Analyst's note: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is in fact working with Mr. Obama to bring immigrants living in the country illegally to "come out of the shadows" to receive a probationary work permit ... at the expense of real Americans. Mr. Ryan also needs to be sent back home ... ASAP. Come on Wisconsin, you can do better than this for America.
****
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) confirmed with MSNBC that he and the GOP House leadership are advancing an immigration plan that totally disregards the struggles of the 20 million Americans who want a full-time job but can't find one, including about 10 million who are less educated and compete the most directly with foreign workers.
Ryan's focus is all on citizenship. That is, he seems to think that opposition to mass amnesty is almost totally about giving citizenship to millions of foreign citizens who either violated the terms of their visitor visas or crossed the border illegally.
So, according to The Hill newspaper today, Ryan and other House GOP leaders are eager to immediately give millions of foreign citizens work permits to compete directly with struggling American workers in the legal labor market, and they believe the American public will accept this as a good thing because the illegal aliens will have to wait a long time to get citizenship.
This is what The Hill reported about the House Republican leaders' principles:
Ryan said the principles would outline a bill that would allow immigrants living in the country illegally to "come out of the shadows" to receive a probationary work permit.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) confirmed on Wednesday that the House GOP's principles on immigration reform would endorse giving legal status to undocumented immigrants.
Ryan reiterated there would be no "special" pathway to citizenship for those immigrants, but said they would be able to apply for a green card after a long set of requirement were met. He did not, however, provide a timeline. The former vice presidential candidate said the principles would also outline a probationary work status those illegal immigrants would be initially defined under until the border is secure and a host of other requirements are satisfied.
"That is the kind of broad brush here -- that is the kind of process we envision that is not a special pathway to citizenship, and it is not automatically, in anyway, giving an undocumented immigrant citizenship," he said on MSNBC.
I have no reason to doubt that Ryan believes his own press releases that he has a heart for the working men and women of America.
But if he actually has a heart for American workers, he certainly doesn't have a brain for them.
Except for field agriculture where only about 5% of illegal aliens work, the rest of these unauthorized foreign visitors are holding jobs in construction, manufacturing and service occupations where millions of Americans are unsuccessfully seeking jobs.
Ryan has spent his whole career inside and outside government advocating for loose globalized labor markets that when they have occurred throughout U.S. history have retarded the growth in wages of American workers.
Ryan's latest comments indicate that his highest priority is to help the employers who hire illegal aliens:
Ryan said the principles would outline a bill that would allow immigrants living in the country illegally to "come out of the shadows" to receive a probationary work permit.
That would allow all the unscrupulous employers to come out from under the shadow of their illegal activities by legalizing their greedy efforts to hold down the wages of Americans.
-- ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA bears no responsibility for where our blogs may be republished or reposted.
