FAIR estimates that illegal immigration costs North Carolina taxpayers $1.3 billion annually. Read the full report to learn more about the impact of illegal immigration on NC.

NC Listen advocates these 4 basic immigration policies to combat illegal immigration and increasing legal immigration:

1. Enforce Immigration Laws and Control Our Borders
2. No More Amnesties
3. Return to Lower, More Sensible Legal Immigration
4. No More “Guest Worker” Programs – Americans Need Jobs

You can learn more about these policy recommendations on our Policy Page.

By: Ron Woodard, Director, NC Listen

I find it interesting that few of our state and federal politicians really seem to understand how immigration enforcement and real reform could significantly impact the job situation in America.   Or maybe they just don’t care.  On the illegal immigration side, we have over six million plus illegal immigrants who occupy non-agricultural jobs in the USA which rightly belong to citizens.

President Obama wishes to spend billions to lower unemployment by a fraction while ignoring the illegal worker problem.  After all, we have the federal government’s E-Verify System available NOW for employers to use to check the legal resident worker status of new hires, but it is not mandatory.  The on-line and simple to operate E-Verify System could easily be used to check the legal resident status of existing workers.  But of course this would take Congressional and Presidential action and require common sense.   So you can see why Congress and the President would have a problem with this concept!

On the legal immigration side, why are we continuing to allow approximately one million legal immigrants into America each year when over 15 million citizens are unemployed?  Of course if we include citizens who are working part-time but want a full-time job and can’t find one and the under-counted unemployed [referred to as the U-6 measure by our U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics] the U.S.A.’s actual unemployment rate is over 16%.  We should basically halt all legal immigration except for legitimate refugees and Americans who marry overseas or have children while overseas — this number would be less than 120,000 per year.

One of our U.S. Congressmen from North Carolina, Bob Etheridge, is pitching a jobs stimulus bill.  He wants to give a tax credit to employers to hire workers – but would they need to be legally here?

You can tell Congressman Etheridge whether you like tax dollars going for such purposes or not, but I encourage you to also tell him that whether job stimulus or not, our government should be requiring all businesses to use the federal government’s on-line E-Verify System to make sure only citizens / legal residents can hold a job.  The E-Verify System is simple to use, takes less than two minutes to enter the new employees name and data required, and costs less than a small bottled water to use per verification.

We have over seven million illegal immigrant adults working in America.  In North Carolina we have approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants working and our state borrowed over $2 billion [yes, billion] in 2009 alone from the federal government to pay unemployment claims because so many folks are out of work the unemployment insurance fund in North Carolina was in deficit that much.  Note the $2 billion is the amount borrowed and spent after the money already in the unemployment fund was spent.   Our state expects to borrow another $2 billion this year again due to not enough funds available to pay unemployment claims.  Guess who will be paying this back?

Is it really a lot to ask for businesses to make sure they only hire citizens / legal residents?

Recently, the NC College Board decided to allow illegal aliens to enroll in North Carolina Community Colleges. Only a few months of internal procedures remain before this rule goes into effect.

Our state unemployment rate is over 10%. Why should the State of North Carolina be assisting illegal aliens to become better educated in order to steal jobs which belong to unemployed citizens?

According to the N.C. Employment Security Commission our state has had to borrow nearly $2 billion [yes, billion] dollars this year from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits, because the state unemployment insurance trust fund is in the red.  They estimate our state may need to borrow another $2 billion through the course of 2010.

NC LISTEN is asking that the citizens of North Carolina sign a petition asking the North Carolina General Assembly to pass legislation to prevent illegal aliens from enrolling in our North Carolina Community Colleges and the University of North Carolina System.

Civitas’s Bob Leubke discusses last week’s community college hearing regarding whether illegal aliens should be allowed to enroll:

I attended part of last week’s public hearing on a proposed rule change to allow the admission of illegal immigrants to North Carolina Community Colleges. For the better part of an hour I heard teachers, students and former community college officials say education is a right (it’s not) and how North Carolina can’t turn it’s back on these children ( Last I checked, according to the NC Comm. College System, the average age of a community college student in North Carolina was 32). From what I understand, there were only a handful of individuals who spoke out against the proposed rule. Most notably, Ron Woodward of NC Listen and Bill Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration.

Read the rest of the post here and stay tuned for more information from NC Listen.

Concerned Citizens and Immigration Reformers,

IT’S NOT OVER.   WE can still stop illegals from attending our North Carolina Community Colleges.  There are a few steps yet for the NC Community College Board to take before it is “official”.    We have a plan to stop the Board in their tracks.

IF YOU HAVE NOT AS YET EMAILED THE NC COMMUNITY BOARD, PLEASE DO SO BEFORE DECEMBER 15th.

As you have heard, the North Carolina Community College Board has announced they intend to allow illegal aliens to attend our state Community Colleges.   Our state just recently announced there are 20,000 more citizens who now want to attend our state Community Colleges [58 campuses across the state] than there is space, due to the economy and high unemployment.