EXPERT: GOP CANDIDATES, MODERATORS WANT TO AVOID DEBATE ON CURBING LEGAL IMMIGRATION
by TONY LEE
10 Nov 2015
On Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily (6AM-9AM ET on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125), one of the nation’s top immigration experts said GOP presidential candidates and debate moderators never want to discuss how many legal immigrants America should actually admit.
Jon Feere of the Center for Immigration Studies told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that though only 7% of the country is calling for an increase in legal immigration, “everyone that’s wandering the halls of Congress out here in D.C. is lobbying for more, more, more immigration at all costs.”
“I think one of the top issues when it comes to immigration is the question of legal immigration,” he said. “We all know that illegal immigration is to come to an end. But the real question that I think these moderators tend to avoid is a discussion about how much legal immigration we should have every year.”
Feere pointed out that the United States admits 1.1 million new immigrants every year, which is the most generous immigration policy in the world, and “this happens whether or not there is an economic downturn.”
He said he would like to know “how could these candidates possibly justify allowing such a massive amount of immigration when we know that there are tens of millions of Americans who are unemployed.”
Bannon pointed out that when Breitbart News publishes stories about the need to possibly reduce immigration levels until more Americans are employed, even establishment right-of-center media outlets blast Breitbart News as being “nativists” and “xenophobic.”
Feere said that there is often a “cave-man like response from a lot of these candidates” regarding immigration—“illegal, bad. Legal, good.”
“If we’re saying legal is good, how much immigration is good? Half a million a year? A million a year?” Feere said. “These politicians don’t even want to be asked that question and the moderators don’t even want to ask the question.”
Feere also pointed out that one of the questioners in tonight’s debate is from the Wall Street Journal, which until 9/11 ran an editorial that called for a new Constitutional amendment—“there shall be open borders.”
“The belief is that the American people should have no control over our legal immigration system,” Feere said. “I think that’s completely ridiculous. We’re a sovereign nation. We’re a sovereign people. We have the right to decide how much legal immigration we shall have, and yet these policy makers and some of these editorial board writers just believe that Americans don’t have that authority.”
He praised Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for being one of the few lawmakers courageous enough to push the issue and said that “immigration is a policy just like any other government policy” and “we have to decide how much immigration we want—and that’s the question that is constantly ignored.”
Since two-thirds of the immigrants America admits every year are “family based,” the immigration laws, according to Feere, “are dependent upon the immigrant bringing in their family members without any inquiry whatsoever as to whether or not these people are going to be assets, whether they have jobs.” He pointed out that many immigrants are not even “coming in with any skills, any education.”
“It’s an ongoing policy that’s been created over decades and decades of immigration law,” he said. “So it’s sort of like the immigrant himself has control over our immigration policy.”
He added that “everyone can bring in their extended family without any discussion about whether we actually need those folks,” and “we often think of them as competition for people who are blue-collar workers or Americans who may not have college degrees or law degrees or people who don’t work for the editorial board of the New York Times.”
But Feere pointed out that even though “skills-based” immigrants are a small percentage of the population, on top of it all, “we are bringing in people who are high-skilled as well unnecessarily” when there is no shortage of American high-tech workers. He said that “what we are discovering” is that “these are folks that are no greater skilled than the American people but they just work for less.”
That’s the topic of Michelle Malkin and John Miano’s new book, Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best & Brightest Workers, and Feere said that The Center for Immigration Studies will have a Thursday event at the National Press Club with the authors.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...l-immigration/
