Expect to continue seeing NumberUSA weigh in throughout the campaign season, arguing that current immigration levels are hurting American wages and jobs.
The group is running an ad featuring footage of former U.S. Commission on Immigration Chairwoman, the late Barbara Jordan.
“The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to complete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force Many of out American workers do not have adequate job prospects. We should make their job easier to find employment, not harder,” Jordan says in the NumbersUSA ad, revealing the findings of the bipartisan commission some two decades ago.
While she speaks, the ad flashes the current immigration level on the screen, emphasizing that 1 million legal immigrants are admitted to the U.S. each year while 15 million Americans are unable to find a full-time job. Jordan’s commission recommended capping admissions to 550,000 per year.
The ad is part of a NumbersUSA campaign that began with the first Republican presidential debate, running ads challenging current immigration policy during both parties’ debates since then.
NumbersUSA founder and President Roy Beck confirmed to Breitbart News that the group expects the ad to continue to run “throughout the campaign season.”
In a written statement, Beck explains that NumbersUSA chose to highlight Jordan in its ad to show that the idea of reducing immigration levels to the U.S. is neither racist nor outside of the mainstream.
“We chose the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform to anchor the ad to help people begin to see that politicians today calling for an end to chain migration, an end to the visa lottery, mandating workplace verification of all hires, and tracking all entries and exits by foreign citizens are not being radical,” Beck wrote.
As Beck explains, while there can be disagreement about the recommendations, critics cannot deny that they “are are so mainstream that they were recommended by a bi-partisan set of commission members chosen by Senate and House leaders.”
Further, spotlighting Jordan as a spokesperson for lower immigration levels, Beck explained, belies the notion that such an idea represents a kind of prejudice.
“As a Civil Rights icon, she also helps people get beyond attempts of the immigration-expansion lobbies to make immigration reduction seem to have a racial component which has tended to intimidate many Americans from dealing with immigration rationally just like any other policy,” Beck wrote, explaining that the issue affects all people, regardless of race or national origin.
“It is difficult to think of a voice more forceful and more unapologetic than Jordan’s in favor of this country’s immigration policies serving the interests of this country’s workers,” he added.
Watch the ad: