Chamber of Commerce, Corporate Donors Make Last-Ditch Effort to Ram Amnesty Through Lame Duck Congress

The United States Chamber of Commerce and corporate donors are making a last-ditch effort, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, to ram an amnesty for illegal aliens through the lame duck session of Congress.

As Breitbart News reported, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) have proposed a plan that would give amnesty to at least two million illegal aliens — those enrolled and eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — and bring hundreds of thousands more foreign workers into the U.S. labor market.

Tillis told NBC News that to get the amnesty passed, Congress needs to approve the measure immediately in the lame duck session as it will become difficult in next year’s split Republican House and Democrat Senate.

The donor class has been enlisted to help with the amnesty push.

The Chamber of Commerce is lobbying lawmakers to back the Tillis-Sinema plan. The Chamber’s political action committee (PAC) gave Tillis $7,500 in his 2020 reelection bid and has donated $3,500 to Sinema since 2018.

“We look forward to working with [Sens. Tillis and Sinema] over the next few weeks to move legislation forward that provides critical resources to properly secure our border, enacts much-needed reforms to our asylum laws, improves the operation of our legal immigration system, and brings real, lasting relief to Dreamers across the country,” Jon Baselice with the Chamber told NBC News.

Likewise, the American Hotel and Lodging Association is dropping a six-figure ad campaign in Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia to promote the amnesty. The group’s PAC donated $10,000 to Tillis in 2020 and has given Sinema $7,500 since 2018.

The Koch network has also thrown their donor weight behind the amnesty, encouraging lawmakers to sign on as cosponsors or back the plan. In 2020, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Action PAC spent nearly $2.5 million against Tillis’s Democrat opponent.

The National Restaurant Association is set to launch a major ad campaign supporting the amnesty. The group’s PAC has spent more than $17,500 backing Sinema since 2018 and gave $5,000 to Tillis in his 2020 reelection bid.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — considered a longtime proponent of amnesty — said the Tillis-Sinema plan has no chance of making it out of the Senate during the lame duck session.

“That’s not going anywhere; that’s a pipe dream,” Graham told NBC News. “You’ve got to do something with the border, you can’t just start legalizing people. I appreciate them working on it — there’s a deal to be done down the road — but it’s not money, it’s policy.”

Independent analysis has shown that amnesty, in addition to more legal immigration, is a net loss for Americans’ job security and wages.

In 2013, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for American workers. Another CBO analysis, published in 2020, stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”

Other research finds current legal immigration to the U.S. results in more than $530 billion worth of lost wages for Americans.

Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.”

Every year, the U.S. gives green cards to more than a million foreign nationals who can eventually sponsor an unlimited number of foreign relatives for green cards — a process known as “chain migration.” In addition, more than a million are brought to the U.S. on temporary work visas to take America jobs and millions of illegal aliens are arriving at the southern border annually. Many are being released into the U.S. interior where they can secure work permits.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.