Immigration Policy is Labor Policy – with Rosemary Jenks – [Ep. 282]

Linda J. Hansen:  Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host of the Prosperity 101® Podcast, where we seek to unleash the power of employers to reclaim and preserve America by Connecting Boardroom to Breakroom® and policy to paycheck. Employers educating employees about public policy issues that affect their jobs can lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. 

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Thank you so much for joining with us today. It is always a pleasure to have you in the audience. Today I have a wonderful guest. I know you're really going to learn something and appreciate the information shared because it is so important to your life. 

Before I begin the interview, though, I do want to say thank you to our prosperity partners, those who help us keep the podcast on the air and to our strategic partners, the freedom minded businesses who are listed on our website and in the show notes. I invite you to go explore their websites, frequent their businesses and help us all to rise together.

So thank you to our strategic partners, to our prosperity partners. And thank you to those in the audience today for choosing to spend time with us. So immigration is a hot topic, as it should be for any nation that cares about sovereignty and freedom. Many voices clamor for attention and emotions run so high. How can we know what truth is? How can we discern which policies help or hurt American citizens?

My guest today will help us unpack this complex subject and she will update us on timely and important legislative proposals related to the issue. Rosemary Jenks is co-founder and policy director of the Immigration Accountability Project, or IAP, whose mission is to educate voters on immigration actions and inactions of their elected representatives so they can make informed decisions and participate fully in civil debates regarding how immigration policy serves the national interest. Rosemary has worked on immigration issues since 1990.

She served as Director of Government Relations for NumbersUSA, and prior to that, she was Director of Policy Analysis at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. She has frequently provided testimony for the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures. She received her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from Colorado College. 

Rosemary, welcome. It's an honor to have you back on the podcast.

Rosemary Jenks: Thank you so much, Linda. It's always great to be with you.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, I just appreciate you making time. I know you're so busy and there's just so much in the news about this issue all the time and I absolutely appreciate how I can come to your site or listen to your interviews and I learn so much about what's actually happening. And the data you provide can really help those in the audience to understand what's going on for real, not just the news bites, not the Facebook posts, but for real.

So I really appreciate your hard work. And I know that you've been very busy alerting people regarding legislation being considered in the U.S. Congress right now. And this legislation has an enormous impact on the jobs of American citizens.

Can you inform us on what this legislation is and what we need to do about it?

Rosemary Jenks: Absolutely. The legislation is actually named the Dignidad Act, a Spanish name that means dignity, and it is dignity for illegal aliens. It is absolutely horrendous for American workers.

It's not just a mass amnesty bill. It's a mass immigration bill. And as you know, we've had mass immigration for 50 years now and the public is clamoring for that to slow down.

But instead, a group of 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats has decided that we should put our immigration system on steroids and to harm the lower wage American workers. It grants mass amnesty to more than 10 million illegal aliens, including criminals, even though the sponsors say they have zero tolerance for criminals. It also increases legal immigration by doubling the employment-based visas that are available every year and by opening up the STEM job market to every foreign student who graduates with a STEM degree.

It allows them to stay permanently and take a job that would otherwise go to a mid-level or high-skilled, high-wage American worker. So it doesn't matter where you are on the economic ladder, this bill would harm you, suppress wages, take away job opportunities, and it's just not worth it. This is the standard kind of the gang of eight amnesty bill that is now being pushed in Congress.

Again, even though that has failed multiple times over the years, these members of Congress don't seem to understand. They don't live in the same world that we do. They don't have to compete for jobs.

They don't have to compete for resources like health care or education for their children. They live in gated communities. They don't have to face the crime.

So it is completely out of touch and the opposite of what we need right now. You know, we had four years under the Biden administration of wide open borders, and now we need to get control.We need to deport the illegal aliens who have come here over the years.

And we need to relook at our legal immigration system and figure out what's best for American workers, because American workers have been left out of the entire immigration debate in Congress. They're just not even an afterthought, which is disgusting because more than anything, immigration policy is a labor policy.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely. You know, I love that you say that immigration policy is a labor policy. And, in interviews we've done on this podcast and times I've heard you speak to, I'm always amazed when you talk about, say, the H-1 visa programs or just any of the visa programs.

And you mentioned the STEM program. So I know I heard you say too that employers who hire these foreign nationals who come in and get their STEM degrees and then they start working, the employers get a tax deduction. Is that correct?

And so taxpayers are paying for this. And these taxpayers don't get to have the jobs that are being supplied by these employers. So it is just so upside down and so harmful to the American worker.

I'm so glad you're shedding light on this. What more can you tell us about that program?

Rosemary Jenks: Well, first of all, I will tell you, this bill actually also codifies the OPT or Optional Practical Training Program. And that's what you're talking about, where a foreign student comes here, gets a degree in a STEM field and then is given an employment authorization document which allows them to work here for three years. And the employers don't have to pay FICA taxes.

So that's essentially a seven point something percent discount that the employer gets for hiring a foreign student over an American graduate. So all these American students who have done exactly what we've told them to do, learn to code, get a STEM degree, they graduate and they can't find jobs because the employers have an incentive to hire foreign students over Americans. It's terrible.

And that program, the OPT program, was created by executive fiat. It was created by the Bush, W. Bush administration, and then it was expanded under President Obama.

It has no congressional statutory authority behind it, and it should have been ended long ago. It never should have been started. But, the idea that we subsidize employers to discriminate against American graduates is just despicable.

And this bill, the Dignity Act, codifies that and makes it permanent. It's just… everything that could be wrong with this bill is wrong with this bill.

Linda J. Hansen: It sounds like it. And I appreciate your detailed explanation of that. It is so heartbreaking.

I know people who got their degrees. They worked in tech. They worked in different companies where they had a very secure job.

And then pretty soon they're training in their replacement. And this is not how it should be. American citizens, American taxpayers should be the ones that benefit from the American employers.

And, we can't just continue to bump the taxpayers out of the economic flow, too. We just can't. You can't have so many people that end up dependent on the government or unemployed.

So this is just a heartbreaking situation. Now, you have mentioned before some of the other visa programs. Can you shed light on some of the visa programs that are a problem now and have been, and what we need to do to fix those problems?

Rosemary Jenks: Well, there unfortunately is a visa for just about every job that you could possibly imagine. There are low skilled visas for guest workers. There are high skilled visas for guest workers.

There are visas for entertainers and visas for geniuses and visas for managers. And I mean, the list goes on and on and on. There are 40 some, I think, guest worker visas, basically.

The latest proposal that I saw in Congress recently, which is just such a joke to me, is a visa for carnival workers. Including the concession stand workers, because, those are jobs Americans won't do. No high school student ever wanted to work at the state fair.

We should bring in foreign workers to do those jobs. You know, it's insane that we have all these visa programs. And again, this is because labor is not part of the equation when Congress is talking about immigration programs.

The problem is that a special interest will come into Congress and say, well, I can't find workers for my carnival, and so I need to import foreign workers. And the member of Congress says, oh, well, you're a donor, so I'm going to see what I can do about that. And so the immigration system becomes this Christmas tree with all these little ornaments added on by each different special interest.

And boy, do those special interests defend their programs. You know, once a government program is started, it's so hard to get rid of it because now it's got people who are financially invested in it. And if we could get people financially invested in American citizens instead, because as you alluded to, the fact is, if we don't get employment for American citizens, we're going to be paying for them.

You know, they're going to be on welfare. So one way or another, we're paying for it. So essentially, the entire immigration system is Americans subsidizing either the foreign workers or the American workers who have to go on welfare or both.

And it's not sustainable. And then we have these members of Congress who just don't care. And I want to say it is a minority of the Republicans. It's only 20 Republicans. And they are basically for the Dignity Act. What they're doing is preventing Democrats from signing onto it en masse so that they can keep an even number of Democrats and Republicans.

So every time they find a new Republican dupe that they can convince to sign on, they add another Democrat on. So, in the how many months we've had this Congress, it's only 20 Republicans who have been willing to sign on to this. Hopefully that will be the end of it.

But, this tells you which Republicans are just– I'm sorry to say it, but completely bought by their donors because this is driven by the donor class. It's not coming from the grassroots in any way, shape or form. The grassroots is absolutely opposed to this.

Linda J. Hansen: Yes, they're absolutely opposed once they know about it. That's one of the things and that's your job and part of my job and everything is to help people know about this. So everybody in the audience, can you share this interview?

And then, we'll give the website and everything for Rosemary's organization and some things that you can do to help make a difference. Because this is an issue that once American citizens truly look at it with the details and kind of the aerial view of how all this affects their daily life, their pocketbook, their retirement savings, their grandchildren's future, once they begin to understand this, this would not be happening and they need to learn how to hold the elected officials accountable. 

You know, I had a conversation, I live in an agricultural state. And I had an elected official that said, well, we can't stop the immigration problem because we wouldn't have anybody to work in the fields. And I thought, when I was growing up, and I know that sounds very cliche, well, when I was growing up, it was a great teenage job for a lot of people to go de-tassel corn or to do things and they could work a few hours in the afternoon after school and now it seems it's either video games or sports and sports are great. You know, that's great too. But what a great opportunity for people or entry-level jobs. Yes, we can employ American citizens. We can take care of farm policy so farms can be profitable.

We can have family farms. We can have the local farms. You know, we can do this. We just have to decide we're going to do it. And in order to get the will in terms of the Congress, we need to educate the people so they put the pressure on the Congress.

Rosemary Jenks: That's absolutely right. And with the farm workers, it's an interesting situation because we have a visa category specifically for farm workers that is unlimited and it has grown from about 50,000 per year, 10 years ago. Now it's creeping up on 400,000 and we're in the 21st century.

There are machines that can do a lot of the hard labor, the harvesting and the planting, and yet we're not incentivizing the growers to invest in capital. We're incentivizing them to continue importing a cheap surf class to do the labor. And that's not, it's not good for national security.

It's not good for productivity. If we could take the money out of the immigrant pool and instead incentivize mechanization, we would be a lot further along. I mean, this is what most of Europe has done is mechanized, even with things like dairy, there are machines that can milk the cows, yes, Americans balk at having to do really hard labor.

Although I will say I picked green beans as a high school student. It was not fun, but I did it. And it taught me a work ethic. Americans are absolutely willing to run the machinery.

So if we can move toward mechanization, whether that's through tax incentives or whatever, and away from the imported labor, we would be much better off. But you're also right that we've got to give young Americans a chance in the labor force because there are so many employers who complain that young people don't show up on time or they don't have good work ethics. You have to learn work ethic.

And the way you do that is through an entry level job. But right now, all of the entry level jobs are taken by immigrants, either here temporarily or permanently. And that, again, it's not sustainable. We cannot have a population of American citizens who are outside the labor force.

Linda J. Hansen: You know, it's so true. If I think of so many different segments, you mentioned like agriculture. And I was thinking I didn't pick corn or beans or things when I was a teenager, other than in our home garden, because my family had restaurants.

So I was, before I graduated from high school, I was hiring and sometimes unfortunately firing my peers, but working my tail off in our family's restaurants and got such a great work ethic, and now it seems like if in this culture, it's almost like if you have teenagers working, it's like, oh, that's horrible, but we're doing a disservice to them and to our nation. And to our nation. And so we've got the restaurant industry or food service industry.

We have trucking. I've been following so much on what's happening with illegals on our roadways, especially getting CDLs, commercial driver's licenses with no name given, and they can take these licenses and use them to vote. This is just a big loophole.

And I've been following this and I've had podcast interviews on it, where not only is it a safety factor, but then we get into the elections and all this immigration ties into what we're trying to see happen with the Save America Act, making sure it's only citizens vote in our elections, which seems really common sense to me, like we don't go to France or to Portugal or to Brazil or something and vote in their elections.

Why would we have foreign people come in and vote in ours? This is just not common sense. But we know that there's an agenda to that.

And it's heartbreaking to see what's happening to our nation. So this immigration issue is so widespread and it touches every sector of society. I've talked to teachers in schools who are so frustrated because they have so many different languages in the classroom.

And I mean, the cost for that… we talk about reshoring manufacturing to make our nation strong. And we've seen this happen under this administration, a reshoring of manufacturing, we need to reshore our labor force, and make sure it is American citizens. And hopefully as we reshore our manufacturing, I would call on every single employer to think about the next generation, not think like a politician, the next election or your next paycheck or your retirement fund, but think about the next generation.

You have a responsibility to act honorably and to help your nation be strong. So employers, I beg of you, please work within the legal system and please hire American, provide American jobs for American workers. And for the immigrants, no one wants to be harsh or unjust.

There's been so many opportunities for them to self-deport and come back legally. Now let's get our immigration situation figured out. I want you to talk a little bit about your deportation efforts too, in terms of what you're hoping to see in deportation.

But this– it's not helpful for the immigrants either at times when, when things are out of balance. So we can send them back to their home country. They can come back legally and as a family, whatever, but this is important.

This is important. So what can you say about that? The deportation efforts?

Rosemary Jenks: Yeah, so we actually joined a coalition called the Mass Deportation Coalition, based on President Trump's campaign promise to run the largest mass deportation operation in American history. We want him to keep that promise because if you are here illegally, you do not have a right to be here. You violated our laws and you should go home.

And the only way to really get illegal aliens to self-deport is to make them believe that they will be apprehended and deported if they don't leave. So we need to see the numbers of deportations going up. And one of the first things we did with this coalition is we commissioned a poll by McLaughlin and Associates, and we asked a whole series of enforcement, immigration enforcement questions.

And the results were pretty astounding because, I mean, we already knew that Trump voters support mass deportations. But what we didn't know is that independents, Hispanics and even pretty close to majorities of Democrats support immigration enforcement, including mass deportations. And in fact, overwhelmingly, all Americans support worksite enforcement.

So holding employers accountable for hiring illegal aliens. They support deporting illegal aliens who use welfare. Which they are not supposed to do.

So, I mean, this was across the board majorities of Hispanics, independents and Democrats. So before the midterms, we would very much like to see a renewed focus on getting rid of the fraud, the welfare fraud especially, and resuming the large numbers of deportations because that is what Americans want to see. We have about 1.6 million illegal aliens in this country who already have been given a final order of removal by an immigration judge. They need to be deported immediately. They've already gone through their due process. So let's move them out.

This is something that will help especially lower-skilled, low-wage Americans, because the illegal population, which a conservative estimate is 16 to 18 million. And all of those people have jobs and mostly low-wage, low-skilled jobs. And so they are taking jobs directly from America's young people, high school students, college students, and all other entry-level workers.

You know, a wife who's trying to get back into the labor market after taking time off to raise her children. Those are the people who need these jobs. And so we need to start enforcing our immigration laws more consistently and across the board in order to help Americans.

It's not just about, we're a nation of the rule of law. We are, and all of our laws should matter and all of our laws should be enforced, including immigration laws. But it's also about helping our own citizens.

That's the most important thing. We need to help our own citizens. And as you said, we need to make sure that only citizens are voting in our elections and determining the future of our country.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely. And before we go, I just want to touch on a couple other things too. Even if they are here, they might not have jobs yet, or maybe just living off the welfare that we provide.

There's so many instances of illegals that we are paying. They're getting more per month from the U.S. government than a lot of people get in their full-time jobs. And that's our taxpayer money, and so we need to close that loophole. 

The other thing is that the criminals, the crime we've all seen, there's so much crime from illegals, and that does not mean to say we're not being judgmental in any way, not everyone who comes to America illegally is bad. They might be just misled.

And so helping them to get out of the country safely, legally, make sure they're not trafficked. And this is a whole nother situation with the immigration is trafficking, the crime. We need to make sure that we're helping American citizens, but we're also protecting the immigrants and the human rights of the immigrants and doing so with the law.

And I just think it's so important. We don't have very much time left here. And so I know that one of the questions I often ask people is what would you tell employers who want to help employees understand this issue?

But I think that we've covered it. And I would say, what do we need to tell employers who need to stop taking the tax credits for hiring illegals? So what would you tell them?

Because, these employers can make a difference. And to all employers out there, if you really care about your nation, if you really care about the future for your family, your children, your grandchildren, then please pay attention to this issue and look at it with more than dollars and cents, look at it in the long range impact of what these policies really mean. And with that, what would you say in closing, Rosemary?

Rosemary Jenks: I would just say that employers are parts of our communities and they should look at themselves as central parts of the community. And that means hiring Americans, training Americans if you need to train them, and focusing on what is best for your community and for your nation. Because this issue… we could very easily be swamped as a nation.

And if we are, the benefits that employers now have being part of this American system, those could go away. We need to protect what we have. We need to protect our system of government and our system of capitalism.

And we need to focus on protecting American workers so that they can do these jobs. We have the capability. We have the skill. We just need the opportunities to do the jobs and make the employer shine as well as the average employee.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely. And consumers pay attention to American-made products too. This will help your American companies and encourage them, ask them to hire American and to build in America.

Let's create a strong country and it takes all of us. So, Rosemary, thank you so much for your work and for all that you do. Please tell everyone how they can follow you, how they can get information and what you recommend they do to help this issue.

Rosemary Jenks: We have a whole lot of resources on our website at IAProject.org. We have fact sheets on the legislation we've been talking about and on all of the different visas that we mentioned.

We also have a separate website called IAP Action where we have congressional immigration rankings. So we rank every single member of Congress based on what they have done or not done on immigration, the bills that they're sponsoring, how they vote, all of that. So you can see that at IAPaction.com and get involved. 

I would encourage people, if you see the impact of immigration in your community, which I think most of us do, tell your members of Congress how you feel about this. Tell them that you do not support amnesty for illegal aliens. Tell them that you want an immigration system that takes into account your needs, not just the needs of special interests. This is about Americans.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely. So well said. Well, Rosemary, thank you.

I know I'll be asking you to come on again in a few months time and we'll catch up on all the legislation and what's the latest that we need to know. So thank you. Keep up the fight. We appreciate all you do. Thank you so much. 

Rosemary Jenks: Thank you, Linda.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please, subscribe, share, and give us a great review. Don’t forget to visit Prosperity101.com to sign our Employers Unleashed™ pledge, to access our entire podcast library, or to discover resources for use in your workplace. Let us know how we can serve you. Contact us today at Prosperity101.com.