WASHINGTON, D.C. — Michigan officials want to repopulate Detroit with an aggressive immigration program — a move critics call misguided and unworkable.
“This ranks right up there with Ford’s expectation that the Edsel was going to be a big seller,” said Bob Dane, communications director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has opened an Office for New Americans, with the goal of luring foreign workers and overseas capital to pump up the Motor City. The once-bustling metropolis of 1.85 million people has shriveled to 701,000, and falling.
Detroit’s unemployment rate officiallyis 8.3 percent, but tops 15 percent when accounting for residents who have quit looking for work. The city perennially ranks as one of the worst job markets in the country.
“For decades, Detroit has watched its manufacturing jobs exported overseas while suffering fiscal mischief at the hands of corrupt city officials,” said Dane, who grew up in the city now going through bankruptcy.
“Now Gov. Snyder wants to compound that pain by proposing to import 50,000 foreign workers to flood a sinking labor market.”
Bing Goel, head of the Office for New Americans, said Michigan wants immigrants to make a commitment to live in Detroit for five years.
Michigan Governor declares financial emergency and takes control
of Detroit's budgetary mismanagement
On Friday, March 1st, Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder (R) made the decision to declare a financial emergency in Detroit and to rip the financial decisions out of democrat city officials’ hands. City residents are facing a crushing $14 billion long term debt and a $327 million current budget deficit, according to Fox News.
Nearly three months ago, Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson pleaded to her fellow council members that President Obama owed the motor city a $200 plus million bacon bailout. The president did not take the bait or the call, while the city continued to plummet further into the morass it had created under liberal democrat leadership. Now the other financial shoe has dropped!
The city has been running their financial budgets on the backs of city residents for decades, while mismanaging funds, and granting big city liberal-backed long term union benefits. Now, the city officials will have to face the harsh truth, that they cannot wring more taxes out of businesses or residents when there is no money to be had.
In fact, if the city’s mayor Dave Bing and council leaders had not worked out an agreement last year to let the city borrow more money, the nearly quarter billion dollar deficit would be close to a billion.
This continuing big city budgetary nightmare is a harbinger on what other large cities across the nation are facing. Other liberal city leaders have also imposed tax policies and overly generous union long-term contract liabilities on their cities as well. The result has left their own city coffers financially crippled.
Just last year the city of Stockton, California had to file for bankruptcy. With its population of 291,707, it became famous for being the largest to do so. Detroit needs to follow suit, and join this infamous club instead of continuing to pursue the finger pointing blame game. This sad refrain has echoed in the corridors of Detroit’s city hall for years. The democrat public leaders would either blame the state republican legislators or a state republican governor or a republican president for their financial ineptitude.
Well, the truth is finally spilling out of their unbalanced budget books. The liberal leaders of this big city Titanic floating albatross have hit the iceberg of reality. Now the city is sinking and sinking fast.
The city of Detroit is no longer the once enviable capitol of the automotive industry. Instead it has become a rusted out junk yard, where its previous signs of prosperity have withered and become now barren land.
What is to become of the citizens who kept voting these charlatans masquerading as responsible elected officials? Did they unknowingly succumb to a culture of corruption and deceit which wove its web throughout the neighborhoods? Did they accept the leaders who traded in favors to keep the wool pulled over the heads of residents?
For decades, at every chance, the political poverty pimps would go to barber shops and beauty salons and even in churches passing out promises and placing blame at the feet of “The Man.” “The Man; i.e. code word for ‘White Man’ is doing this to you, and that is why you are suffering.” This same inane and ridiculous refrain has been passed down for several generations, until it has become just a tragic utterance, now blessedly falling on deaf ears.
The truth is that these large and small urban financial nightmares have been largely run by minority leaders for decades. There is no “Man” in sight. These black leaders have wheeled and dealt away financial responsibility by paying ever larger union retirement pensions, salaries and bonuses. With each election they falsely promised better times were just around the corner. In reality they were delivering the citizens into an awaiting monetary wasteland.
Posted by Kevin Fobbs on December 11, 2012 at 7:31pm
Michigan State Police protect Right To Work Law supporters
from assaults from organized union protesters
“There will be blood,” angrily threatened State Representative Douglas Geiss openly from the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday, according to Fox News. His frustration in the chamber was shouted out by thousands of organized labor supporters who rallied outdoors in the state capitol in opposition to Michigan’s 'Right to Work’ law. The legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder late Tuesday afternoon. Is union tyranny over?
Over the past several weeks, union unrest over right to work legislation had surfaced into slowly burning embers waiting to be ignited. On Monday, the igniter-in-chief arrived. So on Monday when, President Obama visited the Detroit area; he had been scheduled to discuss the fiscal cliff and its impact on Michigan families.
Instead he moved to shove Michigan elected Republican lawmakers off the legislative cliff. He eagerly chided legislators for supporting Right to Work legislation coming to a vote the next day in Lansing, the state capitol.
His invasion into the privacy and sovereignty of the state of Michigan was unnecessary, unwanted, unneeded and served to ignite hot language in an already combustible atmosphere. Instead of sticking to his script or teleprompter, Obama forgot his place and scolded Michigan’s governor and state house and senate leaders by sarcastically stating:
“These so-called 'right-to-work' laws, they don't have anything to do with economics. They have everything to do with politics," He then went on to add, "What they're really talking about is they're giving you the right to work for less money."President Obama
It is abundantly clear that Obama never took an economics course, if he believes that out-of-whack union wages and benefit packages have not placed a stranglehold on state, and local government budgets as well as private sector job creation. In fact, according to Fox News, seven of the states that have the most improved job creation numbers have Right to Work legislation on the books.
If you are a resident of Michigan or any other state and are or have been a member of a union, you know what it feels like to be threatened by union goons. They openly tell you when you can work, and when you cannot, and who you have to support for political office and who you should not. This is not union protection of wages, this is union thuggish behavior, used to harass, threaten and intimidate you!
To add insult to injury all of this is done courtesy of union dues paid by workers!
Yet, the Right to Work drive for Michigan workers arrived this year, past due on the desk of state capitol legislators. Just how could this happen in the cradle of organized unionism? To workers who have long supported this effort, it seems crystal clear. They want the right to jobs and the right to work!
