Business groups are already pushing GOP Senators to approve Alejandro Mayorkas as Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary.
The group is touting Mayorkas’ confirmation as support for “Dreamers” — the younger migrants illegally brought into the United States before 2007.
But if the GOP blocks Mayorkas from getting the top job at the Department of Homeland Security, the defeat will demonstrate broad opposition to the low-wage, high-profit economy favored by Mayorkas and his amnesty supporters, and by many of Biden’s deputies and pro-migration donors.
The November 30 letter by roughly 100 business groups and companies said:
This important and welcomed selection by President-elect Biden signals his commitment to protecting Dreamers, and we look forward to working with his administration on common sense proposals that will provide legal certainty for Dreamers and avoid significant disruptions to the American workforce and economy.
The pro-Mayorkas coalition describes itself as the “Coalition for the American Dream.” It includes many companies that have outsourced white-collar jobs to India’s visa workers, as well as companies that gain when a flood of migrant labor prevents a wage-boosting shortage of American workers.
The members include the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Marriott International, Amazon, Cisco, the National Milk Producers Federation, Microsoft, Ikea, Google, Facebook, Doordash, and the National Retail Federation.
The group is backed by FWD.us, an advocacy group created by Mark Zuckerberg and other investors. The group was founded in 2013 to expand the federal government’s economic policy of importing cheap immigrant labor and welfare-aided immigrant consumers.
The Democrats are backing Mayorkas, even though there is minimal public support — and declining Democratic support — for cheap labor immigration policies. Just 19 percent of all voters support the establishment’s preference for importing foreign workers, and 66 percent prefer the populist demand for “businesses to raise [Americans’] pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans,” according to Rasmussen Reports.
Under Trump’s reduced immigration policies, median household income jumped seven percent in 2019. Also, Trump’s populist policies helped create a huge GOP turnout in 2020, so boosting GOP seats in the House and blocking Democrat gains in state legislatures.
The business groups know their cheap labor agenda is unpopular and a threat to politicians’ reelection.
So their three-cornered strategy is to rush the amnesty through Congress as an early win for Biden, to rationalize the amnesty as a quick boost for the national economy (but not for individual workers), and to stigmatize the public opposition by insisting the amnesty repays a moral debt to illegal migrants.
“One of the things we all experienced during [the tenure of President Barack Obama] was that immigration was pushed for later,” according to Alida Garcia, the vice president of advocacy for the investors at FWD.us. “The later you go, the harder everything gets because [legislators] people prioritize their own reelection,” she told CNN for a November 29 article.
“This is a must-prioritize now as both an economic driver for this nation that is dealing with a crisis. … And a moral driver after the harm that’s been done to immigrants by the Trump administration,” Garcia told CNN.
Mayorkas’ nomination will be reviewed by the Senate’s homeland defense committee, likely chaired by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.
Portman is up for reelection in 2022. and voted against Mayorkas in 2013. The other GOP members include Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; James Lankford, R-Okla; Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah; Sen Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
Mayorkas’ questionable record includes several visas-for-sale scandals, the disregard of migrant fraud, and his encouragement of the huge migration of Latin American migrants into U.S. jobs and neighborhoods.
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