President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff joined four establishment figures — all former secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security — to urge the President to effectively give up his push for a border wall.
John Kelly added his signature to the letter, which was signed by four former DHS secretaries who have backed various wage-cutting amnesty plans in 2006, 2007, 2013, 2014 and 2015. None of the former DHS secretaries favor a border wall.
The January 23 letter ignores the immigration impact of a Trump surrender in the budget fight, it ignores the national dispute over the federal policy of cheap-labor migration, and it ignores the President’s campaign commitment to build a border wall.
Instead, it just urges the President to focus on national security threats and the loss of pay for DHS employees. The letter says:
We write to you today with a simple message — fund the critical mission of DHS.
…
We are awed by the sacrifice that the men and women of DHS and their families make every day and their extraordinary services to our nation. We call on our elected leaders to restore the funding necessary to ensure our homeland remains safe and that the Department’s critical national security functions continue without compromise.
The letter leaked to NBC mentions Trump and “Members of Congress” — but does not name the two top Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who are trying to block Trump’s border wall.
The other four signers include Tom Ridge, who was nominated to head the new DHS by President George W. Bush.
In 2016, Ridge endorsed Hillary Clinton and opposed Donald Trump and his pro-American immigration policies. In 2013, he advocated for passage of the “Gang of Eight” cheap-labor amnesty. In 2003, Ridge supported Bush as the President pushed for a program which would allow employers to freely hire cheap foreigners instead of Americans. The goal was an “immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee,” Bush said.
Another signer is Michael Chertoff, who ran the agency from 2005 to 2009.
Chertoff pushed the 2006 and 2007 amnesties, including the Probationary Z Visa that would have given foreigners two years to apply for a work visa — and also would have forced the DHS to 24 hours to prove the claim was invalid. Chertoff also invented the Optional Practical Training program, which each year allows hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates of American universities to take white-collar jobs in the United States. The influx of white-collar workers reduces salaries for American graduates. Chertoff now runs a consulting and advocacy group in Washington D.C. One of the “principals” at Hayden group is Never Trump advocate Michael Hayden.
Another signer is Jeh Johnson, who ran the DHS agency from 2013 to 2017.
Johnson tried to push the 213 “Gang of Eight” amnesty through the House during 2014. If it had passed, the amnesty would have shifted more wealth from ordinary Americans to investors, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report said that “the rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades.” Johnson also worked with former President Barack Obama to implement the “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans” amnesty for the illegal-migrant parents of U.S-born children. The huge Oval Office amnesty was subsequently struck down the courts.
The letter was also signed by Janet Napolitano, who ran the department from 2009 to 2013.
In 2013, she also promoted the Democrats’ “Gang of Eight” cheap-labor amnesty. The 2013 amnesty would have inflicted huge economic pain on middle-class Americans because it allowed universities to provide green cards to an unlimited number of foreigners, providing they pay fees to U.S. universities and earn masters’ degree in technology fields. Napolitano is now the President of the University of California system, where she disregarded public opposition to her use of the H-1B visa program to outsource U.S. jobs to Indian guest-workers.
In November 2016, after repeated amnesty pushed by establishment leaders, American voters elected New York real estate investor Donald Trump to the White House on a pro-American, lower-immigration platform.
Nationwide, the bipartisan establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the labor market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. whites, Latinos, and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.
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