GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales Says Open the Border for Labor Migration

Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales wants to allow an unlimited inflow of foreign workers into the jobs that otherwise would go to better paid Americans.

The inflow “needs to be where anybody who wants to come and work can do so,” Gonzales told Semafor.com for an April 9 post.

Gonzales’ open border for legal migrant employees is the flip side of his call for tighter border curbs against illegal migration:

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does … [so] how do you create a work visa program that encourages [illegal migrants] … come [legally] and work and live the American dream through the front door?

…

This is an area that is bureaucratic, it is so broken right now. One, employers don’t want to go through the process. Two, on the other end [migrants ask themselves], “Why would I go through a work visa when I can just come into the country illegally?”

I’ve been working on some [immigration] fixes for a couple of years now. We’re almost there. We’re just about to roll it out. A lot of my attention right now is focused on [the narrower issue of] border security. But I do think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Gonzales is heavily backed by business groups who insist that employers should not be inconvenienced by a labor shortage, or be denied a supply of imported consumers and renters.

For example, the Blackstone investor group was one of Gonzales’ leading donors in 2022. Blackstone’s co-founder, Steven Schwartzman, is a pro-migration donor who told Vox.com in 2019 that it would be “completely nonsensical” for the U.S. government to curb the hiring of foreign graduates at U.S. universities.

Gonzales and other business-backed GOP legislators are now blocking a vote on a modest border security bill by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).

Roy’s bill only reaffirms that existing law bars the catch and release of migrants into the United States. That law is being ignored by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

GOP Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is also pushing a Gonzales-type plan to stop illegal migration and also accelerate the hiring of foreign workers.

“Stop catch and release, and go to catch and deport,” the former governor of South Carolina said during an April 3 press conference with Gonzales on the Texas border. She continued:

You do that [on the border] — but when it comes to actual immigration laws itself, instead of doing quotas every year on how many we’re going to let through, you partner with your businesses and see what they need …

In South Carolina, we’ve got farmers and we’ve got a tourist industry that is always looking for workers. When you start to listen to your businesses and do what they need, all of a sudden the economy goes up, people are going to work and everything gets better.

A GOP open border for workers would be a disaster for ordinary Americans, including the GOP’s populist base and the growing bloc of white-collar swing voters who will likely decide the 2024 election.

“It’s crony capitalism, pure and simple,” Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News in response to Haley’s plan.

And the modern [populist]] Republican Party has developed precisely in opposition to crony capitalism. So what Haley represents is a throwback to an earlier Bush-era version of Republicanism that Republican voters have repeatedly rejected.

The mass inflow of foreign employees would be a mass disaster for many a vast population of American families and their children.

Gonzales suggested to Semafor that employers would provide migrant workers with a “livable” wage. But his labor inflow would reinflate the cheap-labor bubble that suppressed Americans’ wages from 1990 to the coronavirus crash of 2020.

The flood of cheap foreign employees also would reduce the incentive for employers and investors to offer good working conditions or to invest in the labor-saving, productivity boosting machines that allow employers to do more work — and earn more pay — each day.

The flood of immigrant employees would also concentrate in the few big coastal states, so spiking housing costs for ordinary Americans. That labor flood would also divert job-creating investment from heartland states.

In early April., Krikorian slammed Hlaey’s plan to let companies hire foreign employees:

What Haley is calling for is the reversal of well over a century of immigration law, and a rejection of the very purpose of immigration law which is to protect American workers, American taxpayers, and American national security [from investors who import cheaper labor] … It is an attempt at a more palatable version of the Uni-party approach to immigration, which is that we shouldn’t have illegal border crossings, but we should have unlimited immigration [for business] so that nobody has to cross the border illegally.

The similar Gonzalez plan would also be a disaster for the many GOP politicians who hope to win majorities in the House and Senate. Polls show rising public opposition to migration, especially to the labor migration that suppresses both blue-collar and white-collar salaries.

In 2004, President George W. Bush pushed his “Any Willing Worker” plan that would have let CEOs hire foreigners instead of Americans. Bush declared:

 Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling. We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane. And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens.

In July 2007, Bush’s approval fell to just 29 percent shortly after he tried and failed to push his Comprehensive Immigration Reform cheap-labor bill through the Senate.

The Semafor video was produced by Joe Posner, Semator’s chief video producer, who has little understanding of U.S. immigration politics. He gushed about Gonzales’ plan:

In the context of Republican politics, this is actually pretty amazing stuff here because the [GOP] line [on immigration] usually is that it’s either more border security or nothing.

Extraction Migration

The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.

Migration — and especially, labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters. A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR).

The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats