A nation’s first loyalty must be to its own citizens.
But the immigration policies of President Obama and Congressional Democrats help only billionaire special interests, amnesty activists, and the citizens of other countries — while reducing jobs and pay for our own.
Every single Senate Democrat voted for the Obama-backed plan to provide immediate work permits to 12 million illegal immigrants — allowing them to compete for any job in America. This legislation would also double the rate at which low-wage guest workers are brought into the U.S. to fill jobs throughout the economy.
Further, the legislation would triple the rate of permanent immigration, giving lifetime work permits and citizenship to over 30 million immigrants over the next ten years.
America already has the world’s most generous immigration policy. The foreign-born population is at record levels, quadrupling since 1970. Since 2000, the U.S. has issued nearly 30 million lawful visas to foreign guest workers and permanent immigrants. During that time, all net employment gains among the working-age went to immigrant workers.
This large surplus of labor has also pulled down wages –- family incomes are down more than $3,000 since 2009 alone.
Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas estimates that our current high immigration rates result in a wage loss of $402 billion every year for competing American workers.
Imagine then what will happen if we double the supply of foreign labor. For many Americans, who will be pushed out of the workforce altogether, their wages will be reduced to zero.
Democrats running for Senate pour millions into ads complaining special interests have too much influence. And yet every Senate Democrat candidate has voted for the crown jewel of the corporate lobbyist agenda: mass amnesty and uncontrolled immigration.
Their plan is championed by open borders billionaires like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — global CEOs who don’t think you’re entitled to the same protections their gates and fences provide them.
In fact, these immigration lobbyists have so little regard for you, that they are meeting in secret with the White House right now to plan executive amnesty orders. These orders, planned for after the election, would implement, by executive fiat, the sweeping amnesty that was rejected by the Republican House.
The planned order would include work permits for millions of illegal immigrants while substantially boosting the supply of new foreign labor– taking precious jobs directly from struggling Americans.
Efforts by Republican Senators to block this illegal amnesty were repeatedly thwarted by Leader Harry Reid’s Senate Democrat majority.
Immigration enforcement has already been decimated. Interior removals have plummeted more than 40% since 2009. Forty thousand illegal immigrant family members who had just recently crossed the border were released by the feds and failed, predictably, to appear in court. People just show up at the border and are simply released into the country — free to claim local benefits funded by U.S. taxpayers.
Seventy percent of asylum applications show warning signs of fraud. ICE officers report that they are barred from enforcing immigration law against the millions who illegally overstay their visas — a number surging every single day.
Internal DHS documents show that there are 167,000 convicted criminal aliens who were ordered deported but are at large in the U.S. and released from custody.
The administration’s non-enforcement directives have placed almost the entire illegal immigrant and overstay population beyond the reach of law enforcement. The president’s own former ICE director explained: “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”
If the president’s promised executive amnesty goes through, we will functionally have open borders in America.
But the citizens of this country, through their vote, have the power to stop it.
The elite denizens of Washington and Wall Street scorn and mock the good and decent people of this country for wanting their laws enforced and their communities protected. They try to make you feel bad for having sensible and rational concerns about how uncontrolled immigration impacts your jobs, schools, neighborhoods, and community resources.
After years of mass immigration, falling wages, and surging joblessness, isn’t it time we focused on the needs of the people living here today? Isn’t it time we got our own people back to work?
But these cosmopolitan elites, these great citizens of the world, turn a blind eye to the suffering and poverty in their own backyards. These “Masters of the Universe” have forgotten that a nation owes its first loyalty to its own citizens.
And they want you to believe that you can’t win.
But they are so wrong.
And with your vote, you have the power to prove them wrong. You have the power to deliver a message they won’t forget.
Republican Jeff Sessions represents Alabama in the United States Senate. He is ranking member of the Budget Committee.