Wisconsin activist says illegal aliens more deserving of jobs than unemployed Americans

 Robert Miranda, the executive director of Milwaukee-based Esperanza Unida Inc., says a lot of good things here about legislation recently introduced by several state senators that would crack down on Wisconsin employers who hire illegal aliens.

He said he supports this bill because it gets to the question of how to stem illegal immigration and the removal of the incentive for it.

"Removing undocumented immigrants out of the labor force is a first order of business for policymakers," Miranda writes.

Such statements are music to the ear of anyone who believes in economic justice for our own citizens and immigrants who came here playing by the rules.

But then a few paragraphs later he says, "Look, the undocumented worker brings a good work ethic to the American labor landscape; they work hard, did not come here to receive welfare and should be allowed to remain in the U.S. after paying penalties."

For what purpose?  Why should they be allowed to remain here if there are no jobs for them?  A phone call to Miranda provided only a partial answer to my question but ultimately left me more confused.

In a nutshell, Miranda says illegal aliens and their families who have "lived by the rules" and conducted themselves like "good citizens" since breaking our immigration laws "should be punished" but allowed to keep their jobs even though 22 million jobless Americans and legal residents are unable to find full-time employment.  The fines they would pay, he said, would be "put in a coffer and used to create jobs" for our out-of-work citizens.

In other words, Miranda's definition of removing illegals from the U.S. workforce is to legalize them so they can continue to enjoy the dignity of regular paychecks.

I told him that the U.S. House of Representatives would soon be considering a bill making E-Verify mandatory for all employers that would result in the removal of illegals form the workforce.  Miranda said that "would be the will of the people, but I wouldn't support it."

I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to learn from Miranda why he believes illegal aliens are more entitled to search for a better life than American citizens, and the best I was able to determine from the conversation was that somebody has to be punished for Corporate America's ongoing exportation of American jobs, and U.S. citizens fit the bill.  

Go figure.

When I asked him why he didn't include what he told me in his column, he said, "You don't want to lay all your cards on the table at once," adding that future columns would continue to reveal why he supports the proposed immigration legislation. 

Miranda strikes me as someone who is genuinely concerned about illegal immigration and wants it dealt with firmly - as long as it doesn't inconvenience illegal aliens.