1/13/2015 - Conn Carroll Townhall.com
Are you for or against
"immigration reform"?
That is the question conservatives
who oppose amnesty are tired of hearing. No one (conservative, moderate, or
liberal) believes the current immigration system is working. The only real
question is how should it be fixed.
For too long, many conservatives
believe, pro-amnesty voices have defined the debate. What should we do with the
11 million illegal immigrants in the country today? Should we deport them or
legalize them? How can American businesses get the foreign workers
they need? How will our immigration policies affect Central American migrants?
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) believes a
very important group has been left out of this liberal framing entirely:
the American worker. In a 22-page memo hand delivered to ever Republican
congressmen today, Sessions writes:
Republicans—who stood alone in
Congress to save America from the President’s immigration bill and who alone
have fought against his executive amnesty—must define themselves as the party
of the American worker, the party of higher wages, and the one party that
defends the American people from Democrats’ extreme agenda of open borders and
economic stagnation.
Sessions' memo notes that the
foreign-born population of the United States actually fell from 1930 through
1950, before leveling off through the 1970, a time when American wages rose
steadily. But since then, the foreign population has surged significantly,
rising from 14 million in 1980 to more than 41 million today. During that same
time period American worker wages have stagnated and have actually fallen by
about $2,000 since 1980.
Sessions does not believe
this decline in American worker wages and the explosion of the
foreign-born population are a coincidence. He writes:
Immigration policy directly affects
voters in ways that Washington “experts” do not see or understand. It impacts
their jobs, wages, hospitals, schools, communities, and security. The failure
of politicians to understand these real and deep concerns has produced an
increasingly large gap between what politicians say about immigration and what
voters actually think. (Imagine for a moment immigration policy from the
perspective of an American worker who has lost his job to lower-paid labor from
abroad). Many inside the DC bubble have no awareness that immigration rates have
quadrupled to record levels, that all net employment growth over the last 14
years has gone to foreign workers, or that studies indicate the surplus of
labor being brought into the U.S. has been driving a precipitous decline in
workers’ wages. And while these realities are never covered by the Beltway
media, they are experienced by working people across the nation.
Sessions recommends that Republicans
pursue "discrete, targeted enforcement measures" that would help slow
the growth of the foreign born population, including: mandatory E-Verify,
ending tax credits for illegal immigrants; canceling federal funds to
sanctuary cities, ending catch-and-release on the border, and suspension of
visas to countries with high overstay rates.
The memo does not spend much time on
Obama's November amnesty, but he does warn that, "how Congress
responds to this emergency will define its legacy," and he bemoans the
focus on the Keystone Pipeline and Trade Promotion Authority,
"while funding DHS is treated more as a hurdle to clear than a line in the
sand."
Separately, Sessions has endorsed
Rep. Rob Aderholt's (R-AL) amendment to the Department of Homeland Security
funding bill, which would not only defund Obama's November 2014 Deferred Action
for Parental Accountability (DAPA) amnesty, but also his June 2012 Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty as well.
The Aderholt bill even reaches back
to a series of memos written by former Immigration and Customs
Enforcement director John Morton that made it much easier for illegal
immigrants to avoid deportation but did not give them work permits as the DAPA
and DACA programs do.
Even if the Aderholt bill amendment
is attached to the DHS funding bill, it is highly unlikely it would survive a
Senate Democrat filibuster. Sens.
Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jon Tester (D-MT), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND),
Angus King (I-ME), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) have all come out against the
provision.
But, by trying a more comprehensive
attack on Obama's amnesties first, conservatives may make it easier to pass a
narrower measure that undoes the November 2014 amnesty by limiting the number
of work permits the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office
can issue each year.
But conservatives will have to
convince House Republican leadership to fight on the issue first. Which is what
Sessions' memo is designed to do.
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