On Thursday, business leaders met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough hours after President Barack Obama gave a speech pressing for comprehensive immigration reform.
According to The Hill, groups like the Chamber of Commerce, which has indicated it will target Republicans opposed to immigration reform, and the National Association of Manufacturers were represented. The meeting, according to a White House official, was “intended to continue conversations with folks — inside and outside the government — supportive of advancing common-sense immigration reform. This is a top priority for the president and we’ll continue to do everything we can to get this done.”
Business groups have been a driving factor behind the push for immigration reform legislation. Industry leaders and groups like the Chamber of Commerce have donated heavily to both sides so they could expand the pool of labor coming into the United States to do jobs they have claimed “Americans will not do,” even though the unemployment rate has only decreased because Americans who cannot find work are leaving the workforce. The unemployment rate specifically among black Americans has consistently been above 10%.
Yet, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) indicated on Wednesday that he may bring up immigration reform legislation this year. House Republicans have reportedly been working on piecemeal bills with the goal of getting to conference with the Senate, where a provision for a pathway to citizenship would most likely prevail.
Though President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he has not heard of one good reason why anyone would oppose comprehensive immigration reform, opponents, as Breitbart News has reported, have stressed the Congressional Budget Office report that determined that comprehensive immigration reform legislation would lower the wages of working class Americans of all backgrounds without even solving the illegal immigration problem.
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