Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are reportedly in talks to revive negotiations over a plan that would give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the United States.
This week, as Breitbart News reported, 51 border crossers died in an abandoned tractor-trailer in an apparent human smuggling operation along the United States–Mexico border near San Antonio, Texas.
Since President Joe Biden took office, at least 650 border crossers have died trying to cross the border — a record-breaking figure since the data started being tracked in 2014.
Now, Durbin tells Politico he hopes to use the migrant deaths to revive amnesty negotiations with Tillis. Both Durbin and Tillis sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and also sought to revive amnesty talks in April.
“We’ve been talking the last couple days about reviving that effort,” Durbin told Politico. “And I think what happened at the border with finding 51 dead migrants in that tractor-trailer is what I would call a ‘Uvalde moment.’ I hope it sparks an interest in finding a bipartisan approach to dealing with immigration.”
Last week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) suggested he was working on a legislative plan that would provide amnesty to potentially millions of illegal aliens. Later, Cornyn called the remark “a joke.”
Angel Families, the loved ones of Americans killed by illegal aliens, rebuked Cornyn’s amnesty suggestion in exclusive statements to Breitbart News. “There is no excuse for joking about working on an amnesty bill,” Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is rebuking Senate talks of an amnesty for illegal aliens, calling it “a nonstarter” that a future House Republican majority “will fight.” https://t.co/Vn1xzfrcol
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 23, 2022
Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies last year found that giving amnesty to illegal aliens could cost American taxpayers about $500 billion over the next two decades. Prior estimates have suggested amnesty would cost taxpayers about $2 trillion.
The Chamber of Commerce and corporate special interests have a vested interest in amnesty for illegal aliens, as such a policy would immediately flood the U.S. labor market with millions of new foreign workers, often hired at lower wages than Americans.
A flooded labor market has been well documented for its wage-crushing side effects, so much so that economist George Borjas has called mass immigration the “largest anti-poverty program” at the expense of America’s working and lower-middle class, while the biggest winners are corporations and Wall Street investors.
Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.”
Albert’s research also finds immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market. Similarly, research from June 2020 on U.S. wages and the labor market shows that a continuous flow of mass immigration exerts “stronger labor market competition.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) likewise has repeatedly noted mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages.
In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated, [I]immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter here.