Koch Network, Chamber of Commerce Lobby for Durbin, Graham Amnesty

The Koch’s network of donor class organizations and the United States Chamber of Commerce are lobbying senators to help pass Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens.

This week, Durbin and Graham reintroduced their “DREAM Act” legislation, which would ensure that millions of illegal aliens who meet minimal educational and criminal background check standards are given green cards and eventually American citizenship.

The amnesty would legalize at least two million illegal aliens, allowing them to enter the U.S. workforce and compete against Americans for jobs, while costing taxpayers about $26 billion, according to an analysis by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).

Previous analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that such an amnesty would put more U.S. citizen children of illegal aliens — commonly referred to as “anchor babies” — on welfare. Additionally, about one-in-five of the amnestied illegal aliens would end up on food stamps while at least one-in-seven would go on Medicaid.

Despite a mass unemployment crisis, in which more than 17 million Americans remain jobless, the Koch network and the Chamber of Commerce are urging senators to sign onto the amnesty.

“We applaud Senators Durbin and Graham for reintroducing the Dream Act today,” the Chamber’s Neil Bradley wrote in a statement:

Dreamers were brought here to the U.S. as children, which is the only country they know as home. They are our neighbors, our classmates, and our coworkers. They contribute to their communities and the companies where they work; some have even started their own businesses.

Permanent protection for Dreamers is long-overdue and should become law without delay. Providing Dreamers with an opportunity to earn permanent legal status and U.S. citizenship will benefit our economy, strengthen our communities, improve our national security, and is simply the right thing to do.

The Libre Initiative, one of a handful of Koch-funded groups, praised Durbin and Graham for introducing the amnesty.

“Sens. [Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin]’s work of uniting in favor of a permanent solution for Dreamers is a critical step forward,” the group wrote in a post online. “We urge other Senators to engage in dialogue to address this topic.”

The amnesty, as well as President Joe Biden’s more expansive amnesty plan for the entire illegal alien population, faces tremendous roadblocks in the Senate. This week, for instance, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) poured cold water on any kind of amnesty plan.

Get more American vaccinated, bipartisan COVID relief, helping private industry create good jobs for Americans & confronting #China’s plan to dominate the world are all more important right now than immigration reform

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 3, 2021

Increasing legal immigration levels and delivering an amnesty for illegal aliens to permanently stay in the U.S. has been a longtime priority of the big business lobby, Wall Street, Big Tech, and other corporate interests. A flooded labor market helps reduce U.S. wages, allowing businesses to cut labor costs, increase profit margins, and tip the scales of the economy to their demands.

Research by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota reveals that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of an American workers’ occupation, Americans’ weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent as more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

Current immigration levels put downward pressure on U.S. wages while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth away from America’s working and middle class and towards employers and new arrivals, research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.

Economist George Borjas has detailed how the country’s working class, those without a high school diploma, have been primarily hurt by current immigration levels.

“The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually,” Borjas wrote for Politico in October 2016. “According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.”

Every year, about 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. and eventually apply for citizenship. In addition, another 1.4 million visas are given out annually to foreign nationals to take U.S. jobs while 11 to 22 million illegal aliens currently live in the country.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.