Feb 17 2009
Is Obama’s Stimulus Plan Un-American?
President Obama signed the economic stimulus package today, making it the largest government spending bill in our nation’s history. I think this is a bad idea personally but that’s not the point I am trying to make today. I heard a very interesting piece of information that many people might not know about the stimulus bill that Obama signed.
The stimulus bill that Obama signed today does not require workers who get jobs due to the stimulus funds to be American citizens. Before this bill became law, the House and Senate were debating if E-Verify should be included in the bill. The House wanted the E-verify measure to be included in the bill, while the Senate did not.
This requirement was ultimately left out of the stimulus bill. I find incomprehensible if you ask me. The main point of this whole entire bill is to put Americans “back to work” right? Why would they eliminate a program that is 97% accurate in determining who is and who isn’t a citizen of this country? http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9127982&intsrc=news_ts_head
Without this program I believe the risk of hiring people that are not from this country will jump expotentionally. The illegal workers that will eventually be hired are not going to spend the money here and support the American economy. The money will end up overseas supporting other economies, which will add to the drain on our economy. I say this because the amount of money being spent here is going to be less than what it has to be. This transfer of wealth is not good for our country. Money that is made here should be spent here period. This recession will be deeper and longer than it should because money is being sent outside our borders.
How to Fix Problem:
Since the the Federal government will not enforce its own laws, what can be done to solve this dilemma? I think that the states can take things into their own hands. For one states can start by taxing remittances sent to other countries.
This could provide revenue for cash strapped state governments to provide vital services such police protection and fire fighting. The tax would also serve as a dis-incentive to send money abroad because of the tax penalty. The more money spent here the better our economy will be in the long run.
The second option would be to enforce E-Verify anyway. Giving jobs to American citizens was the intention of the bill in the first place. Enforcing a law already on the books will ensure that jobs go to people that are lawfully allowed to be here. Here is a article that shows how much money is was sent from the United States to countries in South America in 2007/2008. http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1418521
