WASHINGTON – On Monday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, blasted President Obama and a small group of CEOs who have allied with him to push comprehensive immigration reform, and urged the GOP-controlled House to stand strong against them.
“House leaders must lay out clearly to the American people the President’s dismal record on immigration,” Sessions said in a statement. “During his time in office, the President has systematically dismantled interior enforcement, handcuffing immigration officers and bypassing Congress. These facts—drawn from the testimony from immigration officers themselves—should be clearly documented before the whole nation. No agreement should be entered into while such lawlessness continues.”
Sessions particularly warned against the economic impact of comprehensive immigration reform, expressing concerns that a flood of new workers into the labor force would be damaging to the economy.
“[T]he President must be asked — by media and lawmakers alike — how he can possibly justify a plan that will double the flow of immigrant workers at a time when 91.5 million Americans are outside the labor force?” Sessions continued. “Indeed, as the President makes his immigration remarks he is preparing to hold a fundraiser with Silicon Valley executives, a group clamoring for more guest workers at a time when nearly half of recent college grads are underemployed. Wages are flat and falling for U.S. workers — the clearest evidence that there is not a labor shortage, but a jobs shortage.”
As The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro pointed out earlier today, progressive and business groups have spent more than $1.5 billion since 2007 “on advocacy and lobbying” for a comprehensive immigration bill at a time when the unemployment rate is through the roof. Sessions urged his congressional colleagues to resist these efforts to manipulate U.S. immigration policy to be tailored to these very narrow interests.
“America is not an oligarchy,” Sessions added. “Congressional leaders must forcefully reject the notion, evidently accepted by the President, that a small cadre of CEOs can tailor the nation’s entire immigration policy to suit their narrow interests. A Republic must answer to the people.”
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