Chamber of Commerce: Conservatives the 'Problem' in Amnesty Battle

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said once again that conservatives were the “problem” when it came to passing immigration reform legislation with amnesty provisions. 

“The left has never been the problem on this,” Randel Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president, said on Friday during an immigration summit in Washington. “The right is the problem.”

As Breitbart News reported, that is why the Chamber is reportedly going to spend $50 million against the Tea Party, largely because the Tea Party opposes amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform. According to Bloomberg News, the Chamber of Commerce wants to “rewrite” the immigration laws because current laws limit “access to workers.”

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the Senate’s immigration bill that the Chamber and its big-business allies covet would lower the wages of American workers, and Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue implied earlier this month that his group would try to make the Tea Party “feel some heat” in trying to push for some form of amnesty for the country’s illegal immigrants. In addition, the group reportedly will again try to use evangelical groups to pressure conservatives on immigration issues. But as Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle has doggedly reported, many of the evangelical groups have been financed by those on the institutional left like George Soros.

President Barack Obama and House Republicans will try to push for immigration reform legislation after Obama’s State of the Union Speech next week. Representatives from the Chamber of Commerce met with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, and former Bush administration Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who founded a super PAC that backs candidates who support amnesty, at an immigration summit last Friday ahead of Obama’s address. 

Advocates of immigration reform–like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)–have also emphatically stated that amnesty legislation would have passed a long time ago were it not for the strength of the Tea Party and the conservative grassroots.