It is important for you to listen to your Republican colleagues who realize that comprehensive immigration reform would harm American workers. The best way for your party to reach out to voters, especially working class voters, is to improve the job prospects of all Americans. The worst way to do this is to support legislation that gives work permits to illegal aliens and increases foreign worker numbers.
It makes no sense to legalize illegal workers or bring in more foreign workers when there is not a worker shortage, despite what corporate bosses might say. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployed far outstrip the number of available jobs in every major industry. For instance, in the retail industry there are over 1.2 million unemployed workers and only about 400,000 job openings. In construction, there are fewer than 200,000 job openings for the 1 million workers out of a job.
If Republicans support efforts to bring in more foreign workers to fight for these few job openings, you will not make friends of these voters. However, if you oppose amnesty, but support legislation that removes illegal aliens from the workforce, you will almost certainly pick up more voters.
Phone me if you would like to talk about this.
Greg Raven
