Finding our way back: organized grass-roots pressure on Congress to preserve our unique heritage of freedom under the U.S. Constitution is the key to a better jobs future for Americans.(SAVING OUR JOBS)

For 50 years the John Birch Society and its publications, including THE NEW AMERICAN, have been standing for family and freedom. In the early years of the JBS, Robert Welch, founder of the society, spoke and wrote repeatedly these words: "We actually intend to save for our children and their children as much as possible of the glorious country and humane civilization which we ourselves inherited."

We Americans have been blessed with "a glorious country and humane civilization" for over 200 years. Our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, have provided the basis for our lives of freedom in a prosperous and independent nation. However, the accelerating problem of job losses and lowered wages for Americans in recent times leads us to wonder whether our heritage of freedom and prosperity can be sustained, and if not, why not.

As the previous articles in this issue have described, job losses and wage suppression are closely related to wrongheaded immigration, trade, and regulatory policies. Since under our Constitution, all legislative powers are vested in Congress, including the power to regulate immigration and commerce, we don't have far to look to get to the root of the problem.

Root of the Problem

Congress passed legislation in the 1960s that has led to greatly increased legal immigration. Then, in 1986, Congress approved an amnesty for illegal immigrants and promised that it would be a one-time amnesty. Since then, Congress has allowed massive illegal immigration to occur to the extent that estimates of illegals within the United States range from 12 million to 30 million. Now congressional leaders are working with the Bush administration to craft yet another amnesty to legalize the status of this new generation of illegal immigrants.

The solution to preventing further job losses and wage suppression due to illegal immigration is for sufficient numbers of Americans to work together to convince Congress to enforce our present immigration laws, improve our border security, and reject all amnesty and guest-worker bills.

And that's just the area where we need to start. Although illegal immigration has been an important factor in job losses and wage suppression, the effects of trade agreements and federal taxes and regulations have been greater. More specifically, congressional passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 and legislation establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994 have already led to the loss of millions of jobs for Americans and have set the stage for still larger numbers of job losses.