by Joshua Greene

Created on: April 22, 2009

As of April 3 of 2009, the unemployment rate in the United States has raised to 8.5 percent. This has been created due to the 3.3 million jobs lost within the last 5 months. There are currently over 300 million Americans (not including illegal immigrants). So, almost 30 million Americans who are actively seeking employment are without a job right now. I have seen unemployed factory workers now start working in fast food or other occupations, as they need to work somewhere to get some money in their pockets to support themselves and their families.

The Pew Hispanic Center, one of the many think-tanks of the Illegal Immigration problem in the United States answers this question for us. So let's take a look at one of their many fact sheets. They state a few startling statistics. Currently there are over 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Another research and investment firm, Bear Sterns, places the number at 20 million. So we have somewhere between 12 and 20 million illegal workers in the United States.

"But these illegal immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don't want." This seems to be the battle cry of any illegal alien enthusiast. However, statistics can finally put this myth to rest. In the same fact sheet from the Pew Hispanic Center, published in 2004, we see a breakdown of the jobs that illegal immigrants are holding. So, if these truly are jobs that Americans don't want, then there will be a very minuscule amount of Americans in these jobs and industries.

The following are the industries/occupation groups that are listed in the study with the percentage of American workers in that occupation group. The percentage in the parantheses is the percentage of illegal immigrants that work in said occupation group:

Management, Business, and Professional - 35%, (10%)

Transportation and Material Moving - 6%, (8%)

Production, Installation, and Repair - 10%, (16%)

Construction and Extractive - 6%, (17%)

Sales and Administrative Support - 27%, (13%)

Service Occupations - 15%, (33%)

Farming, etc. - 1%, (3%)

When examining the statistics before your eyes we see that a HUGE chunk of undocumented workers work in jobs that Americans want and have. 10 percent of the illegal aliens that live in the United States work in management and professional settings! That between 1.2 million to 2 million jobs that any American citizen would find security in. In handy-work (the occupation group of Production, Installation, and Repair) we see that a over 30 million Americans work happily in this sector, while illegal immigrants take away 1.92 million to 3.2 million more jobs away that other American can enjoy. I could rant on this all day long.

We can no longer hide behind the ignorance that illegal aliens only take the jobs that Americans don't take. We know it is false and statistics have been published proving its untruth. For every illegal immigrant working in the United States, there is a sad American who is unemployed, wishing he could work as a garbage man, or a manager, or as anything to get by and support those around them. But sadly, that American will feel the wrath of unemployment while an illegal worker will do that job that he wants.

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