GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham promised a group of younger illegal immigrants on Wednesday that Congress will amnesty 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and increase legal immigration numbers once it approves his “Dream Act” amnesty for younger illegals.
“What will happen next is I think we’ll set down and deal with the rest of the 11 million,” he told a group of roughly 100 young “DACA” illegals at a Wednesday press conference organized by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us pro-amnesty lobby group. He then promised more border security and workplace security so that voters will OK greater inflow of cheap immigrant labor, saying:
We’ll find a way to pass e-verify because if you don’t control a job you’ll never fix this problem. We’re going to secure our borders sooner rather than later. We’re going to increase legal immigration so employers don’t have to cheat.
In his joint appearance with Democratic leader Sen. Richard Durbin, Graham also suggested he would expand the ‘Dream Act’ amnesty to include the parents of the DACA illegal immigrants at the press conference. “We’re going to take good care of you and your families because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
The young illegals are dubbed ”dreamers’ by Democrats and the media, who deem them innocent of being illegal aliens because their parents broke the law by bringing them into the United States.
Graham’s push for more cheap labor is a rejection of the 2016 presidential election, in which Americans awarded the White House to the outsider candidate who promised to reform immigration rules so they help Americans before business groups.
In August, for example, President Donald Trump backed the popular RAISE Act, which would raise Americans’ wages by reducing the inflow of unskilled migrants. The RAISE Act “will reduce poverty, increase wages and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars,” Trump told reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first, and that puts America first.”
The current immigration system, said Trump:
has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources, and among those hit the hardest … are minority workers competing for jobs against brand new arrivals. It has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers … [this RAISE act] will give Americans a pay raise by reducing immigration… [and] it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens.
Trump and his deputies are now reportedly finalizing a pro-American labor and immigration policy which may be announced this week.
But after decades of cheap labor immigration, many U.S. businesses now rely on imported cheap labor to keep their costs low and their stock prices high. For example, farm-industry groups recently tried to push a bill through the House Judiciary Committee which would have allowed them to import and employ more than 1 million near-minimum-wage “guest workers” at farms, orchards, seaports, meatpacking factories and food processing companies. That number is roughly double the current population of roughly 500,000 illegals in the farming industry.
The huge wave of legal outsourcing workers would have displaced and cut wages for a huge number of blue-collar Americans, and also would have further slashed business incentives for agriculture companies to develop and manufacture European-style high-tech labor-saving gear, such as robotic cow-milkers, fruit pickers, and meat cutters. The scheduled vote was indefinitely delayed on October 4.
Graham’s own ‘Dream Act’ is also ambitious because it promises legalization to at least 3 million illegals in the first several years, not counting subsequent chain migration. That Dream Act amnesty will cost at least $115 billion in Obamacare costs, according to an analysis by Breitbart News.
The promise of cheap-labor forever is vintage Graham, who has long put the cheap-labor priorities of South Carolina businesses ahead of ordinary Americans’ desire for well-paid jobs. In 2012, for example, he phoned New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer to create the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill which would have transferred a huge share of the nation’s income from working Americans to Wall Street investors. According to Politico:
Schumer said that shortly after the November election, he received a call from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) who wanted to restart negotiations on a comprehensive immigration package.
“Lindsey said ‘the band is back together!’” Schumer said.
Graham informed Schumer that McCain was on board as well.
“My heart went pitter patter,” Schumer said. “That meant we could get something done.”
That “Gang of Eight” fiasco cost the Democrats nine seats in the 2014 election, demoted Schumer to minority leader, and opened the path for Donald Trump to win the GOP primaries and election because the public strongly opposes business-first immigration policies which sideline Americans.
Graham has also stated his opposition to the wage-boosting RAISE Act, saying August 2:
I’ve always supported merit-based immigration. I think we should always want to attract the best and brightest to the United States. Unfortunately, the other part of this proposal would reduce legal immigration by half, including many immigrants who work legally in our agriculture, tourism and service industries.
South Carolina’s number one industry is agriculture and tourism is number two. If this proposal were to become law, it would be devastating to our state’s economy which relies on this immigrant workforce.
South Carolina’s agriculture and tourism industry advertise for American workers and want to fill open positions with American workers. Unfortunately, many of these advertised positions go unfilled. Hotels, restaurants, golf courses and farmers will tell you this proposal – to cut legal immigration in half — would put their business in peril.
Finally, I fear this proposal will not only hurt our agriculture, tourism and service economy in South Carolina, it incentivizes more illegal immigration as positions go unfilled. After dealing with this issue for more than a decade, I know that when you restrict legal labor to employers it incentivizes cheating.
In the Senate, Graham’s push for cheap labor is aided by GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, who is a strong advocate for more business outsourcing in his state of North Carolina.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market. But business groups have used their political power to tilt the labor market in their favor, by using immigration laws to import a huge supply of foreign workers, all of who also serve as consumers.
The federal government now offers green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants each year. The government also hands out almost 3 million short-term work permits to foreign blue-collar workers and white-collar graduates. These permits include roughly 330,000 one-year OPT permits for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, roughly 200,000 three-year H-1B visas for foreign white-collar professionals, and 350,000 two-year permits to DACA illegals. Universities employ roughly 100,000 foreign guest workers.
That Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
The cheap-labor policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many locations because the major states and cities have a surplus of imported labor. For example, 30 percent of zip codes in South Carolina had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group.
Americans tell pollsters that they strongly oppose amnesties and cheap-labor immigration, even as most Americans also want to favor legal immigrants, and many sympathize with illegals.
Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a growing percentage of the nation’s annual income is shifting to investors and away from employees. The business-funded Hamilton Project suggests that the shift is transferring $1 trillion per year from 160 million employees to the nation’s investors.
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