GOP Poll Spotlights Public Opposition to Corporate Labor Migration

Neil MunroNovember 10, 2021

The House GOP’s 2022 campaign committee has acknowledged that a clear majority of Americans oppose uncapped legal migration and hiring of foreign workers by U.S. corporations.

Fifty-three percent of voters, and 55 percent of independents, oppose “removing federal limits on the number of foreign workers who can be hired by corporations to do jobs based in the United States,” said a summary of a November 2-4 poll of 800 likely voters by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

“This polling shows broad, powerful, and intense opposition to measures that erase or eliminate border and immigration control,” said the summary of the poll, which was conducted by Nathan Klein, at OnMessage Inc. He is a GOP pollster who has worked for President Donald Trump and the GOP’s House leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

The NRCC released the poll on legal migration after House Democrats agreed on a plan to pass President Joe’ Biden’s migration-boosting “Build Back Better” (BBB) spending plan.

The Democratic plan removes annual caps on the award of green cards to foreign workers recruited by U.S. companies and removes annual caps on the inflow of family migrants.

The OnMessage poll showed that just one-sixth of American likely voters strongly support the removal of any limits on legal immigration and foreign hiring.

The statement said:

Democrats’ open borders policies are politically toxic … Democrats are already on the ropes but if they pass legislation including these policies, they can kiss their reelection hopes good-bye.

The NRCC statement is important because most GOP politicians and their pollsters choose to ignore Americans’ growing concerns with the pocketbook impact of wage-cutting, rent-boosting legal and illegal immigration. That impact is made worse by corporate outsourcing of U.S. jobs to a population of 1 million-plus visa workers.

The result of that strategy choice is that only 48 percent of Americans think the GOP would do a better job on border security than the Democrats, according to an October poll of 1,000 Americans by NBC.

The GOP does not have majority support in immigration debates because 29 percent of Americans say the two parties are equally trusted (12 percent) or that neither party can do the job (17 percent), according to the NBC data. The Democrats’ border policies are rated favorably by just 21 percent.

Instead of trying to win majority support with the help of pocketbook appeals, the GOP leaders merely try to gin up turnout among GOP supporters by focusing on illegal migration, border security, welfare spending, and crime by illegals.

But GOP leaders are edging towards the recognition of immigration as a pocketbook issue.

“Well, the immigration issue is a pocketbook issue,” NRCC chairman Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told Breitbart News on November 7. He continued:

You’re talking about immigration being a kitchen table issue and how it impacts [voters]. The bottom line is that polling showed us this is still a very potent issue for Americans. This is something that, while some people would want to write it off, this is something that Americans care about, and this administration has completely punted on the immigration issue and talk about incompetence.

However, Emmer quickly defaulted back to illegal migration, saying:

I just have to go to one piece, as you were talking about it—this issue of compensating illegal immigrants who were separated at the border. You’re coming into the country illegally. And now, we’re supposed to compensate you for some type of some type of trauma? That’s 3-to-1 that Americans disapprove of the notion that you’re going to give them any money, let alone $450,000 per family. It’s just insane. But I’m sorry, I got off a little bit.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

For example, Rasmussen Reports’ immigration index asks likely voters every two weeks:

When businesses say they are having trouble finding Americans to take jobs in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and other service work, what is generally best for the country?

In late October, 63 percent of 1,250 Rasmussen’s respondents picked the answer that it is “better for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans even if it causes prices to rise.”

Just 20 percent agreed with the alternative answer: “Better for the government to bring in new foreign workers to help keep business costs and prices down.”

But this opposition to labor migration is rarely acknowledged by the establishment media, which also rarely posts basic information about the legal inflow of one million foreigners into Americans’ society each year.

In 2021, that legal inflow is being doubled by about one million migrants who are being allowed to cross the U.S. border with Mexico, plus hundreds of thousands of visa workers who are being imported for disparate jobs sought by unemployed U.S. graduates or rural voters.

The inflow of 2 million migrants adds up to roughly one migrant for every two births in the United States during 2021. The vast majority of the migrants seek jobs in coastal states, so diverting job-creating investment and real estate value away from GOP-run heartland states.

The new OnMessage polling statement acknowledges that the public wants caps on annual immigration:

54% of voters, including 59% of independents, oppose “removing federal limits on the total amount of immigration authorized each year.” Only 35% of voters support this plan … [and] (39% Strongly Opposed / 15% Strongly Support).

Americans also strongly oppose amnesty for illegal migrants, says the OnMessage poll:

Finally, 59% of voters oppose granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, including 70% of independents. Only 31% of voters support this plan … (44% Strongly Opposed / 17% Strongly Support).

The poll was released as House Democrats argue over the terms of Biden’s Build Back Better act.

The plan allows millions of additional migrants to legally buy their way into the United States. The plan also allows roughly 1 million visa workers and family members, and roughly 3 million chain-migration foreigners, to bypass annual limits with payments of either $5,000 or $2,500.

The early-pay, fast-track process will make it easy for companies to recruit foreign college graduates with the dangled promise of fast-track green cards, so pushing Americans out of careers, jobs, and high-status universities.

The green-cards-for-cash will also allow roughly 3 million legal family chain migrants into the country in a few years — dramatically escalating housing prices and job competition. The process will also encourage many more foreigners to sign up for chain-migration green cards.

The bill offers the immigration agencies roughly $2.8 billion to quickly process the legal migrants.

The bill also creates several hundred thousand extra green cards for additional legal migrants,

The BBB bill also offers a partial amnesty to millions of illegal migrants, and offers child-support payments to illegal migrants, including those who were allowed into the United States in 2021.

The NRCC’s poll questions are “a mild improvement” over prior polls, said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as. top immigration official during President Donald Trump’s administration.

But, he added, “it would be more valuable [if the NRCC was] harnessing that issue to ensure they don’t have Republicans help pass the [BBB] reconciliation bill that has the provisions.”

GOP leaders have spent much time criticizing the BBB legislation’s aid for illegal migration. But they ignore how the bill legally expands migration into Americans’ jobs and neighborhoods, and ignore the pocketbook impact of legal migration.

For example, Rep. John Katko (R-NY) chairs the GOP side of the House homeland defense committee and is responsible for crafting the GOP’s 2022 message on migration. On November 5, he defended his decision to vote for Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by declaring his opposition to Biden’s BBB. But he did not mention any opposition to the bill’s huge changes to legal immigration:

Democrats also made history by beginning the process to pass a separate multi-trillion dollar spending [BBB] package. With this vote tonight. Democrats have paved the way to pass a far-left wish list that will raise taxes, implement radical Green New Deal policies, make our economy less competitive, and exacerbate the skyrocketing inflation that is already hurting Central New York families.

“John Katko is the typical corporate Republican,” said one person active in the immigration debate told Breitbart News in June. He added:

He speaks a great game on illegal immigration, and is sorrowfully bad on legal immigration to the United States. He has never found a guest worker program he does not support, he’s never found a legal immigration program he does not think should be expanded, and I don’t think that he considers immigration as something that affects working Americans.

Katko’s office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

During the first year of the pandemic, more than 96k people died from drug overdoses, the largest in U.S. history. Author @samquinones7 writes about the opioid crisis and tells @JeffGlor how this latest book details a wake-up call to a changing world. pic.twitter.com/PCl4HicQ5c

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) November 6, 2021