Thread: Companies lay off thousands, then demand immigration reform for new labor

US
‘Duck Dynasty’ drafted into amnesty campaign



09/11/2013

Neil Munro
White House Correspondent



The corporate parent of the company featured in the hit TV show Duck Dynasty is backing the controversial push to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws and to double the inflow of new immigrants.

The Duck Dynasty show features Willie Robertson and his extended family of bearded Louisiana rednecks. Robertson is the CEO of Duck Commander, a company based in West Monroe, La., which manufactures duck-calls used by hunters to attract ducks.

But Robertson’s company is actually a subsidiary of a high-tech corporation, Alliant Techsystems, a billion-dollar corporation that manufactures space rockets, radar-hunting missiles, huge quantities of ammunition and sporting goods, and employs 17,000 people.

Christine Wolf, ATK’s vice-president for human resources, signed a Sept. 10 letter to the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, urging him “to fix the broken immigration system and work with the Senate to ensure that a bill is signed by the President this year.”

The immigration rewrite passed by the Senate in July would provide a staged amnesty to 11 million illegals, double the inflow of immigrants to 46 million by 2033 and double the resident population of university-trained, blue-collar or agricultural guest-workers to more than 2 million. The increased inflow would add one immigrant for every two American births.

The GOP-led House has developed a series of immigration bills, but the GOP leadership has not announced plans for a floor vote.

“Even with the economy still recovering, many of our companies continue to have difficulty finding sufficient American workers to fill certain lesser-skilled positions,” said the Sept. 10 signed by Wolf and roughly 120 other executives at major companies. “Our global competitors understand that attracting top talent from around the world is vital to a country’s economic success,” Wolf’s letter said.
An ATK representative declined TheDC’s request for comment.

Some of the companies that signed the letter have recently laid off thousands of Americans.

Hewlett-Packard, for example, fired 29,000 people in 2012. United Technology is laying off 3,000 this year, and American Express is firing 4,500, according to a survey by the Washington Examiner.

The corporate decision effectively shoves Robertson and his family of bearded Louisiana rednecks into a campaign bus already filled with Northeast progressives, West Coast corporate executives and D.C. lobbyists for Hispanic special-interest groups.

“I don’t know what the Robertsons think about immigration or anything else, but [the parent corporation’s] push for amnesty and huge increases in immigration doesn’t seem to be consistent with Duck Commander’s brand image or the expectations of its customers,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“There’s a danger this could turn into Chick-fil-A in reverse for them,” he said, citing progressives’ media-generated scandal about the fast-food company in 2012.

Robertson’s assistant, John-David Owen, did not respond to an email inquiry from The Daily Caller.

In August, Duck Dynasty garnered 11.8 million viewers in its first show of the fall season. “Premiere Shatters Cable Records,” declared the headline in Variety, the industry’s trade magazine, which describes the show as a “redneck reality smash.”
Polls shows most Americans strongly oppose the increased inflow of foreign workersscheduled by the bill. However, many Americans are willing to back an conditional amnesty of illegal immigrants, but only the government follows through on promises to end to further illegal immigration.

In June, a small poll of 500 likely voters in Louisiana showed lopsided opposition to the pending Senate bill’s increased immigration flow, and 81 percent opposed the bill’s doubling of guest-workers.

Left-wing and right-wing advocates for American workers fear that a business-backed immigration rewrite would worsen Americans’ wages and employment opportunities.

However, company executives also back the bills because immigration increases the number of U.S consumers who buy apartments, cars, food, TVs and other basics.
Boosting the population of consumers makes short-term sense for executives, said Roy Beck, director of NumbersUSA, which is working to reduce immigration rates. “If you’ve got a rapidly growing population, then even inefficient and nonproductive businesses tend to survive,” he said.

However, shareholders and executives will lose in the long-run, he warmed.
“You may be importing a lot of new customers… but in the end, you’re importing a lot of people who will require a bigger government, and an electorate that will increasingly vote for legislators who are not pro-business,” he said.

“But for business, it’s all short term,” he said.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/11/du...esty-campaign/

Cheesecake Factory, Hallmark, Disney, and Others Now Pushing Amnesty

Illegal Immigrant Lobby to Stage National Demand for Amnesty, Work Authorization