Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., took to the Senate floor to blast President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty planned for later this year and the Senate Democrats who refuse to oppose it. In the speech excerpts below, Sen. Sessions says the president and Senate Democrats are surrendering the jobs, wages, and livelihoods of American workers to powerful special interests that want to amnesty illegal aliens and increase the number of foreign guest workers.
EXCERPTS OF SEN. SESSIONS' FLOOR SPEECH
“I spoke about the president’s promise that he would issue an executive amnesty to 5 or 6 million people…[which] would include work permits, photo IDs, and Social Security numbers for millions of people who illegally entered the U.S., illegally overstayed their visas, or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities…Not even one of our Democratic colleagues has backed the House legislation that would stop this planned executive amnesty or demanded that Senator Reid bring it up for a vote.
“Tonight I would like to talk about the influence of special interests on our nation’s immigration system. How did we get to the point where elected officials, activist groups, the ACLU, and global CEOs are openly working to deny American workers the immigration protections to which they are legally entitled? …Just yesterday Majority Leader [said] “Since House Republicans have failed to act on immigration, I know the President will. When he does, I hope he goes Real Big.” Let this sink in for a moment. The majority leader of the Senate is bragging that he knows the president will circumvent Congress to issue executive amnesty to millions.
“Has one Senate Democrat…said: I will do everything in my power to see that the House legislation gets a vote in the Senate so the American people can know what is going on? No. All we hear is silence…Every senator needs to stand up and represent their constituents — not big business, not the ACLU, not activist groups, not political interests, but the American interests, the workers’ interests. That is what we need to expect from them…[but]…the entire Senate Democratic conference has surrendered the jobs, wages, and livelihoods of their constituents to a group of special interests meeting in secret at the White House. They are surrendering them to executive actions that will foist on the nation what Congress has refused to pass and the American people have rejected.
“White House officials are meeting with the world’s most powerful corporate and immigration lobbyists and activists who…scorn and mock the concerns of everyday Americans…[and] don’t care much about old-fashioned things like national boundaries, national sovereignty, and immigration control — let alone the constitutional separation of powers…They tried and tried and tried to pass the bill through Congress, but the American people said: No, no, no. So they decided to just go to the president…[and] insist that he implement these measures through executive fiat. And Senate Democrats [said:] We support that…[but]…(w)ait until after the election. We don’t want the voters to hold us accountable for what you are doing.
“Many of us have heard for a long time the claim that there is a shortage of STEM and IT workers. This has been the central sales pitch used by those making demands for massive increases in foreign-worker programs across the board…But we know otherwise from the nation’s leading academics, people who studied this issue and are professionals in it. I have a recent op-ed here from USA Today which reports that there is actually not a shortage but a surplus of Americans who have been trained in the STEM and IT fields and that this is why wages for these fields have not increased since 1999.
“So rich high-tech companies are using the H-1B visa program to keep wages down and to hire less expensive workers from abroad. Indeed, the same companies demanding more guest workers are laying off American workers in droves…There is this myth that we have surging employment in the high-tech industry…There is no shortage of workers.
“Immigration policy is supposed to serve the national interest and the people of the United States, not the interests of a few activist CEOs and the politicians who are catering to them. We have had 40 years of mass immigration combined with falling wages, a shrinking workplace, and exploding welfare rolls….It is time for a shift in emphasis. It is time to get our own people back to work.
“The basic social contract is that citizens agree to follow the law, pay their taxes, and devote their love and loyalty to their country, and in exchange the nation commits to preserve and protect and serve their interests, safeguard their freedom, and return to them in kind their first allegiance and loyalty.
“The job of elected officials is to answer to the people who sent them to Washington — not to scorn them, not to demean them, not to mock them, and not to sell their jobs and dreams to the highest bidder.”
Read more in the National Review.
