Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren is blasting U.S. companies that ship jobs abroad while the self-styled “economic patriot” leaves the door wide open for illegal aliens to work here.
“A lot of giant companies refer to themselves as ‘American.’ But let’s face it, they only have one real loyalty: Their shareholders. A Warren administration will halt the hollowing out of American cities and create good American jobs,’’ Warren tweeted this week.
The Massachusetts senator singled out Levi Strauss, General Electric and “the maker of the famous No. 2 pencil” for moving jobs out of the U.S. She’s not wrong about that.
Warren also assailed Washington, D.C., politicians who “allow companies to call the shots on trade agreements and the tax code.” She’s not wrong about that either.
But in failing to address immigration and border security, Warren is only half right, and her allegedly patriotic agenda collapses.
For all her bold hyperbole about protecting American jobs, the senator has been unclear and evasive about her position on E-Verify, the government’s internet-based system that vets applicants’ eligibility to work in this country legally.
Without mandatory E-Verify screening, the U.S. remains a jobs magnet for low-wage illegal workers. The presence of so much cheap labor drives down the wages that employers are willing to pay American employees. In 2017, the Pew Research Center estimated 7.6 million illegal aliens were in the U.S. civilian workforce. That figure would surely rise in a Warren administration.
NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for immigration enforcement, rates Sen. Warren’s voting record as “abysmal” when it comes to opposing work permits for illegal workers.
Even liberal Mother Jones magazine called Warren’s immigration policy “de facto open borders.”
“It recommends no actions to improve border law enforcement in any way. There’s nothing about either a wall or a ‘virtual wall.’ There’s nothing about E-Verify. There’s nothing about ‘smarter’ or ‘more efficient’ enforcement. No one will ever be deported — except, presumably, for serious felons, though Warren doesn’t even say that explicitly,” Mother Jones concluded. Warren can bash American business all she wants. But it’s all sound and fury signifying nothing as long as her immigration positions continue to give illegal aliens a free pass at great cost to legal U.S. workers.