Study: Millions of Illegals Not Permitted to Work Got Work Permits

About 70 percent of the 5.5 million work permits issued since 2009, the year President Obama took office, were given to illegals who aren't allowed by law to have them or whose qualifications to have them are not documented, according to a new report this month by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reveal 3.86 million work permits issued were potentially or blatantly in violation of U.S. law:

• 1,200,000 work permits were issued to aliens not allowed to work in the U.S. (e.g., tourists, foreign students);
• 960,000 work permits were issued to aliens who crossed the border illegally; and
• 1,700,000 work permits were issued to aliens whose status was unknown, not disclosed or not revealed by USCIS.

Cautioning that Congress has both an opportunity and obligation to remedy this issue, the study concludes:

These statistics indicate that the executive branch is operating a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the bounds of the laws and limits written by Congress.  It inevitably reduces job opportunities for Americans. In addition, allowing work permits to be issued to illegal aliens and temporary visitors damages the integrity of the legal immigration system and encourages illegal immigration.

Hold Those Sexy Photos!

"Girls who post 'sexy' pictures on social media sites are seen by their female peers as less pretty, less likely to get a job done and not someone they'd want to be friends with, a new study shows," reports the UK Telegraph.

The Oregon State University asked 58 girls aged 13-18, and 60 women aged 17-25, what they thought of a girl when her Facebook profile picture was 'sexy', and when it was 'conservative'.

Researchers found that the less revealing pictures scored the highest in terms of the girl’s perceived physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and task competence.

The biggest difference was found in task competence - those girls with 'sexy' photos were seen as not able to complete a task.

“This is a clear indictment of sexy social media photos,” said researcher Elizabeth Daniels, an assistant professor of psychology who studies the effect of media on girls’ body image.

“There is so much pressure on teen girls and young women to portray themselves as sexy. But sharing those sexy photos online may have more negative consequences than positive.

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

Obamacare Sending Insurance Premiums Soaring

"A recent survey of 148 insurance brokers shows that ObamaCare is sending premiums rising at the fastest clip in decades," writes Jim Angle, a national reporter for Fox News.

Rates vary widely, often depending on the state and how highly regulated it was to begin with. Analysts, however, say the main reasons for the higher costs are not medical inflation, but rather the requirements of ObamaCare itself.

"There are certain regulations and certain requirements that had to be in there. And because of that it's driven up the costs of these benefits," said John DiVito of the Flexible Benefit Service Corporation, which represents hundreds of agents.Rate hikes include ten essential health benefits along with more than 20,000 pages or regulations.

The reported hikes are for the first policies issued under ObamaCare in 2014.

The Morgan Stanley quarterly survey across all states found an average national premium increase of 11 percent in the small group market and 12 percent in the individual market.

But all states are not equal. Scott Gottlieb notes that some states show increases 10 to 50 times that amount:

For the individual insurance market (plans sold directly to consumers); among the ten states seeing some of the sharpest average increases are: Delaware at 100%, New Hampshire 90%, Indiana 54%, California 53%, Connecticut 45%, Michigan 36%, Florida 37%, Georgia 29%, Kentucky 29%, and Pennsylvania 28%.