosted surplus of labor in the economy has frozen Americans’ wages and boosted investors’ profits to record highs. The trend shrinks the GOP-leaning middle-class and expands the number of Democratic-leaning people dependent on government.
Obama’s decision to renew his two-year DACA amnesty will likely add to the 520,000 young illegal immigrants who were given work permits over the last two years, partly because many additional younger illegals will have quit or graduated from high school during the two-year period.
A 2012 estimate by the Migration Policy Institute says 1.76 million illegals could get work permits from Obama’s DACA amnesty. The vast majority, roughly 85 percent, may only have a high-school education.
In addition to DACA, the administration has announced last month that it will boost the routine annual inflow of roughly 800,000 guest-workers by allowing 100,000 spouses of guest-workers to take jobs.
Most of the guest workers stay for less than a year, but many stay for several years.
The multi-year guest workers are mostly college graduates, who form a resident population of at least 900,000 foreign university-trained employees. They compete for the skilled jobs sought by the roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with degrees in health-care, business, education, technology and architecture each year.
This week, the administration also continued to release illegals who are crossing the border with children. So far, at least 60,000 have crossed, and up 200,000 young illegals are expected to cross the border between October 2013 and October 2015.
The administration also announced plans to hire 100 lawyers to help the wave of illegals settle in the United States. Many of the illegals will join the population of roughly 6 million working-age low-skill illegal immigrants and will compete directly and indirectly against Americans for lower-skilled jobs.
Almost 12 million illegal immigrants are already living in the United States.
Roughly 8 million work in regular or irregular jobs, including roughly 2 million working in skilled jobs.