Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s endorsement of Paul Ryan for Speaker of the House has drawn new attention to Ryan’s two-decade history of pushing for open borders immigration policies. A previously little noticed 2013 video of Ryan and Gutierrez stumping for Sen. Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill—in which the two make a candid pitch for unlimited immigration—shows just how far Ryan is willing to go to push for open borders policies.
In the wide-ranging 53 minute video, which took place in Chicago, both Gutierrez and Ryan outline their shared plan for adopting open borders: that is, a national policy of allowing companies to bring in and hire as many foreign workers as they would like. This “free movement” of people across national boundaries is the centerpiece of the open borders ideology to which Ryan has devoted much of his career.
The video is entitled: “Rep. Paul Ryan and Rep. Luis Gutierrez Push For Immigration Reform.” The two Congressional partners lay out an immigration plan that is far more radical in scope than many would have imagined, and absent from virtually all major media coverage of the Ryan speakership push. The video gives fresh insight into what legislation Paul Ryan would advance— and what legislation he would block—if given the Speaker’s gavel.
In the video, Ryan begins by adopting a left-wing narrative about GOP voters and suggesting that their opposition to mass migration is fueled by “ignorance.” Ryan rejects the idea that America is “a country”— i.e. a land with a fixed border and heritage—but instead an “idea” since ideas don’t have borders.
Ryan says:
[America] is not just a country. America is an idea. It’s an idea that people from all over the world to aspire to achieve… There is no other economic system, no other immigration system that has done more to lift people out of poverty than the American free enterprise system, and American immigration system that we have here. That’s what makes us proud. So the question is: what do we do to restore this? […] We’ve had plenty of waves of immigration that have always been met with resistance in the past—the Irish wave is just but one of them. Each wave is met with some ignorance, is met with some resistance.
Ryan appears to be taking a page from his mentor Jack Kemp, who— as Ann Coulter has written— had a habit of smearing blue-collar voters of his own party if they opposed his expansionist agenda.
Ryan’s retelling of history leaves out critical facts. The history of the United States is not one of immigration but assimilation.
After the immigration wave from 1880-1920, immigration was cut off. There was no net immigration increase for fifty straight years in order to melt European immigrants into society. Ignoring this history, Ryan is arguing that the unprecedentedly-large non-European wave of the last fifty years should be followed by an even bigger wave that is already happening.
In fact, as Breitbart News reported, Ryan was integral in derailing a 1990s bipartisan push to cut immigration – thereby repudiating the historical assimilation policy of the United States.
Gutierrez praises Ryan’s history of sabotaging conservative immigration reforms and embracing progressive ones.
As Gutierrez said in his introduction of Ryan:
I want to share something… I saw Paul— Congressman Ryan— and we were talking. And he— I just want you to know that when he worked for Kemp, and he was a staffer there, they were against Proposition 187 in California. I want you to know— because people think, ‘Oh, he just showed up lately on the scene on immigration’— No, he has a history on this issue. And I want you to know that in 2005 when [Jeff] Flake and I introduced comprehensive immigration bill… and Kennedy and McCain was the first bipartisan, bi-cameral bill… Paul Ryan was an original cosponsor of comprehensive immigration reform. And I want to share one last thing with you. There was a day that we were in his office, and I’ll apologize to him later, and he said to me, ‘Well, Luis, I don’t want to do it because it’s the political thing to do, I want to do it cause it’s the right thing to do.’ And he said, ‘You know, you and I are Catholics and our Catholic values do not allow us to create a permanent underclass.’ And you know what? My heart soared that day. I mean I could walk so much easier that day. I felt strengthened that day by his words.
Ryan confirmed Gutierrez’s assertion.
“Luis is right,” Ryan declared. “I’ve worked on this issue back since the early 90s. And many Republican and Democrat coalitions trying to make this system work.”
Ryan’s work in the 90s helped add another 10 million immigrants to the United States, according to the President of NumbersUSA Roy Beck.
In the video, Ryan seemed proud of the role he was playing in completing the Rubio-Schumer amnesty push:
For the first time in a long time I really believe that we have an opportunity to have a real, long-term solution… and it’s because like Luis Gutierrez, and Paul Ryan [i.e. referring to himself in third person], and everybody in between are talking to each other in a sincere way, to come together, to find common ground to once and for all get this done… I really think we are the farthest on the path ever since I’ve been looking at this issue and I’ve been in Congress for 15 years.
The Rubio-Schumer bill would have issued 33 million green cards in ten years—or 33 new immigrants for every one South Carolina GOP voter. South Carolina is significant because one of Ryan’s other partners in trying to push an immigration expansion is Congressman Mick Mulvaney.
Ryan and Gutierrez then proceeded to lay out their plan for open borders. Again, open borders refers to a policy of allowing people to freely and legally enter the a country without any firm limits. For instance, for European countries within the European Union, people are entitled to move freely from one country to another. Ryan lays out how the same legal structure could be adopted for the United States and all the foreign countries of the world.
Ryan describes this “open” immigration system and how it will replace American workers:
We need to let legal immigrants come here legally. We can’t have a system where we pay homage and adherence to the rule of law if we don’t have an open system where people can come here in search of their American dream, where the work that won’t be done by people who are already here can be filled by the people who want to come here and do those jobs.
National Review’s Rich Lowry once declared that Republican politicians who argue there are jobs Americans won’t do—or to use Ryan’s words “work that won’t be done by people who are already here”— “that person should be shot, he should be hanged, he should be wrapped in a carpet and thrown in the Potomac River.”
Moreover, Ryan’s statement is simply not logical—the United States already has the most expansive immigration policy in the world, letting tens of millions of foreign nationals legally enter the U.S., vote in U.S. elections, and claim U.S benefits.
The Kennedy-pushed 1965 immigration rewrite eliminated President Calvin Coolidge’s immigration caps and opened up American immigration visas to almost anyone in the world. Year after year, as a result of our current policy, the United States admits one million plus foreign nationals on green cards, one million guest workers, dependents and refugees, and half a million foreign youths sought by college administration. Because of our vast admissions policy, America has four times more immigrants living here than has any other country on the planet. Yet Ryan is arguing that this is not enough, that the United States should effectively have a legal free movement clause with the world.
“We need to clear the backlog of green cards,” Ryan declared.
But the backlog is a term invented by immigration expansionists to say anyone who wants a U.S. green card should be giving the green card. Ironically, most of the people who have applied for the millions of green cards Ryan wants expedited come from poor countries are likely to favor big government policies like Obamacare.
Ryan then outlined his plan to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens, in addition to all the foreign nationals to whom Ryan wants to give expedited admission slips:
We have to offer people a path to earned legalization. We have to invite people to come out of the shadows… We need to make sure that the children who are here, who are brought here, who did not choose to come here, who were brought by their parents– that they have an ability to earn citizenship in a far faster way. These are the things that we think are the principles that Republicans and Democrats can come together on.
By arguing that speedy citizenship should be guaranteed to any illegal alien brought here by his or her parents, Ryan has made another argument for open borders. There are two billion youth in the world; under Ryan’s theory, if any of their parents smuggle them into the United States, the parents should be made voting citizens. As former USCIS Director Ken Palinkas has explained, granting amnesty to illegal immigrant minors, “extend[s] birthright citizenship in the future to include the foreign citizens of other countries” and represents a promise of “perpetual amnesty.”
Ryan explained that his position on immigration is in part motivated by his belief that American workers should be replaced: “We want an economic based immigration system where… labor and supply and demand can meet each other so we can help fuel our economy and create jobs,” Ryan said.
The phrase “labor supply and demand can meet each other,” is a centerpiece of open borders thought. Under this global one-world theory, any willing employer should be able to hire any willing worker regardless of what country they live in. This view, that America is an “idea” and not a “nation” sees borders as an obstacle to commerce.
Demonstrating how outside-the-mainstream Ryan’s view is here, a recent poll from KellyAnne Conway’s The Polling Company found that only four percent of the entire country believes that American workers should not get preference for jobs over those applying from foreign countries.
However, Ryan goes even further than the four percent by suggesting there should be no limits at all – that employers should be able to legally hire foreigners whenever they want and in any quantity.
Even though there are currently 94 million Americans operating outside of the workforce, Paul Ryan argues that we need to increase low-skilled immigration so that foreign laborers can come and go to fill any job they please.
We want to have a system where people can come here and work– go back and forth if they want to… so that we have an open door to the people who want to come and contribute to our country, who want to come and make a difference in their families’ lives, and our economy… That’s why we have all of these various principles that we agree work if we put this together… and that’s why it’s very encouraging to see Republicans and Democrats coming together on this issue.
Again, Ryan is here articulating the open borders vision of the “free movement” of people across international boundaries. What the EU has among solely European countries – over the objections of rising insurgent populist parties – Ryan would like America to have with every country on the planet.
Ryan also expressed his desire to give away coveted white-collar jobs: “You have to have a workable guest worker system. You have to have a system so that high-tech employers can get high-tech entrepreneurs.”
Gutierrez confirmed their plan to increase foreign labor to compete for middle class American jobs. When the two were asked about the next step in their legislative plans, Gutierrez answered for them as Ryan looked on sympathetically while Gutierrez attacked American workers who “do not have the talent” necessary to fill American jobs.
We’ve been working with our Republican colleagues in putting legislation together, and it will have some of the very elements that Congressman Ryan and I have described. I mean, if you collect together what he has said and I have said, you kind of the get the general out [of the plan]… We’re going to have a worker program and in the high tech industry we’re going to tell people, ‘Look, there are tens of thousands of jobs at Microsoft and Intel and the STEM industry needs. Tens of thousands that go unfilled because we do not have the talent graduating from our own universities, so this tells us that we have some work to do in terms of sending kids… so we’re going to invite people to come into the system that can fill [these jobs].
As Breitbart News has previously reported, there is in fact an 11-million person surplus of STEM-certified Americans. Many of these American workers have been forced to train their foreign replacements before the company lets them go, as one terminated Disney employee documented exclusively for Breitbart News. Gutierrez claims that Microsoft has thousands of jobs available, but in the last year, Microsoft actually announced plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers while simultaneously lobbying for legislation championed by Ryan, Gutierrez, and Rubio that would increase the number of low-wage tech workers brought in to take American jobs.
Ryan confirmed Gutierrez’s analysis: “What Luis and I are putting out there are the basic components of a system that we want to endure. We don’t want to be having this conversation five years from now because we just did piecemeal reform… so that’s why we’re talking about all of these things together.”
Throughout the entire exchange, it was clear that Ryan got along with Gutierrez personally and intimately. At one point during the discussion, after Ryan gently teased Gutierrez for making faces at him, Gutierrez stroked Ryan’s arm and then rested his head on Ryan’s shoulder as Ryan laughed comfortably. The two were clearly at ease with one another.
Gutierrez continued told audience members at the event that new arrivals are more entrepreneurial than those who have been in the United States for a longer period of time. Gutierrez seemed excited about the prospect of transforming America’s economy so that it more closely mirrored that of the street-vendors economy of developing countries in Latin America where wares are sold on street corners to impoverished families:
It seems to me that the closer you are to the moment you arrived in America, the more entrepreneurial you are… It just cause I see people in the neighborhood that just get here and I see a grown man and he’s forty, forty-five years old and he’s selling cotton candy on a long pole that’s maybe 10 feet up and he’s out there because he’s going to make a dollar doing that. I just see people on every corner just selling stuff and creating businesses, that entrepreneurial spirit is there, we want to bring it to the forefront.
Ryan nodded his head up and down with vigor in agreement.
Ryan explained to the audience, “This [i.e. immigration] is one of those unique issues where a Democrat and a Republican– and there are plenty others in Congress– see that this is important for the vitality of our economy.”
“It’s important,” Ryan declared:
To modernize our laws, so that we can maintain national security and if we meet this moment, all of the faith in divided government– I’m joking here, but there is no faith in our divided government, we haven’t gotten anything done of record, of seriousness, in a long time, that’s an uncertainty tax that I think is plaguing this economy, ‘Those guys in Washington can’t get anything right, they never get anything done’– this would be an opportunity to prove them [the American people] wrong. This would be an opportunity to prove that in this country divided government can actually work and make a difference.
On a note of camaraderie, Ryan declared, “It’s very encouraging to see Republicans and Democrats coming together on this issue.”
Ryan also introduced a theme that would soon become Marco Rubio’s campaign theme. It offers a veiled allusion to how great life will be in a “New American Century” brought about by Rubio-Ryan Republicans:
When you take a look at the fact that America in the 20th century was the envy of the world economy, when you take a look at the fact that because of the creative, the hard work, and the entrepreneurship of our people, of our workers, you’ve got a lot of other countries that are looking and they’re trying to catch up with us. And, in fact, it’s a lot more competitive in the 21st century than it was in the 20th century. We can’t rest on our laurels. We can’t look back and just take our future success for granted. We need to make sure that we have an economy that is wired for the 21st century economy. And that means we need to keep the best and the brightest here in America. That means hard working people who want to contribute, work hard, get ahead, play by the rules and rise– that helps everybody in this country. That is what immigration is. We need to make sure that for the 21st century we are wired so that we can compete and survive and thrive in the 21st century just like we did in the 20th century.
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