After devoting most of 2013 to pushing for more gun control, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will start 2014 by lobbying for amnesty when he travels to Washington next Friday. He’s set to pressure House Republicans to ram immigration reform legislation through Congress this year, even though only three percent of Americans view it as a top priority.
According to the New York Times, this will be Bloomberg’s “first major public policy event since stepping down as mayor” and is timed to coincide with Obama’s State of the Union address and the release of House Republicans’ “immigration principles.”
Carlos Gutierrez, President George W. Bush’s commerce secretary and a co-founder of a pro-amnesty Super PAC, officials from the Chamber of Commerce, and Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will reportedly also attend the “immigration summit.” The Chamber of Commerce has vowed to “pull out all the stops” to pass immigration reform this year.
The Partnership for a New American Economy, the pro-amnesty organization Bloomberg founded, and the chairman of his group said Bloomberg’s trip to Washington to lobby on immigration “is a clear signal of his passion for the issue and his intention to accelerate his support.”
Last year, as Breitbart News reported, Bloomberg’s pro-amnesty group joined forces with groups funded by George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
On Friday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said the House is the “last line of defense” for American workers against amnesty legislation that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers.
He added that the permanent political class’s desired amnesty legislation “doubles the flow of immigrant workers, adds another 30 million new permanent residents to compete for every job, and guarantees illegal immigration will continue permanently in the future.”
“House Republican leaders must dismiss the whispers of the consultant class, the pleadings of the business lobby, and the pressure campaign from the activists who believe illegal immigration is a civil right,” Sessions said. “It would be tragic if the Leader’s immigration principles were simply a ‘piecemeal’ repackaging of the Senate plan.”
Sessions also said the immigration bill that big-business interests and the consultant class want would “devastate wages and working conditions for millions of struggling Americans to benefit a small cadre of lobbyists and CEOs.”
Obama has indicated that he expects House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to get immigration reform done, and Democrat Rep. Luis Gutierrez has said his “Republican friends” have told him they want comprehensive immigration reform in everything but name only.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.