Does President Bush mean it when he says he wants an “immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee”?

In a letter to the Los Angeles Times published this morning, Doug Ellice of Bethesda, Md., examines the implications of such a policy:

When people say, “match willing workers with willing employers, as long as American workers honestly cannot or do not want to fill the jobs,” can they imagine how many people from other hemispheres might want to apply?

If anyone wants to hire hard-working poor people who, in addition, speak English, the Philippines can send 1 million or 2 million next Friday.

And if language is not required, Chinese workers can do to Mexican workers in our job market the same damage that Chinese manufacturers are doing to Mexican manufacturers in their respective factories.

As Phyllis Schlafly has noted, Bush hasn’t spoken of a limit to the number of “willing employees.” Can anyone doubt that she is right when she says that “up to 5 billion people in the world might want to be ‘willing employees’ in the United States”?

Update: Over at the Tar Pit, Sabertooth has a good post on this. He concludes:

[T]he primary consideration as to how many guest workers might be admitted into the country appears to be the willingness of the employers and their foreign-born employees to match up the ability of the program “to fulfill the employers’ needs.”

As the President’s position currently stands, that means that every new job created in America could be offered at minimum wage, and if no American can be found to accept the eroded wage, the job would be up for grabs to any foreign guest worker who’s willing.

comments (0)   trackbacks (1)