Labor Day topic at Washington Times with some details about the on-goings in the current GOP civil war.
GOP polling indicates that most US workers want government policy to protect the jobs of/for US citizens from the unfettered immigration chaos we see in the news lately.
“Jobs is the primary motivator for awakening action on immigration,” said Kellyanne Conway, founder of the Polling Company, as she presented her survey data last month at the Heritage Foundation.
“Hispanics [and] even liberals pipe up [on the issue]. Independents, those making less than $40,000 a year and 85 percent of blue-collar workers agree with this. They believe that protecting American jobs is an incredibly important point of this immigration equation to them, even if it’s left out of the national conversation.”
“We have a large surplus of labor that is reducing wages and employment, including in our immigrant communities,” Mr. Sessions said.
“The compassionate, sensible, conservative thing to do after a sustained period of open immigration is to slow down a bit, allow wages to rise, assimilation to occur and to help those struggling here today — both immigrant and U.S.-born workers alike — rise together into the middle class,” he said.Sessions also reintroduces the "C-word" here i.e., "compassionate" which "W" coined back in 2000 as an adjective to "conservative" and this messaging served him well with the socio-economic justice cohort, with "W" winning the next two presidential elections.
So we have the authority wing of the GOP looking to appeal to the labor cohort and the socio-economic justice cohort while the libertarian crazy wing of the GOP seems to be still satisfied with their appeal to the metal-loving, neo-confederate, gun-nut, chaos-advocating cohort which is fortunately for the greater country a permanent political minority.
Much smarter approach for them than the racism and xenophobia approach.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the "illegal immigrants" by night and "guest workers" by day do the grunt jobs that Americans don’t' want at the going rate and often cannot do owing to the extreme work conditions such as agricultural work and roofing in extreme heat.The only way to get Americans to do this work is to pay considerably more than the current offers, which, of course, is passed along as a price increases on food, etc.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the GOP is fine with green cards for workers that compete for high paying knowledge jobs and drive down the cost to businesses by about a third.
And, of course, "free trade" is a license to import embedded cheap labor that is not only low wage but also has no benefits and often works under conditions that workers in developed countries are protected against.
Personally I'm more disturbed by the thousands of Californians that flee to Texas every month. Imagine how hard it would be to stop the flow of Californians moving to Texas, often in crossovers loaded to the top, late in the night to find work and housing, kids in tow. The Dems would frame the problem as bad-employers putting Californians to work in Texas while Republicans would focus on the broad range of public services, school, free community healthcare clinics and charities as driving the thousands of Californians moving to Texas every month. You could debate the politics of why people are moving all day long but it is a cold hard fact, they are, and people will always move around to participate in neighboring markets and gene pools.
ReplyDeleteThe whole two-party immigration debate is absurd and based on populist framing. As a nation we've plentiful opportunity and resources that people from everywhere can come to enjoy the bounty whether from California or Honduras. There isn't a fixed number of jobs to be had. Keep it orderly, keep it legal, minimize conflict all you can do.
Ryan what seems to be missing coming from either side is criticism of the leadership in the nations these people are fleeing from... rsp
ReplyDelete