Ted Cruz: “There is no stronger advocate for legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am”

Via the Weekly Standard, he’s not saying anything here that he hasn’t said before. He supports immigration reform, but not comprehensive immigration reform — only a piecemeal security-first approach will work, the same view now taken by Marco Rubio. But Cruz fans who haven’t paid attention to him on this issue may assume, incorrectly but understandably, that he naturally takes the most conservative position that an electable Republican presidential candidate can take. Not so: It’s Scott Walker(!) who’s staked out the right side of the field by demanding that American wages be a variable when considering target numbers for legal immigrants, hinting that maybe legal immigration levels need to drop rather than rise. Walker’s defenders argue that he’s not saying anything controversial there; of course you’d want to know how a certain level of immigration will affect what American workers are paid. His break from the rest of the field is a matter of emphasis, not a matter of introducing something new into the debate.

Fair enough, but it’s interesting to watch Ted Cruz, Mr. True Conservative, talk about this subject at length and not provide the same emphasis. Watch below from around 44:00 to 50:00 and then again at 1:29:00 to 1:36:00. In 13 or so minutes, wages don’t come up. On the contrary, Cruz’s emphasis is on the fact that he wants more legal immigration, at least among better educated immigrants who might qualify for an H-1B visa. It’s interesting that a guy known for having his finger on the pulse of grassroots conservative/tea party sentiment isn’t following Walker’s lead but rather stressing his own relative moderation on the issue. There are obvious political reasons for that — he’s addressing the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here, and as one of the few GOP candidates who opposes a path to citizenship, he needs a way to show general-election voters that he’s no Tancredo when it comes to immigration. But it’s telling that he’s not worried about Walker getting to his right on the hottest hot-button of the GOP primaries. Maybe he figures that, between his stellar tea-party track record on all manner of policy plus Walker’s conspicuous flip-flopping on immigration (which still includes support for a path to citizenship), he can afford to place his emphasis on being pro-immigration — so long as it’s legal. Or maybe Cruz suspects that Walker’s wink-wink at reducing legal immigration levels actually isn’t a position that an “electable” Republican can take. He wouldn’t be alone in that belief, if so.

Try to watch both immigration Q&As below as they’re both worth your time. Cruz spends most of his answers accusing Democrats of being the main obstacle to reform because of their fanatic, self-interested insistence on citizenship for illegals, a criticism that’s valid but also ironic given that Cruz himself continues to support some kind of legal status for illegals and surely knows that that will lead to demands for citizenship eventually. (He notes in passing at around 1:31:00 that his amendment to the Gang of Eight bill didn’t attempt to eliminate work permits for illegals, just citizenship.) Anyway, your exit question: Is this comment, from elsewhere in yesterday’s Q&A, really the best way to pander to a racial group?.......Continued

Re: “It would go from approximately 65,000 H1B visas a year to 325,000, an increase of 260,000 legal immigrants per year.”

Aetius, the reality is far worse than you understand.

There are at least 500,000 H1-B’s currently in the country.

Once issued, an H1-B is almost automatically renewed for six years.

In addition, H1-B’s that work for non-profit labs, universities, or any government agency do not count against the quota. And, they can renew for up to 10 years!

In addition, foreigners who obtain a STEM Ph.D can routinely stay and work in the USA for up to six years. They do not count against the H1-B quota, either.

Foreigners with STEM B.S. degrees can LEGALLY stay and work up to three years disguised as “interns” and “students.”

Tragically, only completely average Ph.D's from India, China, Russia, etc., stay in the USA. Elite Ph.D's from western Europe, Japan, and Canada-Aus-NZ, return to their home countries because the pay and standard of living are the same or better than the USA.

For those who think I'm troll, here's the You Tube video of Cruz submitting an Amendment to the Gang of Eight Amnesty that calls for a 5X increase in H1-B visas...

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHlGlNwsQb0

“The Obama administration has kept details of the TPP agreement under wraps, but the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement concluded by the Obama administration in 2011 provides clues as to what’s in the new pact. The Korea agreement cemented into law a visa waiver program that allows foreign corporations to bring an unlimited number of people into the country for an initial period of up to five years, with unlimited extensions.

One corporate trade association setting out its wish list for the latest deal declares, “The TPP should remove restrictions on nationality or residency requirements for the selection of personnel.”

Labor mobility is a long-held dream of the corporate elite. The Common Core national educational standards that have been controversial in many states also fall in line with the desire for increased mobility of employees, which the elite refer to as “human capital.”

When a worker is moved from one state to another or one country to another, the goal is to have a uniform set of global standards that would allow that worker’s children to be seamlessly moved to a new school district without skipping a beat.

The practice of using foreign workers is well established, and not just in high-tech and agriculture. After Jersey City, New Jersey, police raided a home that was illegally housing Chinese immigrants working for the China Rilin Construction Corp., the workers were taken to the Chinese consulate. The company is tied to the Chinese government and has contributed money to the Clinton Family Foundation.

In a 2012 Cambridge University Press book, “The TransPacific Partnership: A Quest for a 21st Century Trade Agreement,” international law expert Joel Trachtman says “labor mobility is an important frontier” in trade agreements “promising great opportunities for individual migrants” and “great welfare enhancements” for “developing country migrants” who could send money back to their home countries.

Every so-called free trade agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has included rules governing the movement of workers, with the numbers and types of workers continuing to expand with each new agreement.

The trade pact Canada is negotiating with the European Union would allow corporations to bring in unlimited numbers of contract workers in a broad number of fields including manufacturing and construction. The TransPacific Partnership includes Canada, and the Obama administration is negotiating a parallel agreement with the EU. One could expect those pacts to contain similar provisions as the Canada-EU deal, as they are being written by the same corporate interests and negotiators.

The congressmen backing the TPP are some of the same congressmen pushing for legislation currently sitting in both the Senate and House to more than double the number of H1B guest-worker visas issued annually while allowing nearly unlimited student visas. The House bill is called the SKILLS Visa Act, and the Senate version is called the ISquared bill.

The Wilson Center provides a sense of the numbers in the TPP pact. Its study, “Barriers to Cross-Border Labor Mobility,” says “a global shortage of 42 million skilled workers in the near future will necessitate discussions and progress on the movement of talent across borders around the world.”

“Skilled workers” means high-tech workers. Guest worker visas, including H1B and L1 visas, have been slammed for replacing American tech workers with lower-paid foreign labor, often trained by the Americans they are replacing.

Sen. Hatch, in conjunction with Silicon Valley tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been leading the push for an “immigration reform” that would allow corporations to bring in ever greater numbers of workers from overseas.

Hatch and the chamber are also lead proponents of the TransPacific Partnership. The immigration policies written into trade agreements like the TPP would allow corporations to hire personnel anywhere in the world while preventing Congress from placing numerical limits on the number of worker visas, a major goal of the open border/immigration lobby.

At a congressional hearing Tuesday, globalist interests pushed back against attempts to limit their ability to move workers across borders at will.

The TransPacific Partnership would not only allow the immigration lobby to bypass the legislative process, it would take Obama’s executive amnesty one step further.

By enshrining immigration policy in international diplomatic law, no future Congress would be able to change the policy.”

From WND

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