Posted on 04/10/2015 1:40:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ever since Scott Walker began engaging on the national stage, he’s been dogged by questions about his policies on immigration. The Wisconsin governor admits that his position has changed from a few years ago, a change he attributes to having more opportunity to study the issue now that the cycle of elections in Wisconsin has finally played all the way out. Still, Walker has had some trouble defining the issue in a way that makes him stand out from the field.
Did he succeed last night? In an interview with Sean Hannity, Walker said that immigration policy should have as its first principle the protection and improvement of American wages, and not just the crisis management of today (via Daniel Halper):
HANNITY: … You took time to go to the border. What did you learn there, what insight did you gain from that experience?
WALKER: I went to Texas to the border with Governor Greg Abbott, who offered. I’m going to go back to Arizona, New Mexico, and maybe even California with local and state officials there as well. But in Texas in particular, Greg Abbott showed me, with the men and women on the ground from the local level to the state level to even some of the fine men and women who work for the federal government, and they showed that we’re just being overrun.
This is an issue of safety, of security, national security. It’s ultimately an issue of sovereignty. If the United States was being attacked on one of our water ports on the east or west coast, we’d be sending in our military forces. And yet we’re facing some of the same challenges with international criminal organizations — the cartels that are trafficking not only drugs, but weapons and humans, and we need to step up and be aggressive about it. That means securing the border with infrastructure, with technology, with personnel, and the federal government’s got to lead the way on it. We can’t expect the border states to do this alone; the federal government needs to step up and act on it. You can’t be talking about anything else until you do that.
Once you do that, then you can talk about enforcing the laws by using an effective e-verify system for all employers, one that works for small businesses, farmers, and ranchers, and making sure that any legal immigration, no amnesty, any legal immigration system we go forward with is one that ultimately has to protect American workers and make sure that American wages are going up. That’s the way we prosper for every hard working American in this country.
NRO’s Rich Lowry signals his approval of the new focus:
Scott Walker has taken some hits on immigration, including here at NR. But he did well on Hannity last night when he was asked about his trip to the border. He enunciated a position on immigration that is very sound, and expressed a concern about workers and wages that almost no other prominent Republican (besides Jeff Sessions) ever does.
Usually, economic arguments about immigration get tied to pro-business positions of providing low-cost labor for “jobs Americans won’t do.” This turns that argument on its head, arguing instead that businesses should pay the prevailing wage in American markets and that immigration policy should be calculated broadly not to impact that calculus. It’s a pretty nuanced argument intended to attract support among populists on both sides of the fence, perhaps most especially among blue-collar workers. If nothing else, it gives Walker a fairly unique position in the GOP field, and a way to provide a coherent argument to which he can return when the topic arises.
Lowry expressed hope that other GOP contenders will follow Walker’s lead, and it’s not bad advice. Barack Obama wants to make American wages the focus of his economic policy the next two years, and Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly try to do the same thing in her new campaign. This will force both to link their own policies to their open-borders preferences and explain the contradiction to the blue-collar workers that will be most impacted by them.
That's right Bubba. Maybe up in CheeseLand you didn't quite grok that, but it be the truth.
Hope he means everything he said after that.
But then, McCain said he'd "build that danged fence!"
I like Walker but this sounds like popular political double talk.
The whole reason to have immigrants is to keep check on costs/inflation due to wages, same with trade. The only other reason might be to increase birth rates, like to keep social security and medicare funded.
Obviously everyone wants more $$$ but we also want low prices too.
From the article: “This will force both to link their own policies to their open-borders preferences and explain the contradiction to the blue-collar workers that will be most impacted by them.”
Walker is onto something here. The impact of unrestrained immigration is obvious, but the tech sector has been the only group objecting, or at least the only group heard objecting. But tying open borders to the wage issue is brilliant, in my opinion, because it pins the Dems down, forcing them to explain why an open borders policy won’t hold down the very wages that they claim must be raised if people are to achieve a “living wage.”
No, Mr. Walker. Immigration policy should protect the sanctity and preciousness of American citizenship.
What it should not do is render it into worthless candy tossed out by whore politicians looking for votes and donations.
>>The whole reason to have immigrants is to keep check on costs/inflation due to wages, same with trade.<<
There’s a legitimate argument to be made that seasonal needs should be accommodated by green card issuance. Also, if foreign students educated in our colleges would benefit the country greatly by remaining here, why not consider allowing them to do so, and to become citizens.
But if the building trades, or certain other industries, are populated by green card holders, why not see what would happen if the green cards were gradually reduced at the same time we are cutting back on welfare benefits? That would open up jobs at the same time people are being encouraged to go make something of themselves by getting off the dole.
If Walker can develop this thinking in a way that doesn’t end up tripping him up, he’s going to find some other GOP candidates taking the same tack, I suspect, because it’s going to resonate. Plus, it really presents the Dems with a dilemma given Obama’s open border posture, and their uncritical support of it.
Where is his approach? Visiting the border doesn't mean squat, Reid visited the
border too, and many other elected officials including little Dick Turbin.
There was nothing in this interview but his perception and nothing about the solution.
Obama won by doing this, by just playing words so that everybody took it their own way
but once you read the speech, or in this case interview, we can begin to actually see there
was no meaning to his words.
All Walker did here was tell us what we already know.
This sounds good, like maybe he didn’t really get it before.
I have my doubts as I have reports that Wisconsin is as overrun as Virgina and you would have to be blind or ignoring it to not see the detrimental effects.
The farmers like their new labor. The rest of us pay for it.
Walker is just another political fraud, out to save his own political ass.
Which is why it has been completely daft to support the non-enforcement encouragement for illegal aliens to colonize our country that both parties have been pursuing.
Mostly because corporations like their new docile labor force and pay the RNC/DNC huge sums to keep them coming.
He has for years said that he’d legalize the illegals here currently, eventually give them citizenship, and make it so easy for anyone who wants to come here from any country to do so that they wouldn’t bother trying to cross the border illegally.
Until he explicitly renounces each and every one of those positions—and vows not to provide ‘dreamers’ or anyone else here illegally escape from the heavy enforcement of our laws—that is, kicks them out of here—he’s a no go in my book.
So far he’s trying to get credit for wriggling back the straightforward statement of his positions, but he hasn’t explicitly said that he’d enforce our laws and deny legalization to illegals in the country now.
Best to keep the heat on all of them until they soundly reverse their pro-legalization positions. (That includes you, too, Ted Cruz!)
He still hasn’t actually renounced his prior positions. He still hasn’t said no legalization or citizenship for those here and that he’ll use heavy enforcement to kick the current illegals out of here.
We already have multiple lifetimes worth of low-skill labor for the evolving economy, and how nice it would be to see American workers paid natural, competitive wages for any jobs in our country.
Can you imagine all of those construction and other good-paying jobs coming back for working-class American men? How soundly we could finally lift African-American men into sound and honorable, well-paying, working-class careers?
It really would be the start to our mending the fractured fabric of the working-class American family.
I agree.
Green card?
I have some marriage related relatives who came here after getting green cards then became citizens and those green cards were permanent.
Wouldn't something temporary make more sense for seasonal jobs?
As far as college grads go, it really depends on if their education is marketable, and what the demand looks like.
Certainly sending medical doctors away makes little sense.
It does and he said the right words.
But...but...but....he is the CofC guy.
Seasonal needs can well be met by automation, seasonal student labor, and the like. There’s no reason that any job in this country can’t be made attractive enough for American workers.
If it’s tough, nasty work, let it be paid like tough, nasty work.
Walker hasn’t walked back the gist of his previous pro-amnesty positions with any substance at all.
But this country would be far better off if Americans picked themselves and their fellow countrymen up by their bootstraps with an aggressive back-to-work plan—in place of illegal immigrant labor.
As to highly skilled and motivated foreign graduates (from non-Muslim countries!), I agree that if we’re taking in any more immigrants they should be pretty much the first and only ones in line at this point.
But if for national solidarity we need to call a moratorium on immigration for a period of time, I’m okay with that too.
I’m also okay with going along with Rand Paul’s thinking on letting some of our non-violent drug offenders out early to take some of the many construction jobs and the like that would open up, were we to finally send the illegals here home.
I’m let them out earlier, too, if they’d go home to marry some of their baby mamas while they’re at it.
>>Wouldn’t something temporary make more sense for seasonal jobs?<<
I think temporary (seasonal) workers would still be issued green cards. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re permanent, but I don’t know the details about their issuance and the conditions that apply to them. But yes, they should be temporary if they’re for seasonal help.
>>Certainly sending medical doctors away makes little sense.<<
Right now, anyway. And that’s my point. The immigrants issued green cards with a path to citizenship should bring obviously-needed skills at the time, but skills that are likely to remain needed for some time.
One of the problems the GOP has in this regard is that some of its economists regard a slowing of population growth to be a reason for slower future economic growth. I’ve never bought that concept. Slower population growth doesn’t slow the economy necessarily, and it should increase wage rates so the existing population gains from the slowing. If Walker keeps up this line of reasoning I think that aspect of the issue will get addressed eventually.
>>There’s no reason that any job in this country can’t be made attractive enough for American workers.<<
True. You pay enough you can get someone here legally to do it.
However, there’s a larger economic issue in all this as well. If we’re already at frictional employment so that the labor force is essentially fully employed it makes sense to hire seasonal immigrant help instead of needlessly raising wages to pull someone out of one field and into another. If there’s not enough help due to a booming economy, I see no harm in issuing green cards to fill the need as long as they’re temporary and the program is administered responsibly.
That said, we’re nowhere near full employment and there are plenty of people who really should be pushed back into the labor force and taken off the welfare rolls.
We’ve been paying people not to work for so long that businesses have gone elsewhere for employees. It’s certainly worth addressing both issues simultaneously to see whether fruit really does rot in the field.
But this is exactly the sort of discussion that I think will be encouraged by Walker’s raising of the wage issue.
Oh, I agree. Sarah Palin has been speaking out against illegal immigration—and the type of legalization and citizenship that Walker has been supporting—by bringing up the American worker.
There’s gold in tying those two together not simply in making an argument but, as I guess we agree, as a way of repairing more ills here with our own people.
Walker seems to have turned about 3 degrees from his long-standing positions, so he still has another 177 degrees to go. But if he sincerely and vigorously does actually make that swivel (other than offering the empty lip service he’s managed so far), that will be a very, very good thing for the country.
He’s an Establishment guy, however, so I’m not holding my breath.
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