Chamber of Commerce to House: 'Failure to Act' on Immigration 'Not an Option'

The United States Chamber of Commerce sent a letter on behalf of more than 400 businesses and groups to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, urging action on immigration reform.

“Failure to act is not an option,” the Chamber of Commerce wrote in a letter addressed to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “We can’t afford to be content and watch a generation-old immigration system work more and more against our overall national interest.”

Groups that signed the letter stated they had already “been engaged with many members of Congress–Republicans and Democrats–on numerous components of a modern immigration system, and we urge that you not let this momentum slip and progress vanish.”

The letter continued, “The problems with our immigration system have grown and multiplied to become an emerging threat to the current and future productivity, ingenuity, and competitiveness of key sectors of our economy, including agriculture, housing, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, tourism, engineering, and technology.”

“We are united in the belief that we can and must do better for our economy and country by modernizing our immigration system,” the letter states. 

Groups like Google, Facebook, American Action Network and American Action Forum, which will engage in a grass-roots strategy in August to pressure House Republicans to support immigration reform, also signed the letter. Many of these groups reportedly attended secret meetings with the “Gang of Eight” Senators who wrote the immigration bill two weeks ago to plot strategies targeting House Republicans in order to get comprehensive immigration reform passed. 

On Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM 125, Numbers USA Executive Director Roy Beck explicitly stated that these industry groups have always been the driving force behind so-called comprehensive immigration reform in order to drive down wages of working class Americans in all industries, to the benefit of business.