Tag: immigration reform
Republican Drift Toward Far Right Strains Traditional Business Ties

Republican Drift Toward Far Right Strains Traditional Business Ties

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

The nation's most powerful business lobby has long been an ally of Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Now, that may be changing.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which calls itself the "world's largest business organization," and aims to "advocate for pro-business policies," has spent $1.6 billion on federal lobbying — more than double the next largest interest group — and more than $116 million on political expenditures since 1998. But in recent years, it has shifted its rhetoric, embracing more bipartisanship and commonsense policy solutions, as citizens demand more social responsibility from businesses.

An October poll found 68 percent of Americans want corporate CEOs to take a stand on social issues. Another survey, taken last June, found nearly 60 percent want the companies they use to take positions on issues like social justice and racial discrimination.

After years of almost exclusively backing Republicans, the Chamber also backed 23 House Democrats last year. Since President Joe Biden's victory, it has embraced several of his policy goals, lending some support for his social policies and government actions to help people.

Republican leaders, many of them bankrolled by the Chamber for years, claim the organization has "sold out" and are disowning their longtime benefactors.

"I don't want the U.S. Chamber's endorsement because they have sold out," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy complained in a September Fox Business interview. "It is hypocrisy that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would endorse the Democrats that are part of this socialist agenda that is driving this country out, and is fighting [Donald Trump]."

Senate Minority Leader McConnell told Politico at the time, "Honestly at this point, I think they're so confused about what they're about that they probably don't make much difference."

Earlier in February, Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) toldPolitico the Chamber "has forgotten Main Street America" and must decide if "they really care about the bottom line of companies and small businesses and growth," or whether "they care more about social justice[.]"

Though congressional Republicans have taken millions from the Chamber's political action committee, relied on its massive outside spending, and bragged in the past of its support as a "pro-business" seal of approval, most have opposed its mainstream policy proposals and agenda.

That much was evident in January. Having already recognized Biden as the president-elect on the same day major news outlets projected him the winner back in November, the Chamber put out a statement on January 4 opposing efforts by congressional Republicans to overturn the results and declare Donald Trump the winner.

"Efforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results in an effort to change the election outcome or to try a make a long-term political point undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division," the group said, urging Congress to "fulfill its responsibility" in certifying the Electoral College results, which sealed Biden's victory.

Despite its urging, 139 House Republicans and 8 GOP senators — a majority of congressional Republicans — voted to reject the election results on Jan. 6, the same day a riotous mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol to stop that certification, fueled by GOP-led conspiracies about widespread voter fraud.

Overall, many congressional Republicans have moved far enough to the right that they are now mostly out of sync with the public, as well as the Chamber, an entity with which they long claimed to be allied, on a number of high profile issues.

Pandemic Relief

The Chamber of Commerce has embraced Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, specifically applauding its "focus on vaccinations and on economic sectors and families that continue to suffer as the pandemic rages on." It also endorsed Biden's mask mandate to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The pandemic relief bill and mask mandate would both help slow the crisis, ideally allowing businesses to safely reopen.

By contrast, congressional Republicans have railed against the proposal as "wasteful" and, in early February, House and Senate Republicans voted unanimously against advancing it. Several Republicans have refused to wear masks in public and have sought to overturn mask requirements.

Meanwhile, a December STAT-Harris poll found 75 percent support for mandatory mask use in public.

A Navigator Strategies poll released Thursday found 73 percent of Americans back the relief package — and even 53 percent of Republicans support it.

LGBTQ rights

In May 2019, the Chamber endorsed the Equality Act, which would update federal nondiscrimination laws to explicitly protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination. This came as part of a broader push for workplace inclusion, without regard for sexual orientation or gender identity.

But the Republican Party continues to fight against LGBTQ rights. When the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act that month, just eight Republicans voted for it — 173 voted against. Republicans then blocked it from even getting a vote in the Senate.

"Over 325 major businesses have joined HRC's Business Coalition for the Equality Act because they understand that equality is good for business," Beck Bailey, director of the Human Rights Campaign's Workplace Equality Program, said in an email. "In order to truly thrive at work, employees must be able to thrive outside of it. Employees and their families must have the uniform civil rights protections guaranteed to others to live unfettered by discrimination in other aspects of daily life."

A 2016 North Carolina law barring transgender people from using the bathroom matching their gender identity and blocking local nondiscrimination protections, for example, cost the state's economy billions after a national boycott.

"The Equality Act not only aligns with corporate values of fairness and inclusion, it just makes good business sense," Bailey noted.

A December poll found 70 percent support for the Equality Act — including 50 percent support among Trump voters.

Climate Change

After years of backing climate denial organizations and opposing climate action, like the Paris Agreement, the Chamber made a major shift in 2019. In what it has called an "update" to its approach, the group now says it embraces efforts to reduce climate change, including the possibility of a carbon tax.

Many in the GOP still deny climate change even exists. Opposition to the Paris accord is nearly universal among congressional Republicans and the party platform rejects both a carbon tax and the treaty.

Climate change is a huge threat to businesses, which are already feeling its negative impacts and recognize things could get much worse. A 2014 report to investors by Chipotle, for example, warned that extreme weather "associated with global climate change" may "have a significant impact on the price or availability of some of our ingredients," forcing them to stop serving salsas and guacamole.

A Pew poll last June found 65 percent of Americans do not believe the federal government is doing enough to stem climate change and 73 percent supported a carbon emissions tax on corporations.

Adam Beitman, Sierra Club senior communications strategist for federal policy, said in an email: "We know the costs of inaction are far greater than those tied to the opportunities of investing in a clean energy economy that works for all and tackles the climate crisis."

He noted however that the Chamber still had much to prove in its dedication to environmental efforts. "Unfortunately, the Chamber of Commerce has and continues to be one of the greatest roadblocks to significant climate action in Washington, D.C. rhetoric notwithstanding," he said.

Immigration Reform

The Chamber has thrown its support behind comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act, a bill to offer legal protections and a path to citizenship for Dreamers — undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children by their parents.

With millions of skilled and educated workers and entrepreneurs hoping to become citizens, these reforms could provide businesses with their future employees and leaders.

A Vox and Data for Progress poll released this month found 69 percent of likely voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented people already in the country who can pass a background check and pay their taxes.

But few Republicans in Congress have backed immigration reform, even for Dreamers.

Bruna Sollod, communications director at United We Dream, said in an interview that the COVID-19 pandemic "really shined a light on the impact of all immigrants," showing how essential those workers area. She noted that Dreamers, protected by executive action, "are business owners [and] have jobs that keep communities thriving."

Minimum Wage

While the Chamber has historically opposed plans to raise the minimum wage, it has expressed openness to an "increase guided by economic conditions."

For the most part, congressional Republicans have opposed any efforts to raise the federal minimum — which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. McConnell blocked a House-passed increase last year and has long opposed increases as "not the way to grow our economy."

But polls show wide public support for a higher wage floor. One recent survey of voters in swing House districts found 62 percent support for increasing the hours minimum wage to $15 by 2025.

An increase would lift hundreds of thousands of workers out of poverty. While some experts predict it would cost jobs, others say those claims are dubious or leave out crucial context.

"The business community, from the Chamber to small business groups, recognizes we're long overdue for a minimum wage increase," Paul Sonn, state policy program director at National Employment Law Project, said in an email. "The fact that the Republican leadership continues to fight it shows they're neither protecting business interests nor their own constituents — who make up the lion's share of workers who would be helped, and who polls show overwhelmingly back a wage increase."

Ending Systemic Racism

The Chamber has also embraced the Black Lives Matter movement and backed anti-racism efforts. A 2018 report on its website makes the "Business Case for Racial Equity," highlighting that goal as "both an imperative for social justice and a strategy for economic growth."

But many congressional Republicans have demonized the Black Lives Matter movement as dangerous Marxists who they baselessly claim want to destroy the nuclear family. The GOP has also strongly opposed police reform efforts and most Republican representatives voted last July to keep Confederate monuments in the U.S. Capitol.

The public, meanwhile, has mostly backed the anti-racism movement. Polls last year showed majority support for Black Lives Matter and for removing Confederate monuments from public places.

"A growing number of business leaders realize that taking action to promote racial justice is not only the right thing to do, it's also fundamentally good for business," said Gaylynn Burroughs, senior policy counsel at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "Simply put, when communities of color thrive, businesses thrive. Savvy business leaders understand that systemic racism and white supremacy are clear threats to not only our nation as whole, but the success and growth of their businesses as well."

Rather than listen to the business community's calls for moderation, McCarthy has tried to spin the GOP as now being on the side of workers.

Despite a long record of undermining labors right and a website boasting of prioritizing "a business-friendly environment," the California Republican claimed on February 8 that Republicans today are "the American workers' party."

The Chamber of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Trump’s Immigration Policy: Still Cruel, Stupid, And Utterly Political

Trump’s Immigration Policy: Still Cruel, Stupid, And Utterly Political

You’d think from all the bombast and military shows at the border that Donald Trump is truly dedicated to ending illegal immigration. His apparent choice of Ken Cuccinelli as immigration “czar” would seem to cement the impression. The immigration hardliner espouses policies that are both cruel — denying citizenship to American-born children of undocumented immigrants — and truly stupid — letting companies fire employees who don’t speak English at work.

Trump, however, blew his cover following his release of an actually sensible immigration proposal. The plan would scale back family-based immigration in favor of a preference for foreigners with needed skills. Good idea. Canada does it. But something was definitely missing: a means to stop employers from hiring workers without papers.

The system to do that is already in place. It’s called E-Verify. E-Verify is a database that enables companies to quickly check a prospective new hire’s right to work in this country.

Paging Donald Trump. Paging Donald Trump.

Asked on Fox News whether his immigration proposals would include E-Verify, Trump responded that it could “possibly” be part of it. “E-Verify is so tough that in some cases, like farmers, they’re not — they’re not equipped for E-Verify,” he said.

Oh, really? Does Trump think farmers don’t have laptops?

As long as foreigners can get jobs in the U.S. paying many times what they do back home, they’re going to come here. You can’t blame them for trying. Many of us would do the same. Meanwhile, our undocumented immigrants are overwhelmingly good people. They all deserve humane treatment.

But we have our own low-skilled workers to protect, and that requires limiting the number of the foreign-born competing for their jobs. E-Verify, or a system like it, is the only effective way of unplugging the job magnet that attracts undocumented workers. Walls two miles high won’t do it.

Trump’s game, however, is to make a show of abusing and humiliating impoverished Central Americans while wink-winking at businesses that use the illegal labor. If Trump wants to ensure that U.S. agriculture gets the farm workers it needs, he can man up and support changing the laws to admit more people. They may not be as cheap, but that’s legal labor for you.

By the way, E-Verify was part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate six years ago with votes from both parties. It could have passed the House with bipartisan support, but then-House Speaker John Boehner refused to bring it up for a vote because a majority of his fellow Republicans opposed it.

Some of the bill’s foes pointed to the 1986 immigration reform, which gave amnesty to many undocumented workers but failed to stop the illegal flow into the country. And they were right about that. Job applicants could present stolen or counterfeit Social Security cards or other documents, and if they looked OK (more winking), the employer was off the hook.

But the 2013 bill’s inclusion of E-Verify fixed that flaw. Face it. There’s no talking to people whose real issue is the color of the immigrants.

Another hint that he doesn’t really mean business on immigration is his omitting any mention of those brought to the country illegally as children. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly support legalizing the status of these so-called Dreamers.

Whenever things get slow, Trump moves to a “tougher message,” such as naming Cuccinelli immigration czar. Interesting that Cuccinelli once said he considered not getting a Social Security card for his newborn “because it’s being used to track you.”

So much for E-Verify, which tracks Social Security numbers.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Ken Cuccinelli photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com

Trump’s Immigration ‘Reform’ Is A Dishonest Failure

Trump’s Immigration ‘Reform’ Is A Dishonest Failure

Listening to Donald Trump lay out his vision of immigration policy is like scavenging in a garbage dump. You will probably find some things worth keeping, but you have to wade through a lot of trash to find it. And you can be sure that whatever you really need won’t be there.

His address Thursday would not have been complete without the familiar, false Trump themes that animate him and many of his loyal followers. He accused Democrats of favoring “open borders.” He portrayed the status quo as “lawless chaos.” He insisted that immigrants are a threat to U.S. jobs.

It’s all nonsense. Last year, 44 Senate Democrats voted to give him $25 billion for his border wall – the antithesis of “open borders.” All they wanted in exchange was a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants (the “dreamers”) brought here as children. But 42 Republicans were opposed.

If there is turmoil at the border, it’s not lawless or dangerous. The surge of migrants at the southern border consists mostly of people from Central America requesting asylum. They are entitled to apply for refuge from persecution under both U.S. law and international conventions signed by the U.S. government.

The real chaos is in the violent places these applicants have fled, which the administration shows little interest in trying to ameliorate. In fact, Trump has announced a cut of $450 million in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

If immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans, why is the U.S. unemployment rate the lowest it has been since 1969? Filling jobs is not a zero-sum game, where each job done by a foreigner means unemployment for an American citizen. Migrants from abroad, legal or undocumented, also create jobs. Economists generally conclude that they have little if any negative effect on wages.

For Trump to address the broad issue of immigration while offering nothing for those foreigners protected under Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is unconscionable as policy and inept as politics.

Many if not most of these young people are American in every way except their place of birth. To expel them to places most of them hardly remember, whose language they may not even speak, would be pointless cruelty. But Trump can’t be bothered to find a way to let them stay.

His refusal dooms any proposal that needs the approval of Congress. If the opposition party wasn’t prepared to abandon the “dreamers” when Republicans had a majority in both houses, it isn’t going to do so now that Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House. A package that does nothing for the DACA population is as viable as a snowball in a sauna.

This is no secret even in the administration. The Washington Post reported, “A number of White House aides are skeptical of the plan having any chance of passing and say the president having a Rose Garden speech for immigration is a waste of his time.”

But his plan’s fatal elements may be a feature, not a bug. Anything that could be passed into law would provoke the fury of anti-immigration voters. They aren’t content with preventing unauthorized arrivals; they also insist on blocking foreigners from coming legally.

Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, complained beforehand that Trump’s blueprint would “not include any reduction in the overall level of legal immigration.” This comes as a disappointment from those who applauded when Trump announced that “our country is full.” But because his plan has no chance of passage, it should not alienate this loyal bloc.

He wants to replace family-based immigration with a “merit-based” system that gives preference to foreigners based on skills, English proficiency, education and job offers. Though that approach is not entirely without, um, merit, the U.S. economy doesn’t benefit only from foreigners who can work at tech firms. Those willing to pick vegetables and process poultry are also assets. We can admit both.

Conservatives often say that would-be immigrants should follow the rules, get in line, and wait their turn. But the White House admits that under this policy, many people who have done that — often waiting years — would have to go to the back of the line.

That shameful feature highlights another way that listening to Trump on immigration resembles a visit to the dump. Afterward, you need a shower.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapmanand read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Why The Republicans Refuse To Fix Immigration

Why The Republicans Refuse To Fix Immigration

President Trump and the Republican leadership have made clear that they have no intention of repairing our chaotic immigration system. Why not? Because illegal immigration is a problem that bothers most Americans. Fix it and all these politicians have are tax cuts for the rich, environmental degradation, soaring deficits and the loss of health care.

As a campaigner, Trump learned that when audience passion flagged, he could demand a wall with Mexico and his folks would jump to their feet. The week that America went into convulsions over Trump’s racist vulgarities about certain immigrants is a week we’ll never get back again. But it did cancel right-wing displeasure over his seemingly constructive comments on immigration reform a few days earlier.

“Is Trump a racist?” the TV commentators kept asking. He said racially disgusting things as a candidate and again as president. Asking whether he’s a racist deep in his cheesecloth soul is a pointless exercise.

Trump shows all appearances of “not playing with a full deck,” despite a doctor’s report of good cognitive health. It really doesn’t matter much whether he is crazy or just acts crazy.

But with his promises to protect working people breaking like fine crystal dropped from Trump Tower’s 26th floor, his policy deck has become quite thin. Illegal immigration remains one of the few potent cards he has to play. Why take it out of play by solving the problem?

This thinking did not begin with Trump.

In 2013, the U.S. Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform in a bipartisan vote. It would have legalized the status of most undocumented immigrants while putting teeth in enforcement going forward.

There were enough supportive Democrats and Republicans to pass the reform in the House, as well, but then-Speaker John Boehner didn’t put it up for a vote. Passage would have made some hotheads in his Republican caucus unhappy.

Some foes of comprehensive reform pointed to the 1986 immigration deal as the reason they couldn’t support that one. Their reason was baloney.

True, the law enacted in 1986 gave amnesty to millions without stopping the flow of more undocumented workers. Its big flaw was letting employers accept documents that merely “looked good” as ID for hiring someone. An explosion of fake Social Security cards and other documents greatly weakened the ability to enforce the ban on employing those here illegally.

The 2013 legislation would have closed that loophole. It would have required companies to use E-Verify, a secure database, to determine every job applicant’s right to work in the United States. That would have made all the difference in hiring practices and the ability of government to enforce the law.

Had the reform passed in 2013, America would now be in its fifth year of mandatory E-Verify. Instead, we have a law that still lets even poorly counterfeited documents become tickets to employment. The numbers on illegal immigration, falling since the Obama administration, would probably be smaller still had the 2013 reform passed.

And those brought here illegally as children would be enjoying a secure life as Americans. But Trump and many Republicans apparently see value in periodically threatening to deport these innocents. They’re useful as a political plaything.

As for Democrats, they would make a big mistake in underestimating the public’s hunger for an orderly immigration program. Polls show that Americans want a program based on respect — for the immigrants themselves and for the laws designed to protect U.S. workers from unfair competition.

If Democrats make clear that they are on board with both kinds of respect, they’ll be fine. Trump is grasping his one powerful card with both hands. Democrats should not help him.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Relatives separated by deportation and immigration hug at the border during a brief reunification meeting at the banks of the Rio Bravo, a natural border between U.S. and Mexico, October 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo