The GOP’s presidential candidates are grappling with immigration’s impact on Americans’ pocketbooks, marking a huge break from the establishment’s focus on expanding the overall economy with immigrant workers, consumers, and renters.
“These responses are way better than they would have been before Trump showed Republican politicians [in 2016] that you can actually benefit from responding to your constituent’s concerns instead of ignoring them,” Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News.
Breitbart News asked, “Will you support cutting legal immigration levels into the United States until wages stabilize for middle and working-class Americans?”
Former President Donald Trump answered:
Yes. We will immediately restore the full suite of policies we had in 2020, which includes the Public Charge regulation, the sponsor vetting and repayment policies (implementing the curbs from the 1996 law), the Travel Ban (which will be expanded further), and the Healthcare 212 Act (barring the entry of new residents who will depend on the state for healthcare).
Trump also promised to protect American tech graduates from companies’ growing use of imported and cheap H-1B visa workers:
In order to protect American STEM workers, we will reimplement all of our historic actions regarding H-1B workers, including the termination of the visa lottery, the non-displacement rule, and the highest salary first rule.
“Our policy will be to prevent any immigration that hurts Americans or American jobs,” he said.
Former Vice President Mike Pence answered Breitbart’s wage question by arguing that inflation will drop as illegal migrants are sent home:
If we end illegal immigration, we’ll cut that number down by a quarter, and American citizens can expect to notice it in their pocketbook as their money no longer gets debased by Bidenflation.
Pence also promised to implement the E-Verify system to deter the hiring of illegal migrants: “Yes, and the federal government must pick up the tab for implementation and not thrust another unfunded mandate on the American people.”
Aides to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded, “DeSantis will seek to reduce immigration that undercuts American jobs and wages. The immigration system should provide a net benefit to Americans, our economy, and our country.”
DeSantis’s deputies also cited wages in response to a question about reforming the H-1B program used to import foreign graduates for U.S. jobs, saying:
Ron DeSantis believes that the H1-B program has been used to undercut American wages and will work to reform the program to ensure that H1-B visas do not displace or undermine American workers.
The deputies added:
The United States should not have an immigration system that is going to lower wages for working Americans. The level of immigration permitted, skilled and unskilled, should be that which is best for America—and not set according to the demands of foreign entities or political trends. This will be the outlook utilized by the DeSantis Administration when making such policy determinations.
That is a huge shift from 2016 when Jeb Bush competed against Trump’s populist pitch by promising to import more migrants to grow the economy:
I view fixing a broken [immigration] system as a huge opportunity to get to that four percent [national economic] growth. We can grow by 4 percent through all sorts of policies, but immigration has to be a part of it.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley responded, “We need to bring in immigrants based on merit and based on those who will lift our economy up—not based on some arbitrary number.” But she did promise to enforce the E-Verify system if elected.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said, “Once my Administration has secured our border and restored our basic national sovereignty, then I will be willing to discuss the legal immigration system.”
Anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy provided a general statement that included a promise to “gut” the H-1B visa program: “It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H1-B immigrant. I’ll gut it.”
A statement from aides to Doug Burgun, the North Dakota governor, said, “He knows that until the border is truly secure, the crisis at the border will never end, and there can be no true solution to the other immigration issues facing our nation.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declined to answer the questions.
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