Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) lectured Americans while in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, urging them to accept amnesty for the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
During a panel discussion alongside Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and others, Salazar said some form of amnesty is necessary for illegal aliens living across the United States. She said:
We need to also give dignity to those people who are in the country and those are the people that I represent. We’re talking about 13 to 15 million people — who are, most of them, Hispanics, I would say 85 percent who speak my language, look like me, and sound like me — who are contributing to the economy of this country and they live in the shadows.
“So it’s time to seal the border … let’s see who comes in and who doesn’t and then turn around and give dignity, that doesn’t mean a path to citizenship, that means to include them and make them dignified members of our community,” she continued.
Last year, Salazar joined six other House Republicans in unveiling an amnesty plan that would have allowed illegal aliens to secure 10-year work permits to hold American jobs before then applying for green cards to permanently reside in the U.S.
An amnesty for illegal aliens, which would hugely inflate the U.S. labor market and likely spur more vast waves of illegal immigration, is critical for many of Salazar’s largest donors, who include real estate developers looking to build more housing and Wall Street-linked financial firms focused on driving up the number of consumers and available workers.
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.