Ordinary Americans can establish a positive immigration system that rebuilds needed prosperity, a memo from former President Donald Trump’s earliest 2016 election supporter said.
With a positive “vision of what all Americans will gain from an immigration system that works … we will win,” former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote in a memo on June 16 for the American Compass think tank:
Our vision for immigration should focus on ensuring that American workers are protected, especially the most marginal ones whom employers would rather ignore: ex-convicts, recovering addicts, the handicapped and developmentally disabled, even teenagers and single mothers who might require accommodations that employers would rather not make. … How can an American afford to raise a family while competing with an unlimited flow of workers desperate to work for any wage? The brutal fact is that businesses will always lust for cheap labor and see families as none of their concern; economists are happy so long as there are more people to buy more colas, thus boosting GDP.
A positive immigration policy would use firm enforcement to admit highly skilled people who can deliver significant economic gains, while restricting the admission of less-skilled people who are more likely to earn low wages in our market and need to rely on taxpayers for support—not because of any moral shortcoming on their part, but because that’s the economic reality that we face.
Everyone knows that wealth disparity is a crucial concern for our society. In a tight labor market with low immigration and strict enforcement, the market power of marginalized workers increases. With so many low-wage Americans struggling already, an immigration policy that gives them power to demand better wages simply makes sense, while one that weakens their position while adding yet more people in an even weaker position does not.
The current exploitative immigration system is deeply unpopular, Sessions noted: “The progressive preference for open borders, strongly supported by a corporate lobby eager for cheap labor, is deeply unpopular with the American people and efforts to promote amnesty have been repeatedly rejected.”
Read it all here.
Some Republican leaders are trying to create a positive immigration policy that benefits both business donors and ordinary Americans.
They include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has even signed an E-Verify law that is helping Americans’ pocketbooks by pressuring illegals to leave the state.
DeSantis declared on May 10:
Nobody has a right to immigrate to this country. We determine as Americans what type of immigration system benefits our country, but when you’re doing immigration, it’s not for their benefit as foreigners, it’s for your benefit as Americans.
So if there’s legal immigration that’s harming Americans, we shouldn’t do that either. For example, some of these H-1B visas, they would fire American tech workers and hire foreigners at lower wages. I don’t agree with that. I think that’s wrong.
Similarly, in a June 9 message, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) urged his farming community to make more use of labor-saving, productivity-boosting, cow-milking robots: “I’m highlighting Ohlde Family Farms located in North Central Kansas … They’re addressing workforce shortages by adopting an all-robot [cow milking] parlor. Yes, you read that right- ALL ROBOT PARLOR.”
So far, however, the GOP’s priorities are set by wealthy coastal investors and many ordinary business groups who gain from the government-delivered inflow of government-funded consumers, lower-skill workers, and apartment-sharing renters.
For example, Michigan-based WoodTV.com reported on June 15:
Nate Koetje, the CEO of Feyen Zylstra electrical services, said economic growth is dependent on a growing population. He said the supply of people available to work is shrinking while the number of jobs continues to grow.
“We’re working to provide leadership in the business community on attracting new Americans to West Michigan,” he said. “As part of that solution, we want to inspire both the business community and policy makers to look at immigration as a force for good and something that our community needs to embrace in order to continue to build on the successes we’ve had in the past.”
"What's the rough cost to American taxpayers since the roughly four million people have come into this country illegally since January 2021…?"
Mayorkas: "Let me turn that question around a little bit" pic.twitter.com/OVyzGF2ZK1
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 11, 2023
President Joe Biden and his border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, want to import more poor, diverse migrants for economic and “equity” reasons amid abundant evidence of the huge pocketbook and civic damage caused to blue-collar and white-collar Americans and their communities.
