Jittery American workers were greeted with the news that unemployment in July reached a four-year high of 5.7 percent and that the U.S. economy shed 51,000 jobs last month on the heels of the loss of 98,000 jobs in May and June. For all of 2008, the U.S. economy has lost 463,000 jobs. Meanwhile in Congress, both houses spent the final days before their month-long summer vacation pushing for admission of hundreds of thousands of additional foreign workers.

The Senate will adjourn today without acting on reauthorization of E-Verify, a highly successful program that allows employers to verify electronically that workers are legally eligible to work in the U.S. E-Verify is set to expire in November, and its reauthorization is being blocked by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) who is insisting that the bill include a provision to "recapture" work- and family-based immigration visas dating back to 1992. A five-year reauthorization of E-Verify passed the House yesterday by a vote of 407-2.

"Instead of trying to recapture lost visas from the 1990s, the Senate might want to consider trying to recapture the lost jobs that have left 8.8 million American workers unemployed," commented Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

"American workers are hurting. They are concerned about the state of our economy, anxious about losing their jobs, and worried about whether their paychecks will keep up with the soaring cost of energy and food. Flooding the labor market with hundreds of thousands of new foreign workers is about the last thing the struggling American worker needs right now. Reauthorization of E-Verify, on the other hand, would provide much-needed protection against Americans losing jobs to illegal aliens," said Stein.

By some estimates, the number of visas that Sen. Menendez is attempting to "recapture" could total as many as 600,000. It is believed that about half of those visas would be from employment-based categories and the other half from family-based categories. However, most immigrants admitted under family-based categories also enter the labor market.

"When members of the Senate head home this August, they are certain to hear plenty from their constituents about jobs and the economy," Stein continued. "Reauthorizing E-Verify - a proven program that protects American jobs - should be the Senate's first order of business when they return to work in September. If they can't do anything to prevent American jobs from disappearing, the very least they owe American workers is renewal of a program that ensures they won't lose jobs to illegal aliens. And that protection should not come at the expense of hundreds of thousands of new visas to satisfy special interest demands," concluded Stein.