YWC News

The so-called 'jobs bill' proposed by Harry Reid in the Senate makes employers of illegal aliens eligible for tax breaks.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled his jobs bill last week that proposes tax exemptions and tax credits for employers who hire and retain workers—regardless of their immigration status. Senator Reid introduced his bill, entitled the “Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act,”  immediately after shelving a more extensive bill authored by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Chair and Ranking Member of the Finance Committee.  In doing so, Reid said he wanted to focus clearly on the “jobs message” he thought the Senate should be sending to the American people. (Roll Call, Feb. 16, 2010).

The Reid bill has two primary tax provisions that are intended to spur employment. The first would exempt employers from payroll taxes for new employees hired before January 1, 2011. (§101) A qualifying employer is virtually any employer except government bodies, although an exception is created for colleges and universities.  To be a qualifying employee, the worker must:

(1)    Begin employment with a qualified employer after February 3, 2010, but before year end;

(2)    Sign an affidavit stating that he/she was not employed for more than 40 hours during the 60-day period prior to beginning employment with the qualified employer;

(3)    Not displace another of the qualified employer’s workers; and

(4)    Not be a relative, broadly defined, of the employer. (See §101)

Nowhere in Section 101, however, is there a requirement that the individual be legal. Nor does the language require that the employer use E-Verify to verify work authorization. The language appears to allow employers to receive tax breaks for hiring illegal workers or for importing foreign workers.

The second major tax provision of the bill provides employers with a $1,000 tax credit for each “retained worker” hired in 2010. (§102)  To qualify as a “retained worker,” the individual must:

(1)    Meet the definition of a qualified employee under §101 (see above);

(2)    Be employed during the taxable year;

(3)    Be employed by the employer for no less than 52 consecutive weeks; and

(4)    Maintain wages at a certain threshold during the 52-week period.

Like Section 101, this tax credit does not require the employee to be legal or require that the employer use E-Verify to establish the employee’s work authorization.

Action on the Reid Jobs Bill is expected next week and Senate sources have told FAIR that the Senate Majority leader has already taken steps to block amendments to the bill. Stay tuned to FAIR for more information as the Reid Jobs Bill moves forward.

In the Daily Mail, we learned this morning that some "conspiracies" are true: Tony Blair's Labour Government in the UK deliberately encouraged mass immigration to destroy conservatism, undermine traditional cultural values, and advance radical leftwing social programs. The lesson to take away on this side of the pond is that the Far Left and the Democratic Party are promoting the same agenda here for the same reasons. The logical conclusion of our insane immigration policy is one party rule by a coalition of multiculturalist grievance groups alienated from Western civilization and determined to redistribute our wealth through higher taxes and spending.

Our scene: It is May 1968 at the height of the student rebellion at Columbia. In Hamilton Hall, the research papers of Orest Ranum, an associate professor of history, are burned. For decades, Students for a Democratic Society (a radical Marxist student activist group) denied responsibility for the arson. The fire was the climax of a month of protests at Columbia that provoked the largest police bust ever on a college campus.

Now the truth comes out: Mark Rudd, the Chairman of SDS, has acknowledged that one of his radical leftist followers set the fire. The rebellion at Columbia launched SDS as the spearhead of the New Left. The Weather Underground hatched out of this millieu. Other notables went on to fame in mainstream Democratic politics.

Leftists can get away with anything in America because they control the media and set the ground rules of mainstream political discourse. In his 2008 campaign, John McCain attempted to link Barack Obama with Bill Ayers. The charge fell flat.

This is why we don’t take left wing attacks on us seriously.  Leftists and student radicals aren’t just “linked” to violent thugs – they are violent thugs, and that is all they are.  As the reaction to YWC by the criminals at SDS shows, nothing has changed. 

In FrontPageMag, Walter Williams decries the political correctness and multiculturalism that has lowered the quality of education that black students receive in America's public schools. Williams speaks for an earlier generation of African-Americans who were raised to expect high standards and academic excellence in education. The postmodernist plague that swept through the humanities in the 1970s and 1980s has lowered the bar for students of all races. A generation of American youth has been taught racial and ethnic grievances, not science and mathematics, and now find themselves ill prepared to compete with their Western peers abroad.

Michael Steele and the GOP are desperately trying to woo alienated Tea Partiers in eager anticipation of a Republican landslide victory in November. The two groups are uneasily contemplating a marriage of convenience (at least a temporary one) that serves their mutual interests. Some conservatives within the Tea Party movement have accused their leaders of selling out their principles for short term political gain. Mainstream Republicans are wary of aggressive populists attempting to hijack local party organizations. Given the history of Tea Party animosity toward the GOP, it remains to be seen whether this proposed alliance will bear political fruit.