Republican Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) has drafted a bill to raise the huge inflow of migrants from Afghanistan into Americans’ communities, workplaces, and housing.
The expansion bill is titled the “Showing American Values by Evacuating (SAVE) Afghan Partners Act of 2021.”
The bill offers an additional 10,000 “Special Immigrant Visas” — enough for perhaps 40,000 family members — and widens the eligibility to people who merely “contributed” to U.S. government operations in the country.
Under current rules, the SIV family visas are only granted to Afghans who worked hand-in-glove with U.S. military forces, such as translators. But Meijer’s bill would grant the SIV visas — and also, quickly, citizenship — to Afghans who were paid by the U.S. taxpayers, for example, to build roads, hospitals, and schools for Afghans. The Meijer bill says:
Section 602(b)(2)(A)(ii)(I) of the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 (8 U.S.C. 1101 note) is amended by inserting after “United States Government” the following “, including employment or other work in Afghanistan through a cooperative agreement or grant funded by the United States Government if the Secretary of State determines, based on a recommendation from the Federal agency or organization authorizing such funding, that such alien contributed to the United States mission in Afghanistan” [emphasis added].
Meijer justified the additional inflow as a moral duty to Afghans who worked alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, regardless of current moral obligations to fellow Americans. “America has a moral obligation to our citizens and loyal allies, and we must make sure that obligation is being kept,” Meijer and co-author Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) said in a statement.
A U.S. soldier holds a sign indicating a gate is closed as hundreds of people gather some holding documents, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 26, 2021. (AP Photo/Wali Sabawoon)
Meijer’s office did not respond to emails from Breitbart News.
Opposition to the Afghan migration by “the GOP, at least members of Congress, has been rather muted,” said Robert Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies:
From Republican leadership on down to run-of-the-mill cheap labor members of Congress like Meyer, their silence is compliance with an initiative to put many cheap foreign workers into this country … They don’t care about the impact on the constituents, on neighborhoods, on the schools, or the healthcare system. That’s all this boils down to — the unholy union of the open-borders left and cheap-labor corporate Republican right.
GOP legislators are choosing to accept the Democrats’ cover story for their wage-cutting, power-shifting migration, he said:
They say, “Oh my gosh, they were all of these Afghans were in the trenches with our soldiers, they risked their lives, they basically took bullets for our troops.” … That’s not true. A very, very, very small subset of the Afghans were actual interpreters or translators, which is a key and appreciable skill … The rest worked at the food court on the base, or at the embassy, or elsewhere, which is not exactly mission-critical work.
Only about 7,000 of the 100,000 U.S. airlift evacuees from Afghanistan have applied for SIV visas. In prior years, only about one-in-six applicants were given SIV visas.
Refugees board buses that will take them to a processing center after they arrive at Dulles International Airport after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan August 27, 2021, in Dulles, Virginia. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Meijer has long been an advocate for cheap labor migration amid the abundant evidence that government-created migration reduces wages for Americans and drives up their housing costs.
For example, Meijer pleaded in March with Joe Biden’s border chief to help businesses by delivering more H-2B seasonal workers to the tourist industry in Michigan.
“It’s essential that we have additional visas be granted as soon as possible, so we can begin to have those businesses plan to reopen or the 2021 summer tourism season … I would like to work with your office,” he told Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who has opened the border to an inflow of more than 700,000 migrants.
During @SecMayorkas' testimony before @HomelandGOP today, I underscored the importance of H-2B visas to Michigan’s economy. Recently @DHSgov announced this visa cap has already been reached for the year, but there remains a critical labor need for seasonal businesses. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/VRj4N2Z0rJ
— Rep. Peter Meijer (@RepMeijer) March 17, 2021
Despite Meijer’s pleading, the reduced supply of seasonal foreign workers in 2021 forced Michigan employers to expand their recruitment of Americans, often with pay raises. In April, one month after Meijer’s pleading, Michelle Socha of Northwest Michigan Works! told the Traverse City Business News:
“Employers are raising wages to draw candidates, and offering bonuses, more company perks and even in some cases, offering workforce housing opportunities,” Socha said, adding that apprenticeship programs to teach workers key skills – from winemaking to manufacturing technology – have also become more common.
“Employers are raising wages to draw candidates, and offering bonuses, more company perks and even in some cases, offering workforce housing opportunities,” Socha said, adding that apprenticeship programs to teach workers key skills – from winemaking to manufacturing technology – have also become more common.
Many Americans earned higher wages during the 2021 summer because of the visa curbs set by in 2020 by President Donald Trump. These gains were won despite myriad claims by business owners that the supply of foreign workers has no impact on Americans’ wages. “During summer, the [Mission Point] resort needs 26 cooks, but it now has 13. They’re also making more, now $17 per hour, compared to the federal prevailing wage of $12,” BridgeMI.com reported in late July.
In a photo from November 17, 2017, in Detroit, River Bistro chef Maxcel Hardy prepares a Caribbean shrimp dish at his restaurant. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
The Trump curbs also helped the U.S. companies that place Americans in short-term and seasonal jobs around the nation.
Michigan’s employment situation is made difficult by the low wages and other economic pressures that lower the birthrate, by the migration-pressured departure of young people to coastal cities, and by the opioid epidemic. Roughly 500,000 Americans remain unemployed in Michigan.
But many employers prefer to hire compliant migrants or visa workers. For example, Omer Yousafzai told the Houston Chronicle August 30:
He said … they’re hospitable, many speak fluent English and have worked as interpreters, and they’re coming from a tough life and are eager to work hard. “When you ask them to jump, they don’t ask you, ‘Why?’” Yousafzai said. “They say, ‘How high?’”
Meijer’s 3rd district in Michigan is relatively prosperous. He is the grandson of the founder of the Meijer store chain. He joined the U.S. Army Reserve and spent a year in Iraq as an intelligence support analyst. He was elected in November and supported the Democrats’ last-minute January impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
In July, Meijer voted for passage of a bill by Rep. Crow that added 8,000 families visas for translators and other Afghans who worked hand-in-glove with U.S. forces. Only 16 GOP legislators voted against the bill, which will likely import roughly additional 32,000 Afghan migrants, alongside the tens of thousands of non-SIV Afghan migrants who are being imported by Mayorkas and Biden.
Afghan citizens pack inside a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, as they are transported from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan, August 15, 2021. The Taliban on Sunday swept into Kabul, the Afghan capital, after capturing most of Afghanistan. (Capt. Chris Herbert/U.S. Air Force via AP)
Biden’s supports have called for the importation of hundreds of thousands of Afghans.
GOP legislators sabotage their claimed conservative goals by backing Biden’s fraud-ridden Afghan migration, Law noted:
Instead of wanting to amass power in Congress and implementing sound policies that would benefit American and American workers … they’d rather be friends with corporations and their donors than actually be in charge of government where they could advocate and implement policies that actually make this country better.
Overall, Biden’s government is expected to import 1.6 million migrants in 2021, or roughly one migrant for every two American births in the year. This policy extracts many new workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries for the benefit of U.S. employers, investors, and government agencies — and also to eventually deliver many potential voters to the Democratic party.
President Joe Biden answers questions from members of the media about the bombings at the Kabul airport that killed at least 12 U.S. service members, from the East Room of the White House, August 26, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
This policy of extraction migration damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages and raises their housing costs.
More migration also means that coastal investors can hire cheap foreign labor on the coasts instead of investing in heartland jobs or deploying wage-boosting robots. Immigration also shrinks Americans’ political clout and wrecks their open-minded, equality-promoting civic culture.
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