Three prominent Democrats with White House aspirations – Vermont Socialist-cum-Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders, New Jersey Senator Corey Booker, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand – have endorsed a policy of guaranteed jobs for Americans, and it appears that others in the party may start falling into line for fear of being left behind.
Others are better positioned to lay out the pros and cons of such a position economically and socially; that's beyond my purview. But one thing that's puzzling me is this: on the most fundamental level, how can it work when the Democratic Party has shown itself allergic to any and all forms of immigration control and enforcement?
When anti-immigration-control liberals adamantly oppose something as modest as universal E-Verify or other employment verification processes to ensure that Americans are actually the recipients of jobs, exactly who will end up on the job-receiving-end of such a massive taxpayer-funded scheme that would make the $787 billion recession bail-out of 2009 look miniscule by comparison?
Note, for instance, that Numbers USA has assigned Sanders, Booker, and Gillibrand immigration grades of D, F-, and F-, respectively, putting them at the bottom of the heap because of their lack of interest in, and often enough outright hostility toward, immigration controls of any kind. That doesn't bode well for a jobs scheme for American workers.
None of the three has been challenged to respond to this question of how they would ensure that guaranteed jobs would only go to those legally entitled to work – or likely has even thought about it. I would love to see them forced to do so in an open forum without the time to develop canned, focus-grouped responses.
If you think we have a problem with open borders now – in no small measure because of the magnet of jobs and the intransigence of almost all Democrats and some Republicans to common-sense enforcement measures – just wait until news of a guaranteed jobs scheme hits the Third World.