Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is explaining what he thinks the Republican Party position on immigration should be in a 25-page document delivered to all Republican members of Congress and all their key staffers on Capitol Hill.
Sessions staff tell Breitbart News that copies of the “Immigration Handbook For The New Republican Majority” were hand-delivered on Monday. Sessions is also planning to discuss the memo’s themes, they say, with his colleagues at the GOP retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, this coming weekend. It will also be discussed during an immigration meeting with conservative offices on Tuesday. Sessions also is aiming to get the document printed as a handout or pamphlet that can be given to grassroots activists nationwide in an effort to empower their efforts to hold politicians in both political parties accountable on immigration.
“‘Immigration reform’ may be the single most abused phrase in the English language. It has become a legislative honorific almost exclusively reserved for proposals which benefit everyone but actual American citizens,” Sessions writes in the introduction.
Consider the recent Obama-backed “immigration reform” bill rejected by Congress. That bill—the culmination of a $1.5 billion lobbying effort—doubled the influx of foreign workers to benefit corporate lobbyists, offered sweeping amnesty to benefit illegal immigrants, and collapsed enforcement to benefit groups in the Democrat political machine that advocate open borders. But for American citizens, the legislation offered nothing except lower wages, higher unemployment, and a heavier tax burden.
Sessions explains it is an “incoherent question” to assert that anyone who opposes the particular policies in the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill—whether done in a comprehensive bill, or in piecemeal fashion—is against “immigration reform” in general.
“Nobody says opponents of tax hikes oppose ‘tax reform,’ or that opponents of cap-and-trade oppose ‘energy reform,’” Sessions writes, before providing one particular answer Republicans could give when asked that trap question about what their “immigration reform” position happens to be:
I am opposed to any immigration policy which makes it harder for the unemployed to find jobs and easier for employers to keep pay low. If by “immigration reform,” you mean helping the unemployed return to the workforce, limiting work visas so wages can rise, and establishing firm control over entry and exit in the United States, then I am for it. Which do you mean?
Democrats, Sessions notes, have already answered that question—aligning themselves entirely with special interests instead of the American people. “In the House and Senate, they were virtually unanimous in their support of the 2013 ‘Gang of Eight’ immigration bill,” Sessions says of the Democrats. “But their strategy—appealing to the interest groups, donors, advocacy coalitions, and media personalities who oppose any sensible immigration controls—rests on the assumption that Republicans will compete for the same audience. But we were not elected to clamor for the affections of Washington pundits and trendy CEOs.”
Instead of competing for special interests’ support, and support from illegal aliens, Sessions said Republicans should compete for support from the hundreds of millions of Americans who have been ignored by career politicians—especially Democrats—in the immigration debate.
“The largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration debate,” Sessions said. “Speak to that constituency—with clarity and compassion—and change the issue forever.”
Sessions writes that Republicans lost the 2012 presidential election because, according to exit polls, voters believed the GOP was “out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.”
Sessions writes that: “This is evidenced by the fact that Romney trailed Obama among voters earning $30,000 to $50,000 by 15 points and among voters earning under $30,000 by 28 points. Republicans cannot win in 2016 without these voters, and Republicans cannot win these voters unless they prove that they are willing to break from the donor class and defend the working class. Donors don’t win elections; voters win elections. And the voters need our help.”
Sessions points to recent jobs statistics from Obama’s own Department of Labor.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data, he writes, shows that “all net employment gains since the recession have gone to foreign workers while 1.5 million fewer U.S.-born Americans hold jobs today than did then—despite the total population of U.S.-born adults increasing by 11 million over that same time.”
Sessions questions, however, why those facts from BLS are “revealed” in plain sight.
On no issue is there a greater separation between the everyday citizen and the political elite than on the issue of immigration. For decades, the American people have begged and pleaded for a just and lawful system of immigration that serves their interests—but their demands are refused. For years, Americans have been scorned and mocked by the elite denizens of Washington and Wall Street for having legitimate concerns about how uncontrolled immigration impacts their jobs, wages, schools, hospitals, police departments, and communities. But those who do the mocking are often ensconced behind gated compounds, guarded private schools, chauffeured SUVs, and fenced-off estates.
Now six-pages deep into the manifesto against elitist immigration policies, Sessions begins walking Republicans through specific issues on immigration—providing statistics, polling data, explanatory information, and other details they need to effectively use the issue to help Americans, and beat Democrats.
Sessions starts with explaining the one part of immigration where Republicans solidly oppose Democrats: President Obama’s executive amnesty. In addition to quoting Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus’s pre-election promise that Republicans would do everything in their power to stop Obama, Sessions lays out why it’s bad—and what the GOP can do to stop him.
The 114th Congress opens under the shadow of President Obama’s recent immigration orders. President Obama has declared null and void the sovereign immigration laws of the United States in order to implement immigration measures the Congress has repeatedly and explicitly rejected. His order grants five million illegal immigrants work permits, Social Security, Medicare, and free tax credits—taking jobs and benefits directly from struggling American workers. U.S. citizens have been stripped of their protections they are entitled to under law. President Obama himself once admitted that only an Emperor could issue such edicts. Yet here we stand today in 2015, living under imperial decrees that defy the will of the people, the laws their government has passed, and the Constitution we took an oath to uphold. How Congress responds to this emergency will define its legacy.
Sessions worries, as National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru does, about “under-reacting” to Obama’s actions.
“We are already well down this road,” of under-reacting, Sessions wrote. “The most emphasized public priorities for the new GOP Congress cover everything from the Keystone Pipeline to enacting Trade Promotion Authority, while funding DHS is treated more as a hurdle to clear than a line in the sand.”
Sessions notes that Congress “has the power” to stop Obama “by denying funds for its implementation.”
Surely, Congress must not allow the President a single dime to carry out an illegal order that Congress has rejected and which supplants the laws Congress has passed. A constitutional breach of this magnitude demands nothing less than a vigorous, public, disciplined campaign to rally the nation behind a Republican effort to deny the President the funds he would need to carry it out. Yet presently no such public campaign exists: we receive more talking points about the trade bills and a pipeline than about saving the American worker from the dissolution of our borders. Is our goal to win this fight, or just to “move past” it?
Sessions then walks Republicans through how they can win against Democrats on more aspects of immigration, laying out what the GOP position should be.
The document details how former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton issued the Morton Memos bearing his name. These memos led to an “enforcement collapse.” Sessions then shifts into how immigration is intricately connected with the economy, in that the numbers of foreign workers imported into the country hurt American workers.
From there, it details how the welfare state—which Republicans are supposed to be opposed to—thrives because of open borders immigration policies. And Sessions provides polling data and messaging suggestions for Republicans who seek to represent their constituents rather than special interests such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying firm FWD.us. Sessions’ document then turns to what it calls the “hoax” Silicon Valley perpetrates on the political debate, in which lobbyists for high tech companies argue—incorrectly—there is a shortage of workers in America available to do such high-tech jobs.
Sessions’ document concludes by asking three “essential questions.”
“Is America a sovereign nation that has the right to control its borders and decide who comes to live and work here?”
“Should American immigration laws serve the just interests of the country and its citizens? And do those citizens have the right to expect and demand that the laws passed by their elected representatives be enforced?”
“If we believe the answers to these questions are ‘yes,’ then we have no choice but to fight—and to win,” Sessions concluded. “Why were we elected, if not to serve the people who sent us here?”
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