Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Speaker Paul Ryan is ushering through Congress a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill which would fully fund all of President Obama’s immigration agenda along with a disastrous quadrupling of low-wage foreign workers allowed into the country under the H-2 visa program.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) blasted the Speaker’s legislation especially when it comes to H-2 visas:
“The more than 2,000 page year-end funding bill contains a dramatic change to federal immigration law that would increase by as much as four-fold the number of low-wage foreign workers provided to employers under the controversial H-2B visa program, beyond what is currently allowed,” Sessions said in a statement.
The foreign nationals who enter the U.S. on H-2B visas come for low-skilled nonagricultural jobs and work in hotels, construction, landscaping and the like, jobs, Sessions argued, that millions of Americans would like to have.
“At a time of record immigration – with a full 83 percent of the electorate wanting immigration frozen or reduced – the GOP-led Congress is about to deliver Obama a four-fold increase to one of the most controversial foreign worker programs. The result? Higher unemployment and lower wages for Americans,” Sessions continued.
In fact, its hard to find an area where Barack Obama didn’t get everything he wanted from this bill and hard to find where the immigration patriots who elected Paul Ryan got anything.
In addition to the increase in H-2B visa allowances, Sessions pointed to the lack of conditions placed on the President’s request for increased refugee admissions, meaning Obama could bring in as many refugees — who are immediately eligible for welfare once admitted— as he desires.
”This will ensure that at least 170,000 green card, refugee and asylum approvals are issued to migrants from Muslim countries over just the next 12 months,” Sessions said.
The Alabama lawmaker continued, recalling that in his capacity as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, he send a list of proposals for the omnibus to appropriators intended to “improve immigration enforcement and block presidential lawlessness.” While those proposals were not included, funding for Obama’s refugee effort was.
“The bill also funds sanctuary cities, allows the President to continue issuing visas to countries that refuse to repatriate violent criminal aliens, and funds the President’s ongoing lawless immigration actions – including his unimpeded 2012 executive amnesty for alien youth,” Sessions argued.
Sessions added, “As feared, the effect is to fund the President’s entire immigration agenda.”