What Could Obama Say on Thursday to Create Jobs?

Let me take a stab at it. How about:

"I Quit!"

The Sliming of Amercian Conservatism by US Left Wing Media

…But You Will Never Hear a Peep About Black Churches!

The slandering of the American conservative movement has begun

By Tim Stanley TelegraphUS politics Last updated: September 5th, 2011

The slandering of the conservative movement has begun. For the past month, American newspapers have been awash with stories about the religion of various Republican presidential candidates. Michele Bachmann was portrayed in the New Yorker as a fanatical wingnut. Like Rick Perry, she has been labelled a follower of Dominionism – the belief that God gave Christians authority over all the Earth. Writing for the Daily Beast, Michelle Golberg compared Dominionism to fundamentalist Islam and warned that the GOP was engaged in an “all-out assault” on the separation of church and state. This Sunday, the liberal economist Paul Krugman’s grand thesis that the Republicans are now the “anti-science” party was republished in The Observer. By questioning evolution and global warming, Krugman says, the GOP has lost its right to rule.

Krugman’s article is a good example of what’s wrong with this hogwash reporting. It is true that Rick Perry called evolution “just a theory”, but who cares? He’s running to be President of the United States, not an eighth grade biology teacher. He will have no influence over what textbooks schools buy or what is taught in classrooms. His views on evolution are as relevant to the presidential race as the price of petrol in Timbuktu. The fact that they are shared by millions of Americans has done nothing to dent the country’s advances in science and technology. Nor are they any more irrational than the belief that Jesus walked on water or turned water into wine. Gospel stories are not only believed by many religious liberals, they are frequently quoted by Democratic presidential candidates. By the way, evolution is a theory. It is a theory constructed from individual scraps of evidence – a way of amalgamating observations into a grand design. Ergo: whenever the US deficit goes up, Paul Krugman calls for more spending – therefore we might theorise that he’s a drooling idiot. Remember: that’s just a theory, not a fact.

The assault on Dominionism is equally pernicious. In an expose piece in the New York Times, Bill Keller tells us that “I care a lot if a candidate is going to be a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed.” He trots out the usual innuendos about evangelical Christians (they love slavery and hate evolution, and every church picnic climaxes in the ritual beheading of a transvestite). But he sneakily adds, “Neither Bachmann nor Perry has, as far as I know, pledged allegiance to the Dominionists.” Exactly. But doesn’t it make life more interesting to infer that they have?

Let’s imagine for a moment that Bachmann and Perry are Dominionists. Compare that wild and crazy faith with those held by two Democrats. Hank Johnson is the congressman from DeKalb County in Georgia and he’s a Buddhist. Specifically, he’s a follower of Daishonin Buddhism. Adherents gather regularly in large groups to sit cross-legged and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo at a portable shrine. The idea is that if they say these divine words while visualising their deepest desires, they’ll get what they’ve always wanted. Like evolution, it’s just a theory – but it’s much, much more cool.

Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is a Mormon. Many readers probably won’t know that because the mainstream media oddly doesn’t talk about it. It’s okay to call Mitt Romney a polytheist with twelve wives, but Reid is untouchable because he’s a Democrat. And yet it’s reasonable to theorise that the leader of the Senate wears the magic underwear associated with Mormonism. Is his belief that Jesus walked on American soil, anti-science? Geographers and historians would probably object.

Democratic presidential candidates regularly visit black churches, Nancy Pelosi has invoked her Catholicism so many times you might think she was a nun, and Barack Obama was married by a pastor who actively hates America. Yet Krugman suggests that only the GOP uses and abuses religion every election. More sickening is the innuendo that there is a uniquely violent subtext to conservative faith, as if every Right-winger wants to shoot an abortionist. There is no comparison between fundamentalist Islam and Dominionism: one kills and the other doesn’t. The conflation of the two is ugly and deceitful.

Obama has a Profound Resistance to the Constitution’s Separation of Powers

DECKER: Beware Obama’s executive fiat

White House plans to circumvent Congress to spend more

By Brett M. Decker

-

The Washington Times

Friday, September 2, 2011

It’s  official: President Obama is presiding over the worst era of unemployment in U.S. history since this nation was embroiled in World War II. On Friday, it was announced zero net jobs were created nationwide in the whole month of August. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis stammered, “I do believe that we’re going in the right direction, but we need cooperation and it begins with members of the House and the Senate agreeing to do something now.” Going in the right direction? It’s a perfect admission of the cluelessness of this White House that the head of the Labor Department thinks zero new jobs and a permanent unemployment rate above 9 percent mean the country is headed the right way.

The second half of the secretary’s statement is important too and delivers an important warning. Ms. Solis passed the buck for America’s doldrums and blamed our dire fiscal situation on congressional inaction. Congress must “do something now,” she insisted. Of course, legislative consensus is unlikely because the Senate is controlled by liberal Democrats who are pushing more deficit spending, while the House is run by conservative Republicans dedicated to cutting spending and taxes to jumpstart private-sector growth. This logjam on Capitol Hill tempts the executive branch to take supra-constitutional action. In other words, since the Senate and House of Representatives can’t get their act together and agree on anything, the president will have to step in and take extraordinary action himself. This spin will be used as pretext for Mr. Obama to overreach his power to issue executive orders that will accomplish only one thing: waste more taxpayer money that will do more long-term damage to the economy.

In White House talking points leaked to The Washington Times by an executive-branch employee, administration officials are told what to say to the press and the public about Mr. Obama’s Sept. 8 speech to a Joint Session of Congress. The document is devoid of specifics, which will be proclaimed from the podium on Thursday, but it does say that ideas announced to “provide economic security for the middle class … will be both legislative and executive actions.” The key words are the last two: executive actions. This is a tacit acknowledgment that the president is planning to take unilateral action to force through what he cannot get a divided Congress to do.

Mr. Obama has a profound resistance to the Constitution’s separation of powers, whereby the legislature is the lawmaking body and the executive branch implements the laws passed on the other side of Pennsylvania Ave. He’s overstepped his bounds on numerous issues already, ignoring the law to further his liberal agenda through federal agencies. Oppressive environmental regulations against businesses and property owners jump to mind.

“We need to lock arms, reach across the aisle and start acting as one community,” the kumbaya White House marching orders say. Propaganda aside, a panicking Obama administration will be less collaborative than ever in the days ahead.

Brett M. Decker is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. He is coauthor of the forthcoming book “Bowing to Beijing” (Regnery, November 2011).

Small businesses account for 40% of patents issued, but only 4% of federal R&D funding

Commentary -- How not to create jobs: The story of S. 493

Journal Times

Jonathan Pearl | Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:06 pm 

If the brinksmanship of the past few months is any indication, the last thing on politicians' minds is actually clearing the decks for innovative entrepreneurs to create new businesses, jobs and commerce. With more than 112,000 small employers in Wisconsin accounting for more than 52 percent of private-sector jobs and a whopping 97.9 percent of all state employers, you'd think our voice would be louder and clearer.

Yet efforts to support small business creation and job growth are too often silenced in the din of politics. The remarkable fact is that most state and federal plans intended to create jobs are woefully misdirected - biased toward producing profits for middlemen and investors rather than efficiently creating new businesses and jobs. Let me explain: If a contract goes to a startup or small company, the entire amount can be spent to create jobs and innovations. If the funds go to supplement investment in companies, investors reasonably enough expect to skim off a profit, leaving a reduced portion of funds to support jobs and innovations.

In March of this year, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu introduced a bill (S.493) years in the making and culminating from a Herculean effort to address the concerns of multiple constituencies. The bill enjoyed bipartisan support with eight co-sponsors: three Republicans and five Democrats. It was blessed by small business organizations, federal agencies, and investor outfits as an acceptable compromise. S.493 had one simple objective: to extend the SBIR and STTR programs which direct a small percentage of federal R&D spending toward small businesses and partnerships with universities.

The costs are negligible: the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates administering the program at a mere $30 million per year, to award more than $2 billion in contracts and grants to America's small businesses. In effect it is budget neutral: They are not separate line items, only a percentage of whatever funds are budgeted to federal agencies.

The program has been around since 1982, has founded or expanded some 28,000 businesses, many of which became major employers like Qualcomm with 17,500 employees. America's small businesses account for nearly 40 percent of patents issued, but receive a mere 4 percent of the federal R&D funding. For every $400k of taxpayer money, small businesses produce one patent. Universities in contrast require nearly $15 million of federal subsidies for every patent issued.

In terms of efficient use of funds, small businesses produce results!

Unfortunately, before a full vote in the Senate, at least 150 mostly unrelated amendments were proposed to S.493. In May, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tabled it. The leadership of the House Small Business Committee is supporting instead H.R. 1425, a bill that would radically change SBIR/STTR for the worse. The House version, as it stands, would in effect destroy these programs, shifting the focus from seeding innovative job-creating research into a scheme to subsidize Wall Street hedge funds, private equity and venture capital, concentrating our bets in a few mostly mature companies that have already been identified by investors as potential cash cows.

Here are a few of the changes that are proposed:

-- Current law requires a short-term, low-budget Phase I for all awardees to prove the feasibility of an innovation before a large outlay of taxpayer funds; H.R. 1425 does away with this requirement, allowing untested ideas to receive $1 million or more right from the start, reducing the number of new ideas that get tested.

-- Currently, SBIR/STTR contracts and grants are reserved for American small businesses, owned and controlled by individuals, permitting 100 percent of the funds to go directly to the company for jobs, benefits and research; H.R. 1425 does away with the small business requirements, transforming the programs into subsidies for hedge funds, private equity and venture capital.

-- Companies with fewer than 500 employees employ about 40 percent of the nation's scientists and engineers, but receive only 4 percent of federal funding; H.R. 1425 would further distort this situation, removing the opportunity for great ideas to be taken to market.

Why on Earth would we dilute a program that has created hundreds of thousands of Main Street jobs to subsidize the profits of Wall Street money managers? Why would we radically alter a cost-effective, proven job creator?

A vote on H.R. 1425 is expected Sept. 12. The House leadership must support a better bill. At the very least, they should accept the compromises already achieved in S.493. A better bill means a stronger economy for us all.

Dr. Jonathan Pearl is the president and chief scientist of Perceptral Scientific in Racine. Perceptral was founded in 2008, has received four SBIR awards amounting to nearly $970,000 from the Department of Defense to support innovative research and development of new speech and sound technologies and currently employs eight.

Read more: http://www.journaltimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_3a8510ce-d365-11e0-a1c1-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Wxmb42KJ

Pot Heads Are Where It's At

Is there a doper anywhere that did not start with pot? I wonder how the productivity works out for a worker that shows up to work after having done bazooka size bong hits? We heard the "high minded" (I could not resist that low hanging fruit) civil libertarian blah-blah-blah,blah-blah.

Now let's get real and check it out for how it really is.

It Will Never Fail To Fuck You Up

EU UhOh in the Making?

Central bank flight to Federal Reserve safety tops Lehman crisis

A key warning signal of global financial stress has shot above the extreme levels seen at the height of the Lehman crisis in 2008. - TELEGRAPH

Reverse Purchase Agreements from foreign official and international accounts at the US Federal Reserve. 

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

8:31PM BST 01 Sep 2011

Central banks and official bodies have parked record sums of dollars at the US Federal Reserve for safe-keeping, indicating a clear loss of trust in commercial banks.
Data from the St Louis Fed shows that reserve funds from "official foreign accounts" have doubled since the start of the year, with a dramatic surge since the end of July when the eurozone debt crisis spread to Italy and Spain.
"This shows a pervasive loss of confidence in the European banking system," said Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors. "Central banks are worried about the security of their deposits so they are placing the money with the Fed."
These dollar accounts are just over $100bn (£62bn) and are small beer compared to the vast sums invested in bonds as foreign reserve holdings. Yet they serve as stress indicator, reflecting the operating decisions of the world's top insiders.
The dollar data refers specifically to reverse repurchase agreements.

Lars Tranberg from Danske Bank said European banks are reduced to borrowing dollar funds for "a week at a time" rather than the usual six to 12 months. "This closely resembles what happened in late 2008, though the difference this time is that the major central banks have dollar swap lines in place. If the dollar funding markets completely freeze up, the European Central Bank can act as a backstop."
Mr Tranberg said dollar deposits of US banks have increased by $400bn since mid-June, mostly offset by dollar reductions in Europe. "It is clear that the problem lies with the European banks. The credit default swaps on these banks are very high and provide a risk gauge."
The Bank for International Settlements says European and British banks have a dollar "funding gap" of up to $1.8 trillion stemming from global expansion during the boom that relies on dollar financing and has to be rolled over. This is not normally a problem but funding can seize up in a crisis.
European officials hotly disputed claims in a leaked document from International Monetary Fund claiming that a realistic "mark-to-market" of Italian, Spanish, Greek, Irish, Portuguese and Belgian sovereign debt would reduce the tangible equity of Europe's banks by €200bn (£176bn).
"French banks passed stress tests which were extremely tough less than a month ago: there is no cause for worry," said Valerie Pecresse, France's budget minister.
"It is ill advised to provoke alarm," said Michael Kummer, head of Germany's BdB bank federation.
The IMF was attacked as a Cassandra when it warned early in the credit crisis that debt write-downs would reach $600bn, yet losses have since reached $2.1 trillion.
European banks are still struggling to access America's $7 trillion money market funds. Fitch Ratings said last week that Spanish and Italian banks have been cut off altogether.
Investors do not fully believe EU pledges that the 21pc "haircut" agreed for private holders of Greek debt is the end of the story, or will remain confined to Greece, as the second Greek rescue is already unravelling. A Greek parliament report concluded that deep recession is pushing the country into a downward spiral, causing debt dynamics to fly "out of control". Public debt will reach 172pc of GDP next year.
Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon said Germany, Holland, and Finland may balk at a third rescue in the current tetchy mood, implying bigger haircuts instead. That will set a precedent for Portugal, and others. Until markets can see an end to the blood-letting, Europe's banks will remain untouchables.

Chairman Martin on The Mall

The Martin Luther King Monument is Stalinesque with a strong reference of something from the Upper Nile with a hint of a Sphinx like behind. It is awful. It was designed and carved in China. Why?


Edward Rothstein in the New York Times.  

"As for the portrait of Dr. King, it seems to have been based on a photograph by Bob Fitch that shows him with crossed arms, engrossed in thought. But here, the crossing of arms is a sign of something else: determination, perhaps. Or command. Monumental, not human.
"And the mound’s isolation from any other tall objects, its enormity and Dr. King’s posture all conspire to make him seem an authoritarian figure, emerging full-grown from the rock’s chiseled surface, at one with the ancient forces of nature, seeming to claim their authority as his. You don’t come here to commune with him, let alone to attend to the ideas the memorial’s Web site insists are latent here: “democracy, justice, hope and love.” You come to tilt your head back and follow; he, clearly, has his mind elsewhere.
"The failure may also have a larger cause. Many recent memorials proliferating along the Mall have trivialized or mischaracterized their subjects. The World War II memorial seems almost phony, with its artificial allusions to antiquity; the Roosevelt Memorial diminishes that president and even implies that he was a pacifist (featuring his words “I hate war”) instead of a wartime leader responsible for building up the “arsenal of democracy.” Why shouldn’t King, too, be misread -- turning the minister into a warrior or a ruler, as if caricaturing or trying too hard to resemble his company on the Mall?"

We Should Have Listened to Jimmy Carter in 1977 on Illegal Aliens

Undocumented Aliens Message to the Congress. August 4, 1977

To the Congress of the United States:

I am proposing to Congress today a set of actions to help markedly reduce the increasing flow of undocumented aliens in this country and to regulate the presence of the millions of undocumented aliens already here.

These proposed actions are based on the results of a thorough Cabinet-level study and on the groundwork which has been laid, since the beginning of the decade, by Congressmen Rodino and Eilberg and Senators Eastland and Kennedy. These actions will:

• Make unlawful the hiring of undocumented aliens, with enforcement by the Justice Department against those employers who engage in a "pattern or practice" of such hiring. Penalties would be civil--injunctions and fines of $1000 per undocumented alien hired. Criminal penalties could be imposed by the courts against employers violating injunctions. Moreover, employers, and others, receiving compensation for knowingly assisting an undocumented alien obtain or retain a job would also be subject to criminal penalties.

• Increase significantly the enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Federal Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, targeted to areas where heavy undocumented alien hiring occur.

• Adjust the immigration status of undocumented aliens who have resided in the U.S. continuously from before January 1, 1970 to the present and who apply with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for permanent resident alien status; create a new immigration category of temporary resident alien for undocumented aliens who have resided in the U.S. continuously prior to January 1, 1977; make no status change and enforce the immigration law against those undocumented aliens entering the U.S. after January 1, 1977.

• Substantially increase resources available to control the Southern border, and other entry points, in order to prevent illegal immigration.

• Promote continued cooperation with the governments which are major sources of undocumented aliens, in an effort to improve their economies and their controls over alien smuggling rings.

Each of these actions will play a distinct, but closely related, role in helping to solve one of our most complex domestic problems: In the last several years, millions of undocumented aliens have illegally immigrated to the United States. They have breached our nation's immigration laws, displaced many American citizens from jobs, and placed an increased financial burden on many states and local governments.

The set of actions I am proposing cannot solve this enormous problem overnight, but they will signal the beginning of an effective Federal response. My Administration is strongly committed to aggressive and comprehensive steps toward resolving this problem, and I am therefore proposing the following actions:

EMPLOYER SANCTIONS

The principal attraction of the United States for undocumented aliens is economic--the opportunity to obtain a job paying considerably more than any available in their own countries. If that opportunity is severely restricted, I am convinced that far fewer aliens will attempt illegal entry.

I am therefore proposing that Congress make unlawful the hiring by any employer of any undocumented alien. This employment bar would be implemented in the following way:

• Enforcement would be sought against those employers who engage in a "pattern or practice" of hiring undocumented aliens, with the Justice Department setting priorities for enforcement.

• Penalties for violation of the employment bar would be both injunctive relief and stiff civil fines--a maximum of $1,000 for each undocumented alien hired by an employer. A violation of a court injunction would subject an employer to a potential criminal contempt citation and imprisonment.

• An employer would be entitled to defend any charge of hiring an undocumented alien by proving that a prospective employee's documentation of legal residence, as designated by the Attorney General in regulations, was seen prior to employment.

• The Social Security card would be designated as one of the authorized identification documents; and we will accelerate the steps already being taken to make certain that such cards are issued, as the law now mandates, only to legal residents. Those steps include requiring personal interviews of card applicants and making the cards more difficult to forge. But no steps would be taken to make the Social Security card, or any other card, a national identification document.

• To further restrict job opportunities, criminal sanctions would be imposed on those persons who receive compensation for knowingly assisting an undocumented alien obtain or retain employment, or who knowingly contract with such persons for the employment of undocumented aliens. These sanctions are directed at the substantial number of individuals who broker jobs for undocumented aliens or act as agents for alien smugglers. It is not directed at those who inadvertently refer an undocumented alien to a job, such as an employment agency or a union hiring hall.

To make certain that all of these new sanctions are uniformly applied, they would pre-empt any existing state sanctions.

In addition to the creation of these new sanctions, efforts to increase enforcement of existing sanctions will be significantly increased. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates payment of the minimum wage and provides other employee protections, would not only be strictly enforced, but its existing civil and criminal penalties would be sought much more frequently by the government. To date, the inability of the government to enforce fully this Act, due in part to a lack of resources, has resulted in the hiring of undocumented aliens at sub-minimum wages, thereby often displacing American workers. Two hundred sixty new inspectors will be hired and targeted to areas of heavy undocumented alien employment. Similarly, the Federal Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, which prohibits the recruiting and hiring of undocumented aliens for farm work, would be tightly enforced. The Departments of Justice and Labor will work closely in exchanging information developed in their separate enforcement activities.

While I believe that both the new and existing employer sanctions, and their strict enforcement, are required to control the employment of undocumented aliens, the possibility that these sanctions might lead employers to discriminate against Mexican-American citizens and legal residents, as well as other ethnic Americans, would be intolerable. The proposed employer sanctions have been designed, with their general reliance on civil penalties and "pattern or practice" enforcement, to minimize any cause for discrimination. However, to prevent any discriminatory hiring, the federal civil rights agencies will be charged with making much greater efforts to ensure that existing anti-discrimination laws are fully enforced.

BORDER ENFORCEMENT

The proposed employer sanctions will not, by themselves be enough to stop the entry of undocumented aliens. Measures must also be taken to significantly increase existing border enforcement efforts. While our borders cannot realistically be made impenetrable to illegal entry, greater enforcement efforts clearly are possible, consistent with preserving both the longest "open" borders in the world and our humanitarian traditions.

I am proposing to take the following increased enforcement measures, most of which will require Congressional approval for the necessary additional resources:

• Enforcement resources at the border will be increased substantially and will be reorganized to ensure greater effectiveness. The exact nature of the reorganization, as well as the amount of additional enforcement personnel, will be determined after the completion in September of our ongoing border enforcement studies. It is very likely, though, that a minimum of 2000 additional enforcement personnel will be placed on the Mexican border.

• INS will shift a significant number of enforcement personnel to border areas having the highest reported rates of undocumented alien entry.

• An anti-smuggling Task Force will be established in order to seek ways to reduce the number and effectiveness of the smuggling rings which, by obtaining forged documents and providing transportation, systematically smuggle a substantial percentage of the undocumented aliens entering the country. The U.S. Attorneys will be instructed to give high priority to prosecuting individuals involved in alien smuggling.

• The State Department will increase its visa issuance resources abroad to ensure that foreign citizens attempting to enter this country will be doing so within the requirements of the immigration laws.

• Passage will be sought of pending legislation to impose criminal sanctions on those who knowingly use false information to obtain identifiers issued by our Government, or who knowingly use fraudulent Government documents to obtain legitimate Government documents.

• The State Department will consult with countries which are the sources of significant numbers of undocumented aliens about cooperative border enforcement and anti-smuggling efforts.

COOPERATION WITH SOURCE COUNTRIES

The proposed employer sanctions and border enforcement will clearly discourage a significant percentage of those who would otherwise attempt to enter or remain in the U.S. illegally. However, as long as jobs are available here but not easily available in countries which have been the source of most undocumented aliens, many citizens of those countries will ignore whatever barriers to entry and employment we erect. An effective policy to control illegal immigration must include the development of a strong economy in each source country.

Unfortunately, this objective may be difficult to achieve within the near future. The economies of most of the source countries are still not sufficiently developed to produce, even with significant U.S. aid, enough jobs over the short-term to match their rapidly growing workforce.

Over the longer-term, however, I believe that marked improvements in source countries' economies are achievable by their own efforts with support from the United States. I welcome the economic development efforts now being made by the dynamic and competent leaders of Mexico. To further efforts such as those, the United States is committed to helping source countries obtain assistance appropriate to their own economic needs. I will explore with source countries means of providing such assistance. In some cases this will mean bilateral or multilateral economic assistance. In others, it will involve technical assistance, encouragement of private financing and enhanced trade, or population programs.

ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS

The fact that there are millions of undocumented aliens already residing in this country presents one of the most difficult questions surrounding the aliens phenomenon. These aliens entered the U.S. illegally and have willfully remained here in violation of the immigration laws. On the other hand, many of them have been law-abiding residents who are looking for a new life and are productive members of their communities.

I have concluded that an adjustment of status is necessary to avoid having a permanent "underclass" of millions of persons who have not been and cannot practicably be deported, and who would continue living here in perpetual fear of immigration authorities, the local police, employers and neighbors. Their entire existence would continue to be predicated on staying outside the reach of government authorities and the law's protections.

I therefore recommend the following adjustments of status:
First, I propose that permanent resident alien status be granted to all undocumented aliens who have resided continuously in the U.S. from before January 1, 1970 to the present. These aliens would have to apply for this status and provide normal documentary proof of continuous residency. If residency is maintained, U.S. citizenship could be sought five years after the granting of permanent status, as provided in existing immigration laws.

The permanent resident alien status would be granted through an update of the registry provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The registry statute has been updated three times since 1929, with the last update in 1965, when permanent resident alien status was granted to those who had resided here prior to 1948.

Second, all undocumented aliens, including those (other than exchange and student visitors) with expired visas, who were residing in the United States on or before January 1, 1977 will be eligible for a temporary resident alien status for five years.

Those eligible would be granted the temporary status only after registering with INS; registration would be permitted solely during a one-year period. Aliens granted temporary status would be entitled to reside legally in the United States for a five-year period.

The purpose of granting a temporary status is to preserve a decision on the final status of these undocumented aliens, until much more precise information about their number, location, family size and economic situation can be collected and reviewed. That information would be obtained through the registration process. A decision on their final status would be made sometime after the completion of the registration process and before the expiration of the five-year period.

Temporary resident aliens would not have the right to vote, to run for public office or to serve on juries; nor would they be entitled to bring members of their families into the U.S. But they could leave and re-enter this country, and they could seek employment, under the same rules as permanent resident aliens.

Unlike permanent resident aliens, temporary resident aliens would be ineligible to receive such Federal social services as Medicaid, Food Stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and Supplemental Security Income. However, the allocation formulas for Revenue Sharing, which are based on population, would be adjusted to reflect the presence of temporary resident aliens. The adjustment would compensate states and local communities for the fact that some of these residents--undocumented aliens-are currently not included in the Census Bureau's population counts. That undercount deprives certain states and communities of Revenue Sharing funds which, if Census figures were completely accurate, would be received and used to defray certain expenses caused by the presence of undocumented aliens. Those receiving adjustments of status through the actions I am proposing would be included in the 1980 Census, so that the allocation charges would have to be made only through 1980.

Third, for those undocumented aliens who entered the United States after January 1, 1977, there would be no adjustment of status. The immigration laws would still be enforced against these undocumented aliens. Similarly, those undocumented aliens, who are eligible for adjustment of status, but do not apply, would continue to have the immigration laws enforced against them.

In addition, the INS would expedite its handling of the substantial backlog of adjustment of status applications from those aliens entitled to an adjustment under existing law.

Finally, those persons who would be eligible for an adjustment of status under these proposals must not be ineligible under other provisions of the immigration laws.

TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS

As part of these efforts to control the problem of undocumented aliens, I am asking the Secretary of Labor to conduct, in consultation with the Congress and other interested parties, a comprehensive review of the current temporary foreign worker (H-2) certification program. I believe it is possible to structure this program so that it responds to the legitimate needs of both employees, by protecting domestic employment opportunities, and of employers, by providing a needed workforce. However, I am not considering the reintroduction of a bracero-type program for the importation of temporary workers.

IMMIGRATION POLICY

Our present immigration statutes are in need of a comprehensive review. I am therefore directing the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Labor to begin a comprehensive interagency study of our existing immigration laws and policies.

In the interim, I am supporting pending legislation to increase the annual limitation on legal Mexican and Canadian immigration to a total of 50,000, allocated between them according to demand. This legislation will help provide an incentive to legal immigration.

I urge the Congress to consider promptly, and to pass, the legislation I will submit containing the proposals described in this Message.

JIMMY CARTER
The White House,
August 4, 1977.




Read more at the American Presidency Project: Jimmy Carter: Undocumented Aliens Message to the Congress.