A well-financed coalition of cheap labor interest groups is trying to persuade the GOP to cave on amnesty for illegal aliens. This coalition of libertarian and business front groups is simultaneously attacking supporters of immigration enforcement, and attempting to make a case that pandering to the illegal alien and business lobbies is the Republican Party’s only hope for political survival.
The cheap labor coalition’s strategy is to package their plan as the “conservative agenda” for immigration reform. In reality, it is a radical agenda for the demise of the American middle class. To achieve this, they are prepared to engage in ad hominem attacks against anyone whom they perceive to be standing in their way.
The libertarian/cheap labor agenda for immigration reform would ultimately lead to lower wages for many American workers, greater burdens on government services, higher taxes for those who continue to earn enough money to pay taxes, and no end to illegal immigration.
- Amnesty would allow current illegal aliens to compete for virtually all U.S. jobs, not just those offered by employers prepared to break the law.
- Expanded guest worker programs would allow business interests even greater latitude to bypass American workers, or force American workers to accept lower wages.
- Expanded employment-based immigration, without elimination of family chain migration policies, would further undermine job opportunities and wages for American workers.
- Amnesty would result in higher taxes, not lower taxes. A new estimate by Republican staff members on the Senate Budget Committee estimates that amnesty would increase the already staggering cost of Obamacare by as much as $300 billion over the next decade.
- Libertarian/cheap labor interests oppose meaningful employment verification. Even if it were included in an amnesty and guest worker bill, they would work to impede or delay implementation of a universal work eligibility system as they have done in the past.
- Even under their best case scenario, mass amnesty would result in less than a 1 percent increase in GDP. But that extremely modest growth in GDP (if it were to occur) would further exacerbate the hollowing out of the American middle class.
In an effort to promote their own narrow agenda, the libertarian/cheap labor lobby is falsely arguing that opposition to mass amnesty and increases in immigration is the single greatest impediment to Hispanics voting for Republicans. All polling of Hispanic voters indicates that jobs and the economy are the critical issues that drive Hispanic voters and that immigration ranks far down on their list of concerns. Republican support for the libertarian/cheap labor lobby’s agenda on immigration would do nothing to attract Hispanic voters to the party.
Absent any compelling arguments to justify their immigration agenda, the libertarian/cheap labor lobby is employing the age-old tactic of attacking and smearing those who have effectively rebutted their arguments. Advocates for true immigration reform and immigration enforcement have only one agenda: Protecting the interests of American workers and taxpayers, and ensuring that future generations of Americans can enjoy the prosperity we have taken for granted.