NC: Winning by Doing Right

 

To: Claude Pope NCGOP Chairman, member RNC

Dr. Ada M. Fisher, NC member RNC

Rep. David Lewis, NC House, member RNC

cy: Carolyn Justus, Vice Chair NCGOP, former Rep. 117th District NCH

Winning by Doing Right

Advice to the Republican National Committee

Mike Scruggs

President Obama has instigated a massive increase in new illegal immigration across our Southern borders by promising an administrative amnesty for as many as 5 to 12 million unlawful immigrants now in the country. History teaches that illegal immigration increases sharply whenever a new amnesty is anticipated. In addition, amnesties beget more follow-up amnesties. The 1986 amnesty begat six more amnesties in the following 14 years. The 1986 amnesty was supposed to legalize a little more than one million formerly illegal immigrants. It turned out to be almost three million due to fraud, extreme leniency, and naïve initial estimates. The six amnesties that followed resulted in legalizing another three million illegal immigrants, bringing the total to six million. In addition, amnesties beget more illegal immigration. With low border and workplace enforcement, the six million amnesties given between 1986 and 2000 resulted in another 12 million illegal immigrants—some say as many as 20 million. A general rule of thumb estimated from the 1986 experience is that each individual amnesty results in approximately 2.5 new illegal immigrants within the next 10 to 20 years. Thus amnesties have a POWERFUL MULTIPLIER EFFECT generating new illegal immigration. Do the math. Legalizing 12 million unlawful immigrants would create an even bigger illegal immigrant problem, perhaps 30 million more unlawful immigrants. 

Legalizing unlawful immigrants does not bring in much additional tax revenue because most unlawful immigrants are poorly educated. They are in a low tax bracket and stay in a low tax bracket. The fiscal cost of amnestied immigrants actually goes up because they become legally eligible for more government benefits. A 2013 Heritage Foundation study found that the average illegal immigrant household received $14,387 per year more in government benefits and services than all taxes paid. Legalizing them gives them more benefits and runs the average annual tax deficit up to nearly $19,000 more per household. Cheap immigrant labor is not so cheap to taxpayers. Those who hire cheap illegal immigrant labor, however, make a handsome profit from low cost labor and are in effect receiving a prodigious and unwarranted taxpayer paid subsidy.  Besides this, many American workers are displaced, and the oversupply of cheap foreign labor depresses the income of American workers by about $2,800 per year.

The Schumer-Rubio bill, S.744, passed by the Senate, is even more outrageous in its evil impact on American workers. It calls for at least another 20 million legal immigrant workers over the next decade. This would be disastrous insult to American workers and their families. .

Republican establishment policies favoring amnesty and huge increases in legal immigrant workers send a message to American workers: Republicans may talk about growth, but they don't really seem to care about jobs or American workers. They are focusing on near-term profit for special interest donors.

There are two major groups that favor amnesty and a huge legal immigrant surge. First is the Democratic Party, which would gain millions of new voters who favor a welfare state by at least three to one. Cheap-labor special interests are the second. According to Harvard labor economist George Borjas, the users of cheap foreign labor profit $435 billion per year. This costs American workers about $400 billion per year. The profiteers and their powerful lobbying associations calling on Congress and state legislatures are providing immense political donations to those Federal and State legislators who promise to vote their way. Unfortunately, this includes many short-sighted Republicans. The irony is that amnesty is a poisoned chalice for the Republican Party, but their eyes seem closed to the political and economic consequences and ethical considerations of amnesty and open-border immigration policies.

For decades our de facto immigration policies have favored big business in scandalous disproportion to ordinary wage earners and small businesses. This is an enormous injustice that the Republican Party needs to correct rather than perpetuate. It hurts Americans of all races but is particularly devastating to blacks, who are being shoved out of jobs by an excessive oversupply of cheap foreign labor, both legal and illegal, and whose wages are being held down by an oversupply of cheaper foreign labor with devastating socio-economic effect. The second most damaged group by illegal and excessive legal immigration are legal Latino workers and citizens. But it is increasingly hurting the vast majority of American workers and taxpayers.

By taking a principled stand on immigration policy the Republican Party could regain the respect of American workers, who are now realizing how badly they have fared against big corporate donors and associations. There is also a real opportunity for the Republican Party to get a good share of black votes by standing AGAINST the massive amnesty and legal foreign worker surge proposed by U.S. Senate bill S.744.

The enormous outside funding that is pouring into the Republican primaries is a full-court press by the Republican establishment to pass amnesty and the huge legal foreign worker surge contained in the Senate Schumer-Rubio bill (S.744).

 The pro-amnesty folks never add up the real costs of illegal immigration and amnesty. Read the study by the Heritage Foundation--$6.3 TRILLION over 50 years. They just keep looking for the big donations from the U.S. Chamber and other cheap-labor lobbies. Republican establishment rationale is essentially half-baked Chamber of Commerce sales pitch. It is stupendously distorted, amazingly short-sighted, and appallingly bad economic analysis.

The Republican Party also needs to steer away from the scurrilous tactics and brazen dishonesty used by pro-amnesty political consultants and some candidates in several recent U.S. House and Senate primaries, most egregiously in the Mississippi and Tennessee Senate races.  Republicans need to carry a banner of truth that voters can trust, and their immigration policies must weigh heavily for the good of American workers and taxpayers.

The Republican Party's constituency is not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its allied lobbies. It is every American who wants honest and principled government, freedom, and opportunity.