To the Editor:
Granite City is long removed from its hey day, but it could be a great Midwestern boom town again. The American worker (the Granite City worker) is the most productive in the world. Granite City used to be an industrial center with thousands of workers in good-paying industrial jobs, but today it has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state at 13.7 percent last year.
The new green agenda of the Democrat Party has been devastating to industry. And the party's embrace of illegal aliens has hurt the American worker. Jay Hoffman has been instrumental in helping to create this environment that has drawn more and more illegals to Illinois.
The state of Illinois spends $4,592,000 a year on illegals. Only three other states spend a higher amount than Illinois. That is over $4.5 million in taxes and fees that businesses are being forced to pick up the tab for. Those include the more than 300 taxes and fees for which Jay Hoffman has voted. Many of these illegal aliens are taking jobs from native born and tax paying Americans.
In 2007, Jay Hoffman voted to reward illegals with taxpayer subsidized secondary education tuition breaks (HB 60). Then, in 2008, Jay Hoffman voted to grant drivers licenses to illegals (HB 4003). If you broke the law and were told that a state would overlook all of the law breaking, wouldn't you move there?
Jay Hoffman is bad for jobs, bad for workers, and bad for Illinois.
Michelle Sharp
Granite City