Both Sides Claim Victory on Immigration Politics

immigration
AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
Neil Munro

Pro-migration advocates claim the midterm election results show that voters oppose President’s Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and pro-reform advocates say GOP candidates won by backing Trump’s pro-American policies.

Todd Schulte, director of the Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-amnesty, cheap-labor group, FWD.us, claimed:

Schulte’s group is funded by wealthy investors who want more imported cheap-labor and more imported customers.  He cheered Rep. Dave Brat’s defeat after his Virginia district was redesigned to add more Democratic voters. The gloating was personal, partly because Brat’s 2014 primary win torpedoed Zuckerberg’s push for the “Gang of Eight” amnesty.

Schulte also cheered at the defeat of Kansas gubernatorial candidate, Kris Kobach:

Brat’s loss was also cheered by Brian Walsh, an establishment GOP activist and one of Schulte’s allies:

Nick Gourevitch, a Democratic pollster, argued that the anti-illegal-immigration ads by the GOP’s business-first donors backfired:

But the business-funded ads focused on illegal immigration — not on the cheap-labor migration which cuts Americans wages and raises their housing costs.

Journalists quickly argued that local defeats — such as the Kobach’s gubernatorial defeat in Kansas — trumps President Trump’s use of immigration reforms to spur GOP turnout nationwide and to win several Senate seats:

Walsh echoed Kopan’s claim:

Unfortunately for Schulte and Walsh, many of the defeated GOP legislators agreed that immigration policy should serve the needs of business, not the needs of Americans’ for decent wages. They defeat GOP members included Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, Florida Rep. Chris Curbelo, New York Rep. John Faso, New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance, and Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock.

Walsh noted some of the losses among business-first GOP legislators. He Tweeted;

Pro-American reformers, however, say GOP candidates won many races by echoing Trump’s “Hire American” low-immigration, high-wage economic policy:

The GOP’s successful pro-American candidates include new Sen. Josh Hawley in Missouri. Most of the losing Democrats — including Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly — backed the 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill in the Senate, and oppose Trump’s “Four Pillars” reforms in the February 2018 Senate debate.

In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke with a large share of the Latino vote — of perhaps 36 percent — partly because many middle-class Americans with Latino heritage fear large-scale migration:

Overall, Washington’s economic policy of using migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees.

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