(NaturalNews) One of the reasons why corporate and political elites are pressing so hard for "immigration reform" that really amounts to nothing more than amnesty is because, according to them, millions of poor, uneducated people streaming into the country will be "good for the economy."That's no joke: That reason has been cited a number of times when the discussion turns to immigration reform/amnesty, and it continues to be cited by the elites as justification for the illegal immigration chaos currently taking place along the U.S. southwest border."The lesson of these 236 years is clear -- immigration makes America stronger. Immigration makes us more prosperous. And immigration positions America to lead in the 21st century," President Obama said on July 4, 2012, according to the White House website.According to, a 2013 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that "comprehensive immigration reform" -- which is code for amnesty for the tens of millions of illegal aliens already in the country and those who are coming -- "would bolster the country's economic growth by 4.8 percent." Further, the report claimed, "immigration reform would reduce the country's deficits by $1.2 trillion during this time, as young, working immigrants take jobs and pay taxes."And so on. Little thought is given by those who support unlimited, unconditional immigration -- which, by the way, is actuallyhow "we've always done it" -- to what damage it does to the employment prospects of native-born citizens and legal immigrants, especially America's non-skilled and under-skilled labor force.But even skilled labor -- those who are highly technically trained and proficient -- can suffer, as evidenced by Microsoft's recent decision that it will cut 18,000 jobs; most of them, as columnist Phyllis Schlafly wrote, "do not have a realistic chance of obtaining as good a job as the one they are losing."She goes on to note that, in particular, available electrical engineering positions in the U.S. have been falling steadily since 2002. In that year, she notes, the number of electrical engineering jobs in the U.S. stood at around 385,000; now, however, "despite increased demand for technology, the job total dropped to only 300,000 last year.""And that number is not even for American workers , because thousands of these jobs are soaked up by the H-1B visa racket, whereby companies like Microsoft can import and pay foreign workers less than it costs to hire an American," she said. "High-tech companies have thousands of foreign employees working on H-1B visas, who are almost like indentured servants to the company because they lose their right to be in our country if they leave their job."As for Microsoft, Schlafly, a lawyer by trade and head of the Eagle Forum, says the company's massive layoff "makes downright ridiculous" a recent op-ed by Bill Gates "and his billionaire pals, Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson," in which they and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg -- who is poised to become the richest person on the planet -- "financed the lobby group FWD.us" and "demand immediate amnesty disguised as immigration reform in order to bring in more cheap labor ."She says that "the real shortage" in America is "in good jobs," but work visas flood the labor market and therefore keep wages artificially low, when they should be climbing for American workers, especially as corporate profits grow (as evidenced by the steadily rising stock market).But in the midst of all of this immigration activism, "fewer Americans have a job today than just six years ago, even though the potential workforce has expanded during that time," Schlafly wrote. One reason why is "the overuse of foreign labor by large companies."Microsoft is a very profitable company, of course, but in 2007 at a U.S. Senate committee hearing, Gates nevertheless asked for permission to import "an infinite number" of foreign workers. "I don't think there should be any limit," he said, but added that at a minimum the cap should be "dramatically increased."The truth is, as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, has observed, America does not have "a labor shortage," so this notion that we need to import millions of immigrants and make them legal so they can pay taxes and boost the economy is bunk; working Americans pay taxes, of course, but they have to have a job in order for that to happen.Demanding more imported workers while laying off Americans because they cost more is the real impetus behind "immigration reform."