Istook’s Insights: New jobs go to immigrants, Congress gave Obama a blank check on Iran, Bureaucrats neglect veterans

Most new American jobs are going to foreigners.

Each month the U.S. Labor Department issues lengthy reports about employment changes, but the media rarely report about how many jobs go to native-born American workers and how many go to foreign-born workers.

The government has tracked that number since 2007. Since then, the total number of Americans with jobs has increased by 2.4 million. 

Meanwhile, foreign-born workers gained 2.55 Million jobs.

Who do they count as foreign-born? That includes legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary workers, students, and of course undocumented immigrants. They don’t keep separate numbers for those.

The number of Americans in the work force is more than five times greater than the number of foreign-born workers. 

Measured on a per capita basis, foreign-born workers are getting jobs in the USA six times as fast as American workers.

People need to know about this — and do something about it.

Elsewhere in the news, blame Congress for the awful nuclear deal with Iran.

President Obama’s deal with Iran will stand because at least 34 Senators support it.

Even if 66 Senators and all 435 House members vote against the deal, Obama’s wins because 34 Senators uphold his possible veto.

This is backwards. The Constitution says treaties require approval by two-thirds of the Senate.

The secret is that Congress voted in May that any deal with Iran could go into effect with or without Congress’ approval. 

This September’s vote will be meaningless. 

Lawmakers will proclaim they voted against the plan, not mentioning they already gave Obama the OK to do as he pleased.

That gimmick was adopted by 98 to 1 in the Senate and 400 to 25 in the House. Only Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, 19 House Republicans and six House Democrats opposed this charade. Good for them. Shame on all the others.

And: Bumbling bureaucrats don’t know if veterans are dead or alive.

The Veterans Administration is one of Washington’s biggest bureaucratic messes. It has over 300,000 employees. By coincidence, that matches the 300,000 dead people that VA claim it is working to enroll in health care.

But it’s only about a third of the 860,000 case backlog that the Inspector General says VA has accumulated. Many of them will die before the agency acts on their claim — adding more to the 300,000 dead people already stuck in their computers.

The audit report notes that crooks may try to steal those identities, since the VA treats the people as though they still were alive.

Meantime, the agency has erased over 10,000 applications from veterans who are very much alive.

America has 22 Million veterans. They deserve better than to have their health care handled by bumbling bureaucrats.