Americans can defund President Barack Obama’s amnesty by calling their GOP legislators to demand changes in the 2015 budget bill, says Arkansas GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, who won election to the Senate in November.
“Call your Congressman and call your Senator,” Cotton told radio host Laura Ingraham.
“I assure you having been in the Congress that Congressman and Senators listen when the people they serve, their bosses, are calling them and asking them to vote in a certain way,” said Cotton, who campaigned against amnesty during his successful campaign against an incumbent Democratic senator.
“In 2007… the Capitol switchboard actually stopped working because so many people called, and asked their Senators and Congressmen to stop an amnesty bill going through at the time, and it stopped,” said Cotton.
On Wednesday, Dec. 11, House Speaker John Boehner will stage a vote on the 2015 government budget bill. But his bill doesn’t included any language barring Obama’s deputies from spending money to implement his Nov. 21 plan to provide amnesty, work permits and green cards for 5 million illegal immigrants.
Boehner’s spending bill is opposed by numerous anti-amnesty voters and groups, including NumbersUSA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Americans For Legal Immigration PAC, or Alipac.
The amnesty — and Boehner’s spending bill — is backed by numerous business and progressive groups, including Latino lobbies, such as La Raza.
To mollify Americans who oppose greater use of foreign workers, Boehner’s budget bill provides only two months of spending for Obama’s immigration agencies. But once that money runs out in February 2015, Obama’s agencies will be able to use the fees paid by illegals to print and distribute more work-permits.
The GOP won’t be able to pass an anti-amnesty law in 2015 because it will be vetoed by Obama.
Many GOP legislators, including Kansas Rep. Dave Huelskamp and Iowa Rep. Steve King, say the amnesty will be stopped by including language in the 2015 budget that bans any spending to implement Obama’s amnesty.
“We should be looking out for the interest of hard working American taxpayers, who are desperate to get more jobs, who are desperate to get better paying jobs,” Cotton told Ingraham Dec. 5.
Obama’s amnesty will allow illegals to compete for jobs sought by blue-collar Americans, and jobs sought by American professionals and debt-burdened college-graduates. The amnesty also increases the inflow of university-trained guest-workers to compete for university-level jobs.
They “will put downward pressure on working Americans all across this country,” said Cotton.
The foreign workers will take even badly-paid jobs because Obama is putting them on track to get the hugely valuable prize of American citizenship.
Boehner says he doesn’t want to include anti-amnesty language in the 2015 budget because it will cause Obama to shutdown the government —- and to blame the GOP for the shutdown.
However, many Americans oppose Obama’s amnesty — including some Democratic politicians — and the GOP might win the public-relations battle if Obama shuts down the government until the GOP provides funds for his amnesty.
In that battle, if the public backs the anti-amnesty language, Obama’s business-backed amnesty would die.
Equally problematic for Boehner, however, is that any fight over Obama’s amnesty might damage the GOP’s own plans to boost the use of foreign workers.
Boehner’s top business-backed deputies are planning to pass their own bill to allow more foreign workers. Their plan would provide many low-cost workers for American businesses without allowing the foreign workers to get citizenship. The GOP legislators oppose citizenship for the foreign workers because they’re likely to vote for Democrats.
But the Boehner low-wage plan would be derailed if the GOP’s 2015 budget includes a ban on amnesty spending. That’s because any ban would create a public debate over the GOP plan, and force GOP and Democratic legislators to show the public if they are for or against the amnesty.
Boehner’s allies, and many Democratic legislators, don’t want to reveal their support for an amnesty, or for the addition of more foreign workers, because the public strongly opposes both measures.
The business-backed GOP leaders want a steady supply of non-voting, low-wage migrants, either illegals or temporary guest-workers. That strategy has proven economically successful — company profits have risen as median U.S. wages have remained flat since 2000.
Those plans are so unpopular that GOP leaders need cooperation from Democrats and the establishment media to get them through Congress.
Polls show strong opposition to increased immigration and to Obama’s immigration policies.
But public opposition to amnesty is muted by social pressure to support for the tradition of immigration, and by Americans’ reluctance to been seen as critical of migrants.
However, private opposition spikes up to nearly 90 percent whenever the pollsters focus on the fairness of forcing Americans to compete against migrants for jobs in America.
“I am sure people all around the world that want to come here are mostly good folks, but they’re not Americans,” Cotton said. “We should be looking out for the interest of hard working American taxpayers.”
