Zuckerberg’s Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty

Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.

But the push by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group quickly hit a roadblock Thursday when Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy denounced the “discharge petition” amnesty plan, which is fronted by California GOP Rep. Jeff Denham.

“I don’t believe discharge petitions are the way to legislate,” McCarthy said to The Hill. “I don’t believe members in the [GOP] conference believe that, either.”

McCarthy’s opposition — and the growing pressure for a quick exit by retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan — opens up room for GOP legislators to make the November election all about rising wages vs. cheap-labor immigration. Numerous polls show that more than 70 percent of Americans want companies to hire Americans before importing more cheap-labor immigrants, and numerous business groups say they need more imported labor as wages begin to rise.

But a quick Zuckerberg amnesty would prevent President Donald Trump or GOP leaders from running on an immigration reform platform in November — and would also deflate economic pressure that is delivering higher wages before the 2018 election. “It would be the dumbest thing possible for Republicans to do coming election which they already think they may lose — they would for sure lose with this,” said Rosemary Jenks, the director of governmental affairs at NumbersUSA. She continued: 

I don’t think they will [shift to immigration, but] … it would be a surefire way to keep the majority. People in Washington talk about [election-winning] ’70 percent issues’ … [and] this is it, this is the 70 percent issue.

Backed by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, Denham is collecting GOP signatures for a resolution that would urge a so-called “Queen of the Hill” debate on the House floor. In that very rare form of debate, legislators could debate several alternative immigration bills, and the most popular proposal would be sent to the Senate

Those rules would almost guarantee a big win for Zuckerberg and his allies because nearly all Democrats and many business-first Republicans — including many who are retiring this year — will support a no-strings “Clean Dream Act” amnesty for at least 1.8 million younger ‘DACA’ illegals.

Denham claims to have 50 GOP legislators backing his resolution, but those GOP members have not signed the needed “discharge petition” which allows 218 cooperating legislators to force the debate despite opposition from the Speaker of the House. Many of Denham’s supporters don’t recognize the impact of Denham’s plan, said Jenks, and “when they find out, they are not going to be happy and will certainly not sign the discharge.”’

Denham’s office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News.

McCarthy’s quick opposition to Denham’s push is critical because he is the likely replacement for exiting House Speaker Paul Ryan. Without McCarthy’s support for the immigration push, few of the GOP legislators on Denham’s resolution will sign the needed discharge petition — even though many will use their support for the resolution to ingratiate themselves with their donors and pro-amnesty voters.

Denham’s resolution is getting expensive media support from the various donors who are working under cover of the Koch advocacy network, which has at least 550 business donors. On April 17. Daniel Garza, the president of the Koch-funded LIBRE Initiative, told Business Insider:

The American people deserve a government that is effective and efficient in solving our nation’s problems.

Congress and the White House have spent a lot of time talking about DACA, but today our elected officials have yet to approve a permanent legislative solution. The Dreamers are among our best and brightest. They are students, workers, and men and women risking their lives in the Armed Forces. Washington must come together and approve a bipartisan solution that provides certainty for Dreamers and security improvements along our border.

Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group is also providing direct support for the Denham push, and it touted Wednesday’s press conference where Denham was flanked by a few other cheap-labor Republicans — Texas Rep. Will Hurd, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman and California Rep. David Valadao – as well as the Democratic head of the Hispanic ethnic lobby, new Mexico Democrat Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group was founded a by a slew of information-technology investors who gain from cheap white-collar labor.

The group has endorsed multiple bills and amnesties which would raise the supply of white-collar labor and also block Donald Trump’s populist “Buy American, Hire American” policies, all of which will tend to raise Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. In February, FWD.us joined with many other business groups to help the Senate block Trump’s popular immigration reforms.

Since Trump’s election, the FWD.us group has used the relatively few college-grad ‘DACA’ illegals to shift the political focus from Trump’s very popular wages-for-Americans pitch. That diversionary tactic has worked, partly because most establishment reporters prefer to focus on the concerns of foreign migrants rather than the concerns of fellow Americans.

However, Republicans are facing a tough 2018 election and may decide to pick up the issue up the popular issue of immigration and wages, especially if McCarthy replaces House Speaker Paul Ryan before the election.

That shift to wages and immigration is made likelier by the spreading benefits of Trump’s anti-amnesty policies which is delivering higher wages and overtime to many employees, including black bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey, Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high-schoolers, the construction industry, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers employed at small businesses.

Higher wages are strongly resisted by business groups, partly because they threaten to lower investors’ returns and stock values on Wall Street, including the founders of FWD.us.

Zuckerberg’s group has funded polls which tout the supposed popularity of immigration. These “Nation of Immigrants” polls pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.

In contrast, polls which ask people to pick a priority, or to decide which options are fair, show that voters in the polling booth put a high priority on helping their families and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Also, a series of 2018 polls and surveys show that GOP voters believe the immigration issue is far more important than celebrating tax cuts.