Bloomberg
By Dave Weigel and Sahil Kapur
May 9, 2015
Some say another immigration battle—much less one over legal immigration—is not in the party's interest.
Former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum took the stage on Saturday to the
bouncing melody of Pharrell Williams's “Happy,” and explained to a
theater full of conservatives
why it was time to panic.
“You
want to know why wages have flatlined?” Santorum asked the hundreds of
attendees of the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville. “Supply
and demand, ladies and
gentlemen. You have 74 percent of the population of America, aged 18 to
75, without college degrees. And we've brought in roughly 35 million
unskilled workers to compete against them.”
Santorum's
solution was to lower, by 25 percent per year, the number of unskilled
immigrants to obtain citizenship. “If we're going to go out there and
talk about opportunity,
we can't just be the party of growth,” he said. “We need to be a
pro-worker party, and that starts with immigration.”
“We need to be a pro-worker party, and that starts with immigration.”
The
senator, who is expected to announce a second presidential bid this
month, had placed a distant third in 2012's South Carolina primary. In
the halls of the downtown
Peace Center, though, his message had sunk in. “We may need to lower
the influx,” said activist John Schafer, 70. “There are only so many
people who can come in at one time. And that's just the legal people.
The illegals are illegal and they need to stay that
way.”
Santorum
was continuing a conversation elevated recently by Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker. Last month, he sounded the alarm about legal immigration
and called for a
policy “that's based on, first and foremost, protecting American
workers and American wages.” He credited Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a
Republican and outspoken advocate of reducing legal immigration levels.
The
governor's remarks, which came in an interview with conservative radio
host Glenn Beck, were rebuked by senior senators in his party who have
aligned more closely
with the business community in supporting legal immigration. That group
included South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who is likely to
announce his own presidential bid in June—and has already said he'll
pick a fight with the immigration restrictionists
who have opposed him but failed to defeat him at the polls.
Graham
was invited to the summit, tentatively agreed to come, and then
canceled for a family engagement, according to spokesman Kevin Bishop
and Citizens United spokesman
Bryan Lanza (the group helped organize the event). But other
Republicans were on hand to argue that another immigration battle—much
less a battle over legal immigration—was not in the party's interest.
“I'm
disappointed to hear a high-ranking member of my party taking that
position,” said South Carolina Representative Mick Mulvaney, a
conservative elected in 2010. “That's
not how we built this country. Listen, I've heard a lot of arguments
about unskilled labor, and a 10th grade education or whatever to get
here, but if that were the case my family would not have gotten here
from Ireland. They were unskilled workers and they
helped build this country. It's not quite xenophobia, but it's moving
that way.”
Bobby
Jindal, governor of Louisiana, gestures after speaking during the South
Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville, S.C., on May 9, 2015.
Louisiana
Governor Bobby Jindal said in an interview that the federal government
should do nothing on immigration before it secures the border (though he
didn't precisely
define what constitutes a secure border).
“What
Congress needs to do right now—we don't need a comprehensive bill, they
need to secure the border,” he said. “Our immigration system is broken.
We've got a low wall
and a narrow gate. I think we need a high wall and a broad gate. But
right now what we need to do is to secure the border.”
Jindal
lambasted Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's proposal to expand
President Barack Obama's executive actions protecting young undocumented people by also shielding the parents who brought them to the country illegally. “I think it's an
absolute mistake. You're talking about an executive order that's in
contradiction to the Constitution,” he said, arguing that the party
should run against the Democrats' proposals.
Clinton's
expansive offer to Hispanic voters earlier in the week further
complicated the Republican predicament between base voters who harbor
immigration anxieties and
wealthy donors who view a pro-immigration stance as necessary to win
the general election next November. None of the top three Republican
candidates—former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Senator Marco
Rubio, and Walker—mentioned the issue of immigration
in their major speeches Saturday. Bush spoke at the evangelical Liberty
University in Virginia; Rubio and Walker spoke at the South Carolina
event.
Yet
the latter provided some reminders of how the debate could follow
candidates, and why Democrats saw a benefit in forcing it. Iowa
Representative Steve King, who is
nationally known for raising hackles about illegal immigration,
channeled conservative worries about the legal kind after his speech.
While making clear his priority was illegal immigration, he said it has
“always been baloney” when employers say they can't
find Americans to employ.
“I
want to upgrade the quality and the standards of the people coming into
this country legally,” he said, “and if that includes reducing the
numbers to some degree, that's
fine with me.”
In
2008 and 2012, debates like these occasionally roiled the Republican
field. The 2016 race will have voices that weren't as loud then—the
voices of first-generation
Americans now holding powerful roles, or running for president
themselves. Rubio and Jindal both told that story in their Greenville
speeches. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley could tell the same story.
After his remarks, which did not spend much time on
immigration policy, Texas Senator Ted Cruz reaffirmed that he favored
legal immigration, and did not agree that every immigrant was taking a
job that rightfully belonged to someone born in America.
“I
am the son of an immigrant who came here legally, who followed the
rules, but came seeking the American dream,” said Cruz. “You know,
Ronald Reagan referred to legal
immigrants as Americans by choice. I think it entirely possible to
welcome and celebrate legal immigrants and also to defend the rule of
law.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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