House Speaker Paul Ryan’s amnesty bill got only 121 GOP votes in the House, marking a huge defeat despite his earlier effort to gain votes from business-first legislators by offering to add two huge visa-worker programs.
The 121-to-301 defeat showed the populist shift in the GOP’s caucus towards the lower-immigration/higher wages policies pushed by President Donald Trump, and away from Ryan’s brand of donor-backed, business-first, wage-lowering immigration policies.
Ryan’s bill got fewer votes than the tougher bill drafted by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, which did not include a full amnesty but only allowed work-permits to roughly 700,000 migrants. On June 21, 193 legislators backed Ryan’s bill, just 27 votes short of a majority.
112 Republicans voted against Ryan’s bill.
Over the weekend, Ryan added two visa-worker programs — the new H-2C program and an H-2B expansion — in the hope of building support from business groups and business-first GOP legislators. Both visa programs were pulled from the final version of the bill because they did not raise the vote level.
Ryan’s bill was also far less ambitious than the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill passed by the Senate in 2013. His bill would have given an amnesty to roughly 2 million people over 10 years, without adding more people to the economy.
In contrast, the 2013 legislation which would have provided an amnesty to at least 11 million illegals — and also doubled legal immigration rates. Overall, the 2013 bill would have handed out an additional 30 million green cards over the next decade. That huge influx would have moved more of the nation’s annual income from wage-earners to Wall Street investors, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office.
Ryan’s bill was strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — but only because lobbyists expected the Senate’s bipartisan cheap-labor caucus would reverse Ryan’s modest cuts in legal immigration during the Senate’s debate.
The populist shift was recognized in 2014 when the GOP leadership refused to put the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill up for a vote. The GOP’s pro-amnesty Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, lost his primary in June 2014, and Democrats lost nine Senate seats in November 2014.
In November 2016, Trump won the White House on a promise of pro-American reform.
Ryan’s defeat clears the deck for Trump to run a pro-American immigration-reform campaign throughout the November midterms. That campaign has already started on Trump’s Twitter account:
Elect more Republicans in November and we will pass the finest, fairest and most comprehensive Immigration Bills anywhere in the world. Right now we have the dumbest and the worst. Dems are doing nothing but Obstructing. Remember their motto, RESIST! Ours is PRODUCE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2018
….Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit – we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
The Border has been a big mess and problem for many years. At some point Schumer and Pelosi, who are weak on Crime and Border security, will be forced to do a real deal, so easy, that solves this long time problem. Schumer used to want Border security – now he’ll take Crime!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2018
Here's a list of the 112 Republicans who voted no on the immigration bill. pic.twitter.com/AGakzLyd8i
— Paul McLeod (@pdmcleod) June 27, 2018
Polls
Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.
But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or the return of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Immigration Economics
Currently, 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.