Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [17]
Many of the hearings were little more than thinly disguised Republican political rallies, purposely held in congressional districts that were being strongly contested in the upcoming election. Often, they were unabashedly one-sided affairs chock-full of witnesses predisposed to oppose the Senate measure. When GOP Representative Charlie Norwood hosted one such gathering in Gainesville, Georgia, and faced criticism over his unbalanced witness list, he replied in defense and without irony: “What I wanted was witnesses who agree with me, not disagree with me.”
Most entertaining of all, however, were the hearings with titles that amounted to loaded questions that answered themselves. A personal favorite was the House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing held in mid-July and titled, “Should We Embrace the Senate’s Grant of Amnesty to Millions of Illegal Aliens and Repeat the Mistakes of the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986?”
In the event, of course, the gamble didn’t pay off politically. That fall, Republicans lost their majority in the House and the Senate. And while the cause can’t be laid entirely to the party’s hard-line stance on immigration—exit polls said Iraq was the number one issue with voters—it clearly didn’t help matters. A Republican Party in control of Congress and the White House had spent the past year making illegal immigration a loud national theme, only to do nothing substantive about the problem. The party thus revealed itself to be either incapable of dealing with the supposed crisis, or incredibly cynical in raising the issue at all.
JOB STEALERS
The political appeal of immigration as a wedge issue, notwithstanding this poor track record, will be discussed later. But the faux hearings of the summer of 2006 help illustrate another recurring claim of immigration opponents, which is that foreign workers displace native workers and lower wages. Immigrants are said to be “stealing” jobs.
GOP Representative Steve King of Iowa put it succinctly after hosting his own hearing that summer. “Nothing good will come from an amnesty bill,” he said, referring to the Senate measure. “It will continue to force legal American workers out of their jobs and further deplete the middle class.” Mr. King, who as one of Congress’s most outspoken restrictionists once compared illegal immigrants to livestock, continued: “I wholly support an immigration policy designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States of America. That means employer enforcement and preserving jobs for legal workers.” Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, another fiery Republican restrictionist, has said that if illegal immigrants were forced out of the country, “thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits.”
The argument is also hugely popular with cable news-casters and conservative pundits. CNN’s Lou Dobbs says that allowing more foreign-born engineers, medical doctors, and other high-skilled professionals into the country “would force many qualified Americans right out of the job market.” Pat Buchanan’s beef is with low-skilled migrant labor. In his subtly titled book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, Buchanan argues that Latin American newcomers harm the job prospects of working-class natives. Not especially known for his empathy toward the black underclass, Buchanan nevertheless posits that less immigration is a key to black economic