Ryan Puts Cheap-Labor Amnesty Bill on Fast Track to Floor Vote 7 Jun 2018
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he hopes to quickly write up an amnesty bill and get it passed through the House.
“The next step is putting pen to paper so we can start getting legislation to the floor,” Ryan told reporters shortly after he held a Thursday-morning meeting with the GOP caucus to push for a wage-cutting amnesty.
Ryan suggested he would try to rush the bill to the floor. “Time is of the essence if we want to have a legislative process that we can control,” he said, referring to the group of 23 GOP legislators who threaten to use the discharge-petition process on June 25 to let Democrats pass their own amnesty.
The bill would reportedly provide an amnesty to at least 1.4 million illegals, and it does not include a cap to prevent fraud or subsequent waves of migrants hoping to join the next amnesty.
CNN reported mid-afternoon that Ryan’s legislation could be drafted “in the next few days.” The claim was made by Florida Rep. Chris Curbelo, a leader in the discharge-petition group whose district is dominated by Democratic-voting immigrant families who were brought into the United States by earlier amnesties.
Zitat New 🚨: Curbelo tells me House leadership should have a draft of a DACA compromise in the next few days: “The next two or three days will be decisive in terms of whether or not people keep their word and support this framework” that has been negotiated, he said.
— Tal Kopan (@TalKopan) June 7, 2018
Wrapping up #ImmigrationReform @HouseGOP meeting. I don’t think it could have gone any better. Some questions but a lot of consensus. Our country deserves meaningful action on #immigration now. For too long politicians have used this issue for personal political gain. Enough.
— Carlos Curbelo (@carloslcurbelo) June 7, 2018
Ryan has used the threats from Curbelo and his discharge-amnesty group to push mainstream GOP legislators to support a pre-election amnesty vote. Ryan has the political power to shut down the amnesty-petition drive, partly by denying campaign funding to the 23 GOP members who have signed the petition. He also has the legal authority to ensure the House will not be in session during the only two days the amnesty-discharge people can hold their vote.
Ryan is also aided by threats from cheap-labor business groups who stand to lose billions of dollars because of rising wages in Trump’s no-amnesty economy.
These business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are claiming that investors are suffering from a labor shortage. But the 2017 tax cut and record corporate profits do give them the resources to offer higher wages to encourage people to rejoin the workforce or to switch from lower-paying jobs.
Ryan has a history of supporting cheap-labor amnesties and large-scale immigration in California and other states, although this week he praised the recent wage increases. Those rising wages are helping raise Trump’s political ratings and the GOP’s generic-ballot score before the November election. But the wage raises likely will stall before the election if the federal government passes an amnesty that adds at least two million workers to the labor supply.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.