Businesses with 50 or more employees that choose to pay a fine rather than provide insurance will not have to pay fines for the RPIs or blue-card holders because they are not eligible for the exchanges. So employers will be able to save from $2,000 to $3,000 a year by hiring a new immigrant over an American citizen. For salaries that hover between $15,000 and $25,000, as they do in many immigrant-heavy industries, that's no small savings.



In other words, a provision meant to deny a benefit to illegal immigrants will wind up denying jobs to U.S. citizens.



Ugh.

_By CNBC's John Carney. Follow me on Twitter @Carney