Sessions Rallies Opposition To Obama’s Back-Door Plan To Import More Foreign College-Grads

Sen. Jeff Sessions blasted the White House’s latest effort to increase the inflow of foreign white-collar professionals into the already swamped market for U.S. college-grads.

“The President has announced another brazen, illegal executive action… In a proposed federal rule published on New Year’s Eve, President Obama decreed that hundreds of thousands of additional foreign workers will be licensed to replace American workers at lower pay,” said the Jan. 4 statement.

“Congress must act with urgency to stop him,” said the statement, which criticized features of the new open-door plan that was first described by Breitbart on Dec. 30.

Here is how the scheme works: under current law, there is a statutory cap on the number of aliens who can receive green cards based on sponsorship from their employers, and thus a cap on the number who can receive the all-purpose work authorization those green cards provide.  Under this new rule, the administration can bypass those caps with two easy steps.  First, it would simply approve as many aliens as it wishes to seek green cards in excess of the cap.  Then, it would give those workers – and their spouses and children – a renewable all-purpose work permit while they wait for their green cards to become available, nullifying Americans’ statutory protections against job-threatening flows of excess foreign labor….

Brazenly, the proposed rule would also result in the automatic renewal of work permits for aliens who, among other things, merely file applications to have their deportations cancelled or asylum granted.  It is as if these policies were designed to create chaos and disorder.

This lawless action comes at a time when immigration is already at an all-time high.  The total foreign-born population is at record-breaking 42.4 million, having more than quadrupled since immigration caps were raised five decades ago.  Excess labor supply has already helped drive down today’s median household income more than $4,000 beneath levels at the turn of the century.

Sessions, however, also noted that GOP leaders — including House Speaker Paul Ryan — want to import more low-wage workers for GOP donors.

Instead of answering the public’s demand to curb the intake of foreign workers, Congress has worked with the President to expand it – most recently in the omnibus spending bill.  In fact, provisions I offered that would have helped to prevent this and other executive actions were rejected by those crafting the omnibus legislation.  Instead, the omnibus dramatically expanded the supply of H-2B foreign workers to fill positions in construction, hospitality, truck driving, and many other blue collar jobs.

Sessions also hinted that the increased flow of foreign workers is powering Donald Trump’s primary drive.

Voters want immigration growth halted.  The more the governing class ignores these demands the more they lose their authority to govern.

In 2013, Obama used his executive power to add 2 million foreign workers to the U.S. labor market — roughly 1 million legal immigrants and provisional immigrants, plus 700,000 guest-workers and and several hundred thousand illegal migrants — even as 4 million young Americans began looking for work. Predictably, Americans’ wages flatlined, company profits soared and Wall Street spiked.