Republican Senators are hoping to take up an amnesty bill passed by the House last December that also expands guest worker programs; White House says it’s “listening” to these proposals.
News reports this week brought attention to a push in Congress to pass an amnesty for illegal aliens working in the agricultural industry, which would in effect create an indentured servitude program, allowing illegal aliens to gain green cards in return for a period of service working an ag-related job.
According to a story in Politico by Anita Kumar on Wednesday, the White House “has been in talks with Senators” hoping to convince the President to back amnesty legislation.
Last December, the House passed the mis-titled Farm Workforce Modernization Act, introduced by Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).
You will find the NumbersUSA fact sheet for the bill here. And Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote up his take at National Review (“Farming Like It’s 1699.”)
In the Senate, Republicans Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) are leading efforts in that chamber to pass legislation along the lines of Rep. Lofgren’s bill, with indications the Senators would like to expand guest worker programs for other industries. The senior Senator from South Carolina is well-deserving of his nickname “Grahamnesty,” though, to his credit, he has always been upfront about his aims to provide U.S. employers with a continual flow of low-wage labor from abroad. Tillis has never had Graham’s national visibility, but he, too, has been a reliable advocate for amnesty and expanded guest worker programs.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), who has emerged in the House as a strong voice for enforcement, sent a letter to Senator Graham on Tuesday:
I write to urge that any immigration reform measures undertaken in the Senate, for Agriculture workers or otherwise, focus expressly and solely on actual and desperately needed immigration reform. There should be no amnesty considered as we should be squarely focused on re-establishing actual operational control of our border, which we currently do not have. – - Rep. Chip Roy
Kumar points out that amnesty and expanded guest worker programs go against pledges made by President Trump on the 2016 campaign trial, and reiterated after he took office. She also wrote that:
A White House official confirmed the ongoing negotiations on the guest worker proposal and said the effort is an attempt to generate action on a smaller immigration proposal after a larger one stalled and won few adherents.
“We’ve also been listening to stakeholders,” the official said. “We’ve also developed points of view on what the temporary system should look like.”
Journalists have written a lot about how the Trump Administration wants to decrease immigration, and some have even claimed the administration has already achieved this end, often conflating legal admissions with illegal entries. It remains an open question whether the President truly supports that goal.
While he endorsed the RAISE Act in 2017, President Trump more recently said that America “needs workers” and he would like to see “the largest numbers ever” of legal immigrants.
The President isn’t always precise in his language, and he must be given credit for steps taken to secure the border, though he has not pressured Congress to pass mandatory E-Verify. However, just this week Acting White House Chief of State Mick Mulvaney was quoted as saying this:
“We are desperate – desperate – for more people….We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.”
Wages are finally started to rise for workers at the lower end of the pay-scale. It is for this reason, and not because of any labor shortages, that employers are now “desperate” for immigration increases.
Mr. Mulvaney referenced “immigrants,” not “legal immigrants. NumbersUSA recommends that citizens
White House comment line: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
# # #
