Rep. Labrador: Mid-Term Elections Are All About Amnesty and Immigration

GOP leaders need to make the 2018 midterm elections all about immigration as pro-amnesty Democrats block immigration talks and threaten government annual spending bills, says Rep. Raul Labrador, the co-author of a new GOP immigration-and-amnesty bill.

GOP Majority Leader Rep. “Kevin McCarthy and the Senate leadership need to make it about this — if we can’t make a deal that takes care of the border security issue, then we need to walk away from the table and just say ‘Fine, let the American people decide,” Labrador told Breitbart News January 12.

“I know the American people will be on the side of security and enforcement and they will not stand with the Democrats,” said Labrador, who is retiring from Congress to run for the governorship of Idaho.

Labrador also said his “Securing America’s Future Act” immigration-and-amnesty bill will also help raise wages for votes by trimming the inflow of legal immigrants. “We need higher wages — that is the most important thing,” he said, adding:

That is why our bill reduces numbers on immigration. That is why our bill is supported by [pro-American] NumbersUSA. Our bill is an important step in the future of immigration. It modernizes the immigration system, and it leads to a skills-based system, as opposed to a family immigration [chain migration] system.

The legislation was developed by House judiciary chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, House homeland defense chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, Rep. Martha McSally, who chairs the homeland defense committee’s panel on border subcommittee, plus Labrador, who chairs the judiciary committee’s immigration subcommittee,

The bill cuts the annual inflow of roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants by almost one quarter, or 260,000, even as it provides business with roughly 35,000 extra imported white-collar workers and provides the agriculture industry with hundreds of thousands of temporary workers. The bill also provides roughly 760,000 ‘DACA’ illegals with renewable work permits, in contrast to the Democrats’ DREAM Act bill which would provide fast-track citizenship to a roughly 3.25 million illegals and to many additional chain-migration relatives.

So far, Democrats have offered token concessions in exchange for an amnesty, and have loudly walked away from talks after declaring that President Donald Trump privately used the word “shithole” to describe some African countries. Since that conversation, Democrats and their media allies have pressured Trump towards concessions by claiming that his criticism of some African countries means he is negatively stereotyping all individuals of African descent.

“I think it is imperative that we stand strong on this issue,” Labrador told Breitbart January 12. He continued:

Right now the Democratic base is energized and if you want to energize the Republican base, the best thing you can do it to keep your promise. The worst thing you can do in 2018 is cave to Democrats on immigration because the base will not show up, so the Democrats will then take over the House and the Senate …

The national campaign both House and the Senate needs to be that the Republicans understand the importance of security at the border and security at home, and the Democrats are willing — if they go to the point of shutting down the government [budget] … and gamble the future of the United States — to protect an illegal population. I just don’t see how that is a winning formula …

If the House position is our bill which keeps its promise to the Amerian people … the contrast is going to be sharp, the 2018 election can be all about more seats in the Senate. We can tell the American people that there are nine senators that refuse to work with us on immigration, so it is time for them to bring … conservative Republicans from those states.

The Democratic party is moving further left, so it is unlikely to be able to moderate its policies before the election, Labrador said. “The Democratic Party more and more is becoming a monolithic party nationally, and I think that is why they are having more trouble winning elections.”

Trump’s pro-business economic policies are helping companies expand — and Trump’s immigration policies are forcing them to hire Americans and recent legal immigrants. For example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty blocked by Trump would have allowed Americans companies to import a limitless supply of low-wage workers from the Pacific rim for a wide variety of service-related jobs now performed by American voters.

According to the January 12 Washington Post: 

“I’ve been in this business since 1984, and I’ve never seen what we’re dealing with in terms of hiring people,” said [Ron] Sandlin, president of the Jacksonville, Fla., trucking firm. “Driver pay is going to have to continue to go up, and our customers are going to have to pay for it.” …

He has raised pay over the past year by 3 to 4 percent, added two vacation days and offered hiring and longevity bonuses that run up to $10,000 in certain cases. …

Millions of aging or discouraged workers who retreated to the sidelines in the aftermath of the recession will likely be drawn back into the workforce. That would be a healthy development, unless the job market gets so tight that employers engage in bidding wars that rapidly drive wages and prices higher.

The New York Times reported January 13:

A rapidly tightening labor market is forcing companies across the country to consider workers they once would have turned away. That is providing opportunities to people who have long faced barriers to employment, such as criminal records, disabilities or prolonged bouts of joblessness …

Many economists say the recovery still has a ways to go before rivaling that of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The unemployment rate has fallen nearly as far as it did in 2000, when it hit 3.8 percent. But millions of Americans still have part-time or temporary jobs, or are out of the labor force entirely. And parts of the country still bear the scars of the recession that officially ended nearly a decade ago…

Still, household incomes have risen rapidly in the past two years, with the strongest gains coming for those in the poorest families. And there are signs that the tightening labor market is at last beginning to shift bargaining power from companies to workers. Ahu Yildirmaz, an economist who helps lead the research arm of the payroll-processing company ADP, said her firm’s data showed more people switching jobs, and getting bigger bumps in pay for doing so.

However, some business-first Republicans using Democratic opposition to avoid supporting Labrador’s bill. For example, TheHill.com quoted opposition comments from retiring Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent:

“Even if we did have 218 Republican votes for a DACA bill, it’s not going to be close to what the Senate passes. … We need to pass a DACA bill with over 300 votes,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), co-chairman of the moderate Tuesday Group.

“We can go through this exercise for a while, until we ultimately get jammed by the Senate. We’ll indulge all these folks with this fanciful notion that we’ll somehow pass a DACA bill with 218 Republican votes — and then unicorns fly.”

Polls show that Trump’s American-first immigration policy is very popular.

For example, a December poll of likely 2018 voters shows two-to-one voter support for Trump’s pro-American immigration policies, and a lopsided four-to-one opposition against the cheap-labor, mass-immigration, economic policy pushed by bipartisan establishment-backed D.C. interest-groups.

Business groups and Democrats tout the misleading, industry-funded “Nation of Immigrants” polls which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants, including the roughly 670,000 ‘DACA’ illegals and the roughly 3.25 million ‘dreamer’ illegals.