President Joe Biden visits Baltimore on Friday following the deadly bridge disaster on March 26, as investors and left-wingers jointly use the tragic deaths of six migrant workers to demand legalization for low-wage migrants.
The illegal migrants “that have been working, contributing, paying taxes here for decades deserve the dignity of a legal work permit,” Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), told a press conference on April 3.
“Given the tragedy on the Key Bridge, this is more urgent and necessary than ever,” she said, according to a report by WTOP.com.
ABIC is quietly backed by FWD.us, an advocacy group created by multiple West Coast investors, including Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. The group is spotlighting the migrants’ deaths as it continues to push for more imported workers, customers, and renters.
The Baltimore Bridge PR push is intended to guilt Americans into supporting migration policies that help investors and migrants, not American citizens, Chris Chmielenski, the president of the Immigration Accountability Project, told Breitbart News.
So far, he said, journalists are “choosing — whether consciously or not– to ignore the fact that these [migrant] workers are being exploited at the expense of American workers who are willing to take these jobs” at decent wages.
That easy-migration policy is very unpopular with voters because it undermines ordinary Americans — including the many young men in Baltimore who lose opportunities to the cheap and illegal migrants preferred by CEOs. Since 2021, Biden and his deputies have imported more than 7 million southern migrants — alongside more than 5 million legal migrants and temporary workers.
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“That’s the whole story of immigration from the 1820s,” Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News:
I can see why a business would say “Okay, I want this obedient Central American working for me.” If I ran a business, I might have the same reaction. …[because some] immigrants might be better workers than the [local] people who aren’t even in the labor market. But we [citizens] want to draw the [locals] in to get jobs.
Congress passed popular laws to bar companies from hiring foreign workers. The goal is to ensure that local Americans get decent wages, career opportunities, and a chance to buy their own homes and build their own families.
“Which is why every black leader in 1924 was just giddy with excitement” when Congress shut down immigration in 1924, Krikorian added.
The policy was relaxed in 1965 and reversed in 1990. Since then, federal data shows that average after-inflation household wages have stayed flat in Baltimore. The share of local adults with jobs has plummeted from just under 70 percent in 1990 to 65 percent in 2023. The city is 62 percent black, yet violent crime in the area is four times the national average, and the well-funded local schools have some of the worst scores in the nation.
ABIC’s business leaders are eager to hire migrants instead of local Americans. “You can’t get a better group of people to work for you,” J. Doug Pruitt, former president of the Associated General Contractors of America, told the ABIC press conference.
MSN.com reported:
For the millions of recent Latino [migrants] in the US, construction jobs have low barriers to entry and the openings are plentiful. Stable construction jobs can also allow a path to upward mobility.
“We’re not just here trying to change our lives and achieve our goals and dreams. It’s also everyone we have left behind in our countries, we sustain them, we help them,” construction worker Reinaldo Quintero said to CNN. “We are the ones people call when they’re sick, when they can’t afford food.”
Biden’s government wants to import many more migrants above the limits set by Congress in 1990 — but does not want voters to recognize they are helping companies hire cheap foreign workers instead of better-paid Americans. So his agencies do little as companies exploit the federal supply of diligent but disposable migrants to fill dangerous jobs they do not want to be filled by plain-speaking citizens.
One illegal migrant, Victoriano Almendares, described the result via a translator during a March 29 press conference in Baltimore:
I am from Honduras. I have been living in Montgomery County, Rockville, for the last 21 years. I am an electrician … In my work, I have [suffered] two disc fractures … I was in the hospital for over a year. I continue to battle with my health and have not been able to fully recover … Because my fall caused great injury to my head, I don’t have the stability any longer to continue work high up. I’m currently out of work because … I can only do floor work.
I have faced a lot of discrimination. I have faced a lot of injustice on wages. The [employers] are not following the law when they are paying me … Many employers still owe me money have not paid me for that work … I should be paid just wages despite my status.
Illegal workers get abused by construction-industry CEOs, former Arizona Gov. Sen. Bob Worsley told his ABIC event. “We ignore what their life is like here, living in the shadows,” said Worsley, a real estate investor and a leader of the ABIC campaign for more immigrant labor. “It’s horrific, and it needs to change,” he added.
“If the employers wanted to, they can find a pool of [American] workers … but they don’t want to pay,” said Chmielenski.
The migrant-hiring push is also supported by left-wing advocacy groups, including CASA, which is a government-funded migration agency in Maryland.
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BCFD via Storyful, Jayme Krause via Storyful“In a time when there is so much hatred against the immigrant community, we look to the quiet leadership of Maynor [Sandoval] and Miguel [Luna] and appreciate how they uphold our society so that Americans can live comfortably,” said Gustavo Torres, the far-left founder of the establishment-backed CASA.
Torres spoke at a March 29 event where he and his allies urged Biden to grant “Temporary Protected Status” — a temporary amnesty — to migrants from Central America.
That campaign is backed by Zuckerberg’s investors at FWD.us:
The breadth of investors who founded and funded FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website in early 2021. But copies exist at the other sites.
The more-labor policy is also backed by employers in Maryland.
“Baltimore City’s population has declined steadily for decades, wiping out the tax base,” Veronica Cool, the former president of the Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told the BaltimoreBanner.com. “But you know who has moved in? Filling those vacant houses? Working all the jobs needed to keep the city running? Immigrants!”
Left-wing media outlets urged Democrats to use the six dead migrants against the GOP’s likely presidential candidate, President Donald Trump.
The Baltimore Sun‘s editorial board wrote:
Families and friends of the bridge collapse victims have shared stories of loving, hardworking men devoted to their families, often sending money to relatives back home. Now, contrast that reality to how immigrants have been characterized by some major political figures in this country. Former President Donald Trump has spoken in especially dehumanizing terms, lashing out about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase seemingly lifted from the Nazi playbook, and bringing languages that “nobody speaks.”
“Democrats could consider fighting back” as President Donald Trump targets “immigrant crime,” complained Greg Sargent, a staff writer at The New Republic:
What about holding events with, say, the families of the immigrant pothole-repairing workers killed in the Baltimore bridge collapse, or with immigrant essential workers who got our society through the pandemic? Democrats could say: This is what immigrants are really doing for our country. They could call on Trump: Stop the hate.
A rare left-wing dissent came from Roger House, a retired professor at Emerson College:
Biden can use the [bridge] rebuilding process to champion Black labor in the construction industry. If done right, he can incorporate the issue in his efforts to generate enthusiasm among Black working-class men broadly. He can use it to demonstrate awareness of how the civil construction industry needs to address a history of excluding Black labor.
But the investors and Democratic activists are backed by a chorus of journalists in the establishment media who are eager to demote assertive Americans in favor of dutiful migrants:
“The men who fell from that bridge are the people who build our nation,” said a column by pro-migration columnist Petula Dvorak at the Washington Post:
… when it comes to the reality of who these workers were, how they got here and why they came, more than half of us lose our minds — and our hearts. A disconcerting 61 percent of Americans see illegal immigration as a “very serious” problem, according a poll by Monmouth University last month. More than half of the poll’s respondents said they support building a border wall.
“Baltimore’s Key bridge will be rebuilt by immigrants, like America itself,” said an oped by MSNBC host
Migrants are “the engine of America’s economy,” wrote Mexico-born Washington Post columnist Leon Krauze.
The immigrant workforce has long been a crucial driver of various industries. For example, without immigrants, the construction industry would grind to a halt. Immigrants work in it at great personal risk.
… Those of us who have had the privilege of recounting these [migrant] stories understand their depth and complexity, their humanity and moral significance. There is no better antidote to hatred and misinformation. But that work needs to start now. If we continue to wait for catastrophic events to spotlight the stories of people like the six grieving Baltimore families, public perception of their struggles and aspirations will remain unchanged. That would be an American tragedy
“Immigrants built America. That’s an indisputable fact,” claimed Lorraine Ali, a columnist at the Los Angeles Times.
“When the Francis Scott Key Bridge rises again, it’s a good bet it will be immigrants who are building it,” a CNN reporter wrote under the headline, “The true face of immigration.”
“The Immigrant Workers Who Died on the Baltimore Bridge Were Hardworking Heroes,” according to the libertarian, pro-migration Reason magazine.
Many writers praised migrants for taking dangerous jobs that kill a disproportionate number of employees, said Chmielenski, adding:
These folks say, “You know what? These migrant workers we can put them in dangerous jobs. And as long as it’s the migrants doing these dangerous jobs, we don’t need to force these companies to improve safety conditions!” So they can continue to be super-dangerous as long as Americans aren’t around.
In the college-educated strata of society, he noted, “There is a certain level of thinking that you can’t have black Americans mowing your lawn and doing your landscaping because we have a history of slavery. It just wouldn’t look right — but it’s okay to exploit Hispanic labor to do it.”
Americans have a civic duty to help their fellow citizens, he said. “We know that there’s a lot of Americans still sitting on the sidelines, who are fully dependent on public benefits … and we have a responsibility to help them find work.”
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