Two out of three Republican candidates for Ohio’s 2024 United States Senate seat suggested Saturday that illegal migrants be allowed to stay and work in manual jobs that would otherwise be accomplished by better-paid Americans using machines.
“It’s not realistic to take 20 million consumers out of the economy,” said GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose. “Immigration, when done legally, is a net positive for our country.”
“We also have to recognize that legal immigration in our country … is a huge part of our economics,” state Sen. Matt Dolan (R) told the boisterous crowd at a country club in Medina, Ohio. “We have to have a meaningful discussion about who [among the illegals] can stay, who can provide value to the United States of America.”
“They’re for amnesty. I’m not. That’s the bottom line,” responded populist Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman who is also running for the seat now held by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
Democrat Brown rarely talks about migration — despite its huge economic impact on Americans. But he usually votes for the Democrats’ business-backed amnesty and cheap labor bills.
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Federal agencies have pushed millions of Americans out of the workforce, partly by allowing employers to use cheap, young, indebted, and hard-working migrants in place of discarded, older, alienated Americans. In Ohio, the share of working Americans dropped another 4 percent between 2000 and 2023, according to a September report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Moreno cited his own experience as a legal immigrant as he promised consistent enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws against the growing population of illegals, including those who got in before Biden was inaugurated:
If somebody broke our law to get in our country, they cannot be rewarded by staying here. There’s no more amnesty — no more backdoor amnesty. In the 80s, we were sold this under Reagan: “We’re going to provide amnesty to this certain group of people and everything would be fine.” That is absolutely nothing that I would ever possibly support.
Moreno also detailed the legal changes needed to stop migrants from exploiting the legal loopholes in President Donald Trump’s concrete-and-steel border wall:
The asylum laws don’t need to be completely revamped … [The law] says “any natural person can claim asylum in America” — Are you ready for this? — “… whether at a legal port of entry or otherwise.” That needs to be changed [to] “only at a legal port of entry.” And by the way, if you enter through a nonlegal port of entry, you’re disqualified for life. That’s what we need to change. That can be easy legislation.
In contrast, both Dolan and LaRose tried to focus attention on the border while quietly suggesting that employers be allowed to hire the existing low-wage migrants — instead of the Americans who need decent wages to buy homes and raise kids.
“Our border is wide open, so we have to secure the border,” Dolan said, adding:
We also have to recognize that legal immigration in our country is not only a historical norm, but is a huge part of our economics.
If you’ve spent any time in northeast Ohio or northwest Ohio, you know that they rely on legal [H-2A and H-2B temporary] immigration for their nurseries or wineries or farms. You go to southeast Ohio, you know, they rely on legal immigration for their farms, for their hospitality.
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The huge number of H-2A and H-2B workers are not immigrants. They are temporary workers who usually go home after the seasonal jobs are finished.
Still, some of the visa workers are used for jobs that would otherwise go to competent, hard-working, and better-paid Americans.
“If you came during the chaos, the invasion of the Biden administration, yes, you will be deported,” responded LaRose, who then suggested that the migrants who arrived before Biden be allowed to work jobs as second-class workers without economic aid or legal recognition.
“What I said is that if you came here illegally, you will never get United States citizenship and you will never get government benefits,” he said.
“Immigration when done legally is a net positive for our country … We should have a merit-based immigration system, but only after we have a secure border,” LaRose said.
In Ohio, voters’ wages have stalled during 2023 amid President Joe Biden’s entwined combination of inflation and migration.
The candidates also emphasized the danger of the cartels’ drug smuggling.
Moreno said:
We have to go to Mexico to explain to them “You’re our largest trading partner of legal goods … You’re also our largest illegal trading partner. You’re bringing fentanyl — which you’re getting from China — into our communities and killing 100,000-plus Americans. You have to make a choice.” Colombia made that choice in the 80s.
“We need to clarify that these Mexican drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations,” said LaRose.
Extraction Migration
The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast numbers of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.
The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.
The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states — such as Ohio — by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.
The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites and the establishment to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.
Migration — and especially labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters. A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.