Fast food executive Andy Puzder is reportedly Donald Trump’s choice to serve as secretary of labor. Puzder has espoused immigration views at odd’s with Trump and the Department of Labor plays a prominent role in immigration enforcement.
The CKE Restaurants CEO spoke at a 2013 AEI forum titled: “Essential workers? Less-skilled immigrants and the changing US economy.” At that event Puzder praised low-skilled immigrant labor. “Our Hardee’s restaurant operators in the midwest and the southeast often use the labor force in California as an example of what they would like their labor force to be.”
He later said at that event that no provisions in the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration bill, which Trump fervently attacked on the campaign trail, would hurt him as a CEO. Puzder did add that “as an American more than as a CEO” he found the border security measures in the immigration bill “troubling.” Puzder said that doubling the amount of border security officers would be “overkill.”
CKE Restaurant owns Hardee’s and Carl Jr’s among other fast food chains. The Wall Street Journal and CNN both reported Thursday that the long time Republican donor will be named as Trump’s labor secretary.
In a video released after he was elected president, Trump said, “I will direct the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker.” During the campaign, Trump called the H-1B program, which the Department of Labor oversees, “a cheap labor program.” The president-elect added that it exists “for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.”
“They’re very hard working, dedicated, creative people that really appreciate the fact they have a job they have a job whereas in other parts of the country we get people who say, ‘I can’t believe I have to work this job,'” Puzder said at the AEI event about the California labor force. “With the immigrant population you always have a thank god I have this job kind of attitude.”
Puzder also donated to a super PAC supporting Jeb Bush in 2015 and told reporters that Republican presidential candidates should follow the former Florida governor’s “lead” on immigration. He said, “People vote with their hearts … our values dictate we should be the party of immigration reform.”
“Puzder, of course, praised the Schumer-Rubio bill which would have almost tripled H-1B visas; visas that have brought in millions of semi-skilled foreign guest-workers over the years, replacing our own professionals and crowding out our own graduates,” Ian Smith, an attorney with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told TheDC. He added, “What’s problematic for Trump is there’s precious few career government officials, politicians, or business elites, that don’t want to erase our borders. These groups belong to a special class, one that’s far above the working and middles classes.”