Elizabeth Warren’s Workers Plan Will Provide Back Pay to Illegal Aliens

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a leading 2020 Democrat presidential primary candidate, is vowing to “fight” for back pay for illegal aliens.

As part of Warren’s “Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages” plan, illegal aliens who have worked illegally in the United States — sometimes by stealing Americans’ identities and Social Security numbers — would become eligible to receive back pay for their previous work by amending the National Labor Relations Act.

Warren writes:

Ensuring employers can’t exploit undocumented workers and drive down standards for all workers: The 2002 Supreme Court case Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB held that an undocumented worker could not receive the backpay he was owed from an employer who had violated the NLRA. That 5–4 ruling is wrong and denies millions of undocumented workers redress for illegal firings or other retaliatory conduct by an employer. The case encourages employers to hire undocumented immigrants and exploit them in numerous fields, including construction and manufacturing, which could lower wages for all workers. I will fight to amend the NLRA to end this form of exploitation and ensure that all workers are protected. [Emphasis added]

Despite her platform of populist economic patriotism, Warren has committed to driving up foreign competition against America’s working and middle class in the U.S. labor market by providing amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens, increasing current legal immigration levels, and decriminalizing illegal immigration.

Absent from Warren’s workers plan is a mandate and punishment for employers and businesses who hire illegal aliens over American citizens, as well as a reform to the H-1B visa program whereby Americans are readily replaced by foreign visa workers to increase profit margins for multinational corporations.

Warren has not endorsed mandatory E-Verify — a system that prevents businesses from hiring illegal aliens over Americans — though it would decrease foreign competition against Americans, especially those most vulnerable to competing against illegal aliens in the labor market.

In contrast to Warren is President Trump’s populist-nationalist “Buy American, Hire American” agenda, which has sought to increase interior immigration enforcement to tighten the labor market and delivered wage hikes for America’s blue-collar and working class. Unlike Warren, Trump’s latest national immigration plan includes a nationwide mandate of E-Verify to prevent Americans from being forced to compete for jobs against illegal aliens.

Today, there are at least eight million illegal aliens holding American jobs in the U.S. economy that would have otherwise gone to American workers and legal immigrants. In most cases, these illegal workers obtain fraudulent work authorization documents or steal American citizens’ identities in order to take jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.