The Republican Study Committee has posted talking points for GOP legislators to help them focus public opposition against the mass migration caused by pro-migration zealots in President Joe Biden’s administration.
“The Biden Immigration Agenda sacrifices the interests of the American People in order to serve the interests of foreign citizens, criminal cartels, and ultra-wealthy multinational corporations,” says the April 12 memo from Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). The memo continued:
Biden’s agenda rejects responsible limits and controls on the number of people entering the country.
It’s as if the Biden Administration recognizes no borders at all.
President Biden’s policy is not liberal, or even merely left-wing — it is radical, extreme and beyond the bounds of rational thought.
…
While Biden reshapes our immigration system to serve rich donors and giant corporations, we believe it must serve the interests of American citizens, families and workers.
“Trump FIXED it, Biden BROKE it. It’s just that simple,” the memo says.
The memo would help GOP legislators reframe the debate around Americans’ concerns, and away from the focus on migrants’ desires that pro-migration groups and most of the nation’s media tout.
For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group funded a polling memo which warned pro-amnesty legislators to avoid talking about jobs and wages and to instead focus their pitch on the worries and concerns of foreign migrants:
It is better to focus on all of the aforementioned sympathetic details of those affected [by an amnesty] than to make economic arguments, including arguments about wages or demand for labor. As we have seen in the past, talking about immigrants doing jobs Americans won’t do is not a helpful frame, and other economic arguments are less effective than what is recommended above.
The migrant-first framing is pushed by establishment media outlets — such as The Washington Post — and by politicians who have decided to support an amnesty. “This is basically for the children,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said April 1 after endorsing a 2021 amnesty that would reward investors and CEOs to hire foreign migrants instead of recruiting West Virginia’s adults and graduates.
The new GOP memo also shifts the Party’s message towards pro-American solutions and away from vague, donor-approved complaints about socialism, welfare, and security. A polling memo released March 24 by the billionaire-funded, pro-migration Immigration Hub group spotlighted the weakness of GOP messaging that avoids positive proposals:
In message-testing, Republicans’ greatest vulnerability on immigration is their refusal to work with Biden on solutions to the problem — instead opting to score political points. When presented with a range of criticisms of Republicans’ approach to the southern border, the following item is most concerning:
That Republicans in Congress refuse to work with President Biden on solutions to address what’s happening at the border, instead opting to block everything Biden is doing on immigration to score political points.
Banks wrote his memo after leading a delegation of GOP representatives to the border:
In the matter of mere weeks, the Biden Administration has transformed President Trump’s secured Southern Border into the sprawling site of an unmitigated and rapidly worsening disaster.
As we could clearly see with our own eyes what the Biden Administration desperately wants to hide from the American public: the situation is devolving and deteriorating by the day. When we met with local sheriffs, mayors and judges at the border, they told us in no uncertain terms that this is an indisputable crisis. They also told us they don’t have time for Congress to drag its feet and pass laws — they need help now. And they need it fast.
President Biden must not be allowed to hide behind the liberal media’s smoke screen. We must urge he and Vice President Harris to visit the border and see the crisis they created firsthand. It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that he is held accountable to the American public for his massive failure.
Banks’ memo suggests four ways for GOP legislators to talk about Biden’s cheap-labor economic policy at the border:
1. National Security: Immigration policy should protect our national security by protecting the American people from terrorism, cartels, and other threats to their safety;
2. America First: Immigration policy should prioritize American workers first, help grow our middle class, raise wages, and enhance economic opportunity for all lawful residents well;
3. Rule of Law: Immigration policy should respect the rule of law, along with immigrants that honor our legal immigration processes, rather than incentivize law breaking;
4. Patriotic Assimilation: Immigration policy should aim to assimilate legal immigrants into the American family so they too can take pride in our values, history, and heritage.
Biden is also far from the mainstream, the memo says:
Americans regardless of party recognize the need to afford basic protections to U.S. workers in the job market. And voters throughout America recognize that we must first consider the social, economic and financial well-being of all American citizens and lawful residents here today. Biden has rejected this mainstream consensus and, with virtually no announcement or discussion, is sailing the United States deep into uncharted waters.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, rational, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.
The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly progressives — embrace the many skewed polls and articles that push the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money away from most Americans’ pocketbooks and families. It moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, from Red states to Blue states, and from the central states to the coastal states such as New York.