More Job Losses Ahead, Says Forecast

            The United States lost 2.6 million jobs last year, and the business research firm Conference Board projects that two million more may be lost this year. The official unemployment figure now stands at 7.2. That, however, may be a gross understatement of how bad joblessness has become. Statistician John Williams maintains that the government has changed the standards of measuring over the years to minimize the number of people out of work.

            One example was the decision of the Clinton Administration not to count people who have given up looking for work as being unemployed. Williams affirms that if the government still used the methodology it used in 1980, the official unemployment rate today would be 17.5 percent. Williams has published his findings on www.shadowstats.com.  

            With so many Americans out of work, one would think that the leaders of business and government would consider a reduction of our unprecedented levels of legal immigration which annually admits in 1.6 million permanent and temporary workers to compete with American job-seekers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Just recently computer mogul Bill Gates spoke before Congress pleading for more foreign workers for his industry.

            Commenting on Gates’ activity, syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts observed, “According to Gates, there is a shortage of American workers despite a 17.5 percent unemployment. I personally know American computer engineers, both seasoned and recent graduates, who cannot find jobs. What Gates and American corporations want is cheap labor, in effect indentured servants, unprotected people who don’t demand an American standard of living. . . .  If Congress expands the work visas as U.S. unemployment mounts, we will have one more piece of evidence that ‘our’ representatives have no sympathy for the American people.”  

            Just as clueless was outgoing President George Bush who criticized those who opposed his support for mass immigration and his so-called “reform” plan to give amnesty (legal status) to illegal aliens. Said Bush, “We should be open-minded about big issues like immigration reform, because if we’re viewed as anti-somebody—in other words, if the party is viewed as anti-immigrant—then another fellow may say, well, if they’re against the immigrant, they may be against me.”

            Does it occur to our soon-to-be former president that his viewpoint is blatantly against American workers? Evidently not. Bush and so many others of America’s elite classes are far too removed from economic difficulties to be “open minded” about what is happening to their fellow citizens.