Open Borders Lobby, Big Biz Attack Immigration Overhaul

Following President Donald Trump’s major White House endorsement of immigration overhaul legislation, the open borders lobby and corporate business interests are teaming up to attack the proposal.

Joined by the sponsors of the legislation, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), Trump announced his support for the RAISE Act, which would give millions of blue-collar and working-class Americans relief from the current mass legal immigration system that admits more than one million low-skilled newcomers a year.

Under the RAISE Act, the current system of cheap, low-skilled legal immigrants entering the U.S. at historic levels would be drastically revamped to cut levels and shift back to a system where high-skilled applicants with good English-speaking skills are given priority.

There are five key components of the significant RAISE Act:

• Reducing number of Green Cards given out every year from about one million to 500,000;
• Prioritizing immediate family households, thus ending extended family chain migration to the U.S.;
• Creating visa program for U.S. citizens to bring elderly parents to U.S. for caretaking purposes;
• Eliminating the diversity visa lottery, where 50,000 visas are “arbitrarily allocated” every year; and
• Capping permanent U.S. refugees resettlement to 50,000 migrants per year.

The open borders lobby, big business interests, and establishment politicians are already attacking the overhaul package.

In a statement to the Washington Post, the Center for Migration Studies, an open borders advocacy group which favors mass immigration, slammed the RAISE Act for daring to cut off the flow of low-skilled migration.

“This is just a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system which has huge implications for the future,” Center for Migration Studies official Kevin Appleby said. “This is part of a broader strategy by this administration to rid the country of low-skilled immigrants they don’t favor in favor of immigrants in their image.”

The open borders group New York Immigration Coalition, which has ties to globalist billionaire George Soros, also attacked the RAISE Act, claiming that cutting legal immigration levels to help working-class Americans is an “attack on our country’s values.”

“Trump’s plan to slash legal immigration is just another senseless attack on our country’s values. Trump doesn’t get that immigrants are good for America – good for our economy, our families and our communities, and this plan is just a mean-spirited fallback to vitriol and division,” Executive Director Steven Choi said in a statement.

Like the open borders lobby, corporate interests have a large stake in keeping legal immigration levels high, as taking in more than one million low-skilled immigrants a year has proven to cut U.S. wages and keep a constant flow of new consumers entering the country.

New American Economy, a pro-immigration business interest organization, said it opposed the RAISE Act based on the claim that it could “hinder growth.”

“Slashing legal immigration in half would only hinder growth and result in fewer jobs for Americans,” said New American Economy President John Feinblatt in a statement. “It absolutely makes sense to fix a broken system, but Congress should focus on stopping illegal immigration – not on restricting the legal immigration that grows our economy.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s open borders organization FWD.us likewise echoed disdain for potentially cutting legal immigration to give relief to Americans, with spokesman Peter Boogaard writing on Twitter that the RAISE Act “does nothing to fix those problems.”

FWD.us is not only funded by Zuckberg, but also by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to lobby Congress to keep the flow of cheap, foreign labor coming to the U.S.

Despite major push-back from the open borders lobby and big business interests, the American people support cuts to legal immigration.

As Breitbart Texas reported in a recent poll of Missouri voters, 59 percent said they supported a 40 percent or more reduction of legal immigration.

When voters were asked how many legal immigrants should be admitted to the U.S. and given lifetime work visas every year, 63 percent said they favored only 500,000 or less gaining the privilege.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.