Speaking of jobs

I know clips posted about jobs, but I have an issue I would like to address that is a bit different.

I work for an MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) which does the transportation planning for a certain area and works with State Department of Tranportation (DOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).  

Currently, ALDOT is in a 12 year court battle over a discrimination suit which was filed against it - whether it is valid I do not know, but basically they can only hire minorities as of this time and I don\'t have a problem with this.  However, I do have a problem with ALDOT hiring non US citizens (no not Mexicans) to fill this quota.  FHWA does this too and we have US citizens who are looking for employment yet our state, federal and even local governments are hiring NON US CITIZENS when they could be hiring US citizens (train them for Christ sake if they don\'t have the training)?  This does not make sense and really pisses me off.  I get a DOT representative who can\'t even speak English that well (once again this person is not Hispanic     ) and it turns out this guy was given $600,000 by the DOT as part of their settlement in the discrimination suit.  On top of it, he doesn\'t know what he is doing!!!  We went to a training class and he was lost the whole time.

I am sorry if this is long and hard to follow - it just pisses me off that we have people in this country who need jobs and with a little training can do them and make a decent living - yet we import people from India, Africa and elsewhere to do the work that the average American with training could easily do and would do to make a quite nice living.

NOTE * If this sounds too much like a rant then move it over to rants and raves - I just felt it had to do with politics since I feel this situation is a result of liberal policy makers who think we should be providing jobs to every underpriviledged person other than a US citizen.

[clips]

yeah i agree..most jobs should go to american citizens first,...whether you\'re of african decent, hispanic whatever,..i have heard of legal aliens that live here..y\'know people from other countries who are here legally but just don\'t have their citizenship. And if you are here i feel you have to make an effort to understand the language,..

It\'s kinda all relative tho..in a sense,,i have programmers asking me how to run certain jobs & to fix programs they\'ve created..and i\'m just a computer operator with very little programming knowledge. I\'ve said it before companies hire minorities just for the sake of sayin\' "see look at us we have african amer. hispanics, chinese working here, we\'re very diversified!"...instead of hiring minorities that actually have the skill for the job in question

ps: i\'m the exception of course!

ALDOT has a history of problems with minorities - one was killed by a white ALDOT employee a few years ago due to that ongoing discrimination suit... talk about pathetic.  My point is that I don\'t care what color the person is that any of the above mentioned agencies hire, but they should be US CITIZENS.  

With a lot of people living at border line poverty here in the South you would think that they would try and train some people to do this work.  What ever happened America for Americans?  You are right though the ones they are hiring are not illegals - they are people that come from oversees - go to college here and then get jobs here.  It is perplexing to me that our government allows this on all levels and finds it acceptable by saying they can\'t find US citizens who have the qualifications to do these jobs.  First the University pays for these people to come here and get degrees and then the Feds/State/Local governments hand them jobs!  Why not pay for some of the underprivledged people who are US citizens to go to school and take these jobs?????