GOP mega-donor and Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is blasting conservatives in the party who are opposed to comprehensive amnesty legislation.
The Washington Post reports that Adelson, who spent nearly $100 million in 2012 and will likely spend a hefty sum in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, “upbraided many in the GOP for their opposition to legalizing millions” of illegal immigrants. He reportedly said that without a “comprehensive overhaul” that would legalize all of the country’s illegal immigrants, the nation would not be “the America that I’m proud to live in.”
Adelson made his remarks while addressing the Israeli American Council (IAC) in Washington, D.C., along with liberal billionaire Haim Saban, a Hillary Clinton ally. This is not the first time that Adelson has lobbied for comprehensive amnesty legislation.
“Let’s start by instituting a process in which all undocumented immigrants receive permits to legally work here,” Adelson wrote in a Politico op-ed earlier this year while the country was facing a flood of illegal immigrant children from South America. “Let’s provide them with the opportunity to get driver’s licenses and bank accounts—simple things that we all take for granted.” He also joined billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in calling for an unlimited number of high-tech guest-worker visas in a New York Times op-ed.
House Republican leaders have expressed a willingness to work on an immigration bill in the GOP-led Congress, while President Barack Obama, who has vowed to enact executive amnesty by the end of the year, said that he felt time has not run out even on a lame-duck amnesty bill. Conservative opponents of amnesty, citing a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report, have emphasized that massive amnesty legislation and awarding of guest-worker permits would only lower wages and reduce employment opportunities for U.S.-born Americans and legal immigrants already in the country.
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