Senate Stimulus Bill Would Provide 300,000 Jobs for Illegal Immigrants

Analyst Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has released an estimate that the stimulus bill on the Senate floor would provide construction jobs to roughly 300,000 illegal aliens.

A Heritage Foundation release states that the travesty could be largely avoided if the Senate would adopt an amendment similar to one that passed the House requiring all recipients of stimulus money to use the E-Verify system.

Roy Beck, CEO of NumbersUSA says:

Sounds crazy but that is just business as usual.

While hundreds of thousands of American construction workers are unemployed, businesses across America continue to employ illegal aliens and will be allowed to use Stimulus money to hire hundreds of thousands more illegal aliens.

The Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are lobbying the Senate to ensure that businesses can use Stimulus money to hire illegal aliens.

Nearly every national Hispanic advocacy group is lobbying the Senate to ensure that illegal aliens have the same access to Stimulus jobs as unemployed Hispanic American citizens.

The key points of Rector's analysis are:

No. 1: If enacted, the Senate stimulus bill would fund over $100 billion in new government construction projects with the goal of providing additional jobs to unemployed Americans.

No. 2: Government estimates show that under current verification procedures, about one out of every seven persons hired to work in construction is an illegal alien.

No. 3: The Senate bill would provide roughly $104 billion in funding for a variety of construction projects. Normal government estimates indicate that each $1 billion spent on construction will create around 19,500 construction jobs, each lasting a year. Thus, $104 billion in funding in construction projects would ostensibly create construction-related jobs for about 2.04 million workers over several years.

No. 4: If the stimulus bill does not have additional requirements for verification, the normal ratio of illegal alien hiring will prevail. Applying the one in seven ratio to 2.04 million results in about 300,000 of those jobs going to illegal aliens.

The Heritage release states:

... if the current Senate bill were to become law without language requiring contractor use of E-Verify, the inevitable result would be billions in federal funds spent to employ illegal immigrants.

E-Verify is a very effective mechanism for determining the legal status of potential workers. E-Verify is inexpensive for employers to use, costing between $4 and $20 for each employee screened. E-Verify is in wide use; currently about one in 10 new hires in the U.S. economy are screened through the E-Verify system.

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Tags: American jobs, jobs, e-verify, economic stimulus, Heritage Foundation, illegal aliens, illegal workers, NumbersUSA To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!