Fox News host Tucker Carlson criticized some of President Donald Trump’s advisers for placing the wishes of big business over the American middle class.
Reacting on Tuesday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to what could turn out to be a watered-down immigration pause that doesn’t include many of the temporary immigrant workers who compete with lower-skilled Americans for jobs, Carlson began by saying critics of the pause, like former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “needn’t have worried.”
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“The ban will apply only to individuals seeking permanent residency in this country. In other words, people who like the United States enough to stay permanently and would like green cards to be able to do it legally,” Carlson said after describing what he knew about the pause so far. “But the ban will not apply to those entering the United States on a temporary basis, and that means this will not affect guest workers. That’s an awful lot of exceptions.”
“Every year our government hands out 80,000 non-agricultural guest worker Visas as well as 85,000 H1B Visas, and hundreds of thousands of [agriculture] worker Visas,” the Fox News host continued. “The purpose of this tidal wave of immigration has nothing to do with what advocates of immigration claim immigration is for. These Visas do not improve American society in any way. We have no moral obligation to give them. There is no mention of guest workers on the Statue of Liberty.”
The “only” reason, Carlson contended, that these Visas are handed out is to “placate big business.”
“Employers always and everywhere want to hire workers for less, in this case for less than Americans make, and these Visas let them do it,” he pointed out. “They continue to do it at a time when more than 22 million Americans have just filed for unemployment.”
The Daily Caller co-founder gave Trump credit for wanting to save U.S. jobs, but speculated that “some in his orbit are not as concerned” and simply want to make “donors happy.” (RELATED: Tucker Carlson: America’s Elites Want ‘Immigration Without Limit’)
While donors love “cheap employees,” Carlson said, such an order “will not help” America’s middle class.
“Some of the people with influence hanging around the White House have more profound things to worry about right now than the fate of America’s dying middle-class,” he concluded. “They are worried about whether their friends will approve of the president’s latest Executive Order. That’s their attitude and it’s that attitude that brought us where we are right now. Who are we talking about? We’re not naming names tonight because we haven’t confirmed who they are. More to come.”