American CEOs should be allowed to import all the foreign workers they say they “need,” Nikki Haley told supporters at a New Hampshire campaign stop.
“So for too long, Republican and Democrat presidents dealt with immigration based on a [annual] quota,” she told the roomful of supporters:
We’ll take X number this year, we’ll take X number next year, the debate is on the number. It’s the wrong way to look at it. We need to do it based on merit. We need to go to our industries and say “What do you need that you don’t have?”
So think agriculture, think tourism, think tech, we want the talent that’s going to make us better.
Haley’s reference to “think tech” refers to the many white-collar careers that are now being filled by cheap and compliant foreign graduates instead of available and trained American graduates.
Haley continued:
Then you bring people in that can fill those needs. That way you’re actually emboldening in your economy. [Emphasis added]
Yes, the fabric of America is legal immigration. But let’s get the right ones in that are gonna make America better.
“What Nikki Haley is proposing is to legalize human labor trafficking” for CEOs, said Jay Palmer, an immigration law adviser to CEOs and migrants. “The migrants will come over here, they will be abused, and they will work for any wages because the economy in the United States is better than in their country,” Palmer told Breitbart News.
Haley’s “fabric of America” claim was delivered as many establishment media outlets tout her as a “hard-liner” on migration, or a moderate, and as the last, best hope for the establishment GOP against President Donald Trump. “Ms. Haley has momentum,” said a November 6 editorial in the Washington Post that did not mention wages, jobs, or immigration.
She is also portrayed as a “hard-liner” even though Haley’s October open-borders-for-CEOs speech echoed an April speech: “When it comes to actual immigration laws itself, instead of doing quotas every year on how many we’re going to let through, you partner with your businesses and see what they need.”
A New York Times article on her November campaign event did not mention her “need” giveaway to the Fortune 500. But the article by
In her New Hampshire speech, Haley also suggested that she would let Biden’s six million-plus illegal migrants stay in the country providing they labor in jobs:
If they’re feeding off the [welfare] system, you send them back. If they’re actually trying to be productive and have a job and have a record that we can look at, then we can look at what happens.
“That’s a very strong suggestion that she has little interest about removing people who don’t belong here,” responded Jon Feere, the director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“She’s the type of candidate the Chamber of Commerce loves,” he told Breitbart News, adding, “She’s going to promise everything they want and they ignore the reasons that [President Donald] Trump got elected in 2016, which includes a strong position on immigration.”
Rival Republicans say that immigration should help ordinary Americans.
“To protect American STEM workers, we will reimplement all of our historic actions regarding H-1B workers, including the termination of the visa lottery, the non-displacement rule, and the highest salary first rule,” Trump told Breitbart News in August.
“Ron DeSantis believes that the H1-B program has been used to undercut American wages and will work to reform the program to ensure that H1-B visas do not displace or undermine American workers,” DeSantis’s team told Breitbart News.
Haley’s open-borders-for-CEOs offer echoes the “Any Willing Worker” plan pushed by failed President George W. Bush in 2004.
“New immigration laws should serve the economic needs of our country,” Bush announced in January 2004. “If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job,” he said.
The Haley policy also matches the semi-covert “Extraction Migration” economic strategy adopted by Biden’s deputies, and the max-migration policy pushed by Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Haley’s giveaway to CEOs and investors would be bad for the nation, Feere said: “She’s saying that she believes foreigners and corporations should be the only people making decisions about how much immigration the United States should have in a given year. I can’t think of a less democratic way of looking at immigration policy.”
“She looks at [immigration] entirely as a policy for obtaining cheap captive labor. I”m sorry, but our immigration system is about creating permanent future American citizens and that’s not something that should be outsourced to billion-dollar corporations so they can make a quick buck,” he added.
Her policy is also bad for the U.S. economy, productivity, innovation, and wages, Feere said. “Anyone who believes that businesses are capable of saying this is how many people we need doesn’t understand that there is no limit to the amount of cheap foreign labor a business seeks to import. It’s never-ending.”
He continued: “As soon as these foreign workers become too expensive, in the minds of the business owners, they call upon politicians — like Nikki Haley — to bring them even more people who are willing to work for less. It’s basic economics — you flood them, the labor force with large numbers of people, it gives power to the businesses rather than the employees, and there’s no telling how far wages will go down. Or more importantly, how long they will stagnate.”
Haley “has an 18th-century perspective on labor — [there is] no conversation about mechanizing jobs,” he added: “All [her] talk about STEM technological advancements — that will never see the light of day if we continue to give businesses and corporations a reason not to mechanize. That’s precisely what cheap foreign labor is — it’s an incentive to continue doing business as they always have, not innovate, not raise wages or improve working conditions to attract lawful residents to the jobs.”
“She’s celebrating the creation of a permanent underclass that’s willing to work for less,” he said.
It is possible that Haley was merely pandering to business supporters and donors, Feere said. But, he added, “If there were any evidence that she was strong on immigration enforcement and had previously shown opposition to massive increases in legal immigration, then maybe I wouldn’t take this so seriously. But the reality is, her long-term view has been more immigration by any means necessary.”
Breitbart News asked Haley’s campaign to explain her migrants-for-CEO’s comments. The campaign declined to answer the questions but did send this comment:
Nikki Haley believes we should send back those immigrants who didn’t follow the law to come here. We are a country of laws, and the second we give up being a country of laws, we give up everything this country is founded on.
Immigrants who want to come here need to come the right way, through legal pathways, not break our laws and feed off the system.
Haley’s team also touted more border protections, saying:
We also need to make it more difficult for those to cross and stay illegally by bringing back Remain in Mexico and Title 42. Nikki will end catch-and-release and start catch-and-deport by hiring new Border Patrol and ICE agents, and she will stop handouts to illegal immigrants and sanctuary cities.
Haley’s poll ratings leave her far short of winning the GOP nomination, But establishment media outlets, donors, and politicians are promoting her for the Vice Presidency in a GOP administration. That job would help her corporate donors fight back against any populist proposals in the GOP-run White House.
Haley has relied heavily on major investors for donations. Politico reported in August 2022:
Haley’s nonprofit policy advocacy group, Stand For America, Inc., has received major donations from people including New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor Stanley Druckenmiller, and Miriam Adelson and her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Internal Revenue Service filings reveal.
The roster of supporters who gave undisclosed donations in 2019 also includes Suzanne Youngkin, the wife of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, himself a possible presidential contender; former Pennsylvania Senate candidate and hedge fund executive David McCormick; and Vivek and Lakshmi Garipalli, members of a New Jersey family that has donated large sums to Democrats — but which gave Haley’s organization $1 million.
The New York Times gushed on November 9:
There are some signs major donors are turning their attention to her. Harlan Crow, a wealthy real estate developer, hosted a fund-raiser for her in October with well-connected real estate and oil and gas donors in attendance. Former Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois, a top giver to Mr. DeSantis, transferred his allegiance to Ms. Haley after the first debate. Last week, one of former Vice President Mike Pence’s top donors — the Arkansas poultry magnate Ron Cameron — said he would back her, after Mr. Pence dropped out of the race.
The New York Times article ignored Haley’s giveaway offer of cheap blue-collar and white-collar labor to investors.
“Most politicians do not know the business side of immigration,” said Palmer. “Nikki Haley is so out of touch … I think that her Super PACs are swaying her judgment,” said Palmer.
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