FA Sum­ma­ry: Agen­da 21 seeks the abo­li­tion of bor­ders and the eco­nom­ic equal­iza­tion of peo­ple across the world. After twen­ty years of imple­men­ta­tion the plan is working!

In a speech deliv­ered on the Sen­ate floor Fri­day as the Sen­ate was debat­ing a 1,603-page gov­ern­ment fund­ing bill that will per­mit Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to spend tax dol­lars to imple­ment his uni­lat­er­al amnesty, Sen. Jeff Ses­sions (R.-Ala.) argued that trends in U.S. immi­gra­tion and employ­ment are depress­ing the job prospects and income of Americans.

“This sum­mer alone the White House met 20 times with busi­ness exec­u­tives, amnesty lob­by­ists, immi­gra­tion activists to craft their exec­u­tive amnesty,” Ses­sions said.  “You know who wasn’t invit­ed into that room? You, the Amer­i­can cit­i­zen.  You don’t get a say.

“These super-elites in Wash­ing­ton and Wall Street dream of a world with­out bor­ders,” said Ses­sions, “a par­adise where things like laws and rules and nation­al bound­aries don’t get in the way of their grand chimera.”

Here is the text of Sen. Ses­sions’ speech:

Sen. Jeff Ses­sions: The U.S. Depart­ment of Com­merce informs us that ‘today’s typ­i­cal 18- to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year (adjust­ed for infla­tion) than their coun­ter­part in 1980.’  That is a sharp and painful wage decline for young Amer­i­cans.  What has hap­pened in the labor mar­ket since 1980?

Data from the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau offers this insight: ‘From 1930 to 1950, the for­eign-born pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States declined from 14.2 mil­lion to 10.3 million…[but] Since 1970, the for­eign-born pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States has increased rapid­ly due to large-scale immi­gra­tion.’  Cen­sus Bureau sta­tis­tics report that in 1980, the for­eign-born pop­u­la­tion stood at 14.1 million.

From 1980 through 2013, the immi­grant pop­u­la­tion tripled from 14 mil­lion to more than 41 million.

This large increase in the size of the immi­grant pop­u­la­tion is the direct prod­uct of poli­cies in Washington.

Legal immi­gra­tion dur­ing the 80’s aver­aged around 600,000 a year.  But since 1990 through today it has aver­aged about 1 mil­lion annu­al­ly – mean­ing the annu­al rate almost dou­bled.  The sus­tained large-scale flow of legal immi­gra­tion – over­whelm­ing­ly low­er-wage and low­er-skilled – has placed sub­stan­tial down­ward pres­sure on wages.

We have, right now, a very slack labor mar­ket with more job­seek­ers than jobs.

The White House has itself esti­mat­ed that are three unem­ployed per­sons for each one job open­ing.  The Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute esti­mates that, in the con­struc­tion indus­try, there as 7 unem­ployed per­sons for each avail­able job opening.

This large-scale immi­gra­tion flow, paired with the forces of glob­al­iza­tion and automa­tion, has made it ever more dif­fi­cult Amer­i­can work­ers to earn a wage that can sup­port a family.

Con­sid­er this report just pub­lished in the New York Times:

‘Work­ing, in Amer­i­ca, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not work­ing has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 per­cent. More recent­ly, since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, the share of women with­out pay­ing jobs has been ris­ing, too. The Unit­ed States, which had one of the high­est employ­ment rates among devel­oped nations as recent­ly as 2000, has fall­en toward the bot­tom of the list…

At the same time, it has become hard­er for men to find high­er-pay­ing jobs. For­eign com­pe­ti­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal advances have elim­i­nat­ed many of the jobs in which high school graduates…once could earn $40 an hour, or more.’

Since end of the 1960s — the time frame iden­ti­fied by the arti­cle – the share of the US pop­u­la­tion that is for­eign-born has increased from less than 5 per­cent to more than 13 percent.

As a total num­ber, the size of the for­eign-born pop­u­la­tion has quadru­pled over the last four decades.

Due to cur­rent Wash­ing­ton pol­i­cy, these fig­ures are only going to rise.  The Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice esti­mates that the for­eign-born pop­u­la­tion could reach as high as 58 mil­lion with­in a decade based on recent trends.  Only an adjust­ment in pol­i­cy will change this tra­jec­to­ry – just as pol­i­cy was changed ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry to allow labor mar­kets to tighten.

This is an issue that affects all res­i­dents, for­eign-born and US-born.  In fact, among those most affect­ed by the size of these large immi­grant flows are the immi­grants them­selves.  By con­tin­u­ing to admit these large num­bers over such a sus­tained peri­od of time, many immi­grants them­selves are unable to find jobs.  For instance, less than half the immi­grants who entered Cal­i­for­nia since 2010 are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the labor force. In Los Ange­les – where 4 in 10 res­i­dents is an immi­grant – one-third of immi­grants recent­ly-arrived live in poverty.

We have an oblig­a­tion to those we law­ful­ly admit not to admit such a large num­ber that their own wages and job prospects are dimin­ished.  A sound immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy must serve the needs of those already liv­ing here.

Immi­grants and native-work­ers are also com­pet­ing with a large flow of tem­po­rary guest work­ers – indi­vid­u­als brought into the U.S. from abroad for the explic­it pur­pose of tak­ing a job.  Each year, the U.S. admits rough­ly 700,000 guest work­ers for this pur­pose.  Of those rough­ly 700,000 guest work­ers only about 10 per­cent are for agri­cul­tur­al work – the oth­er 90 per­cent take jobs in almost every indus­try in Amer­i­ca, from good-pay­ing con­struc­tion jobs to cov­et­ed posi­tions at tech­nol­o­gy firms in Sil­i­con Valley.

The pres­sures on the mid­dle class are great.  You have a large flow of per­ma­nent immi­gra­tion and tem­po­rary work­ers, the elim­i­na­tion of many good-pay­ing jobs at fac­to­ries and plants due to advances in robot­ics, the shed­ding of man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs due to over­seas com­pe­ti­tion, a slug­gish over-reg­u­lat­ed econ­o­my that is grow­ing too slow­ly to keep pace with pop­u­la­tion growth, and the high costs of ener­gy, health­care and house­hold goods.

Pol­i­cy­mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton need to be reduc­ing the bur­dens on work­ing fam­i­lies, not increas­ing them.

Har­vard Pro­fes­sor Dr. George Bor­jas esti­mates that high immi­gra­tion flows from 1980–2000 reduced the wages of low­er-skilled Amer­i­can work­ers by 7. 4 per­cent.  In gross dol­lar terms, Pro­fes­sor Bor­jas esti­mates that cur­rent immi­gra­tion rates pro­duce an annu­al net loss of $402 bil­lion for Amer­i­can work­ers who com­pete with for­eign labor.

Fur­ther­more, as doc­u­ment­ed by the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies rely­ing exclu­sive­ly on gov­ern­ment data, all net employ­ment gains among the work­ing-age since the year 2000 have gone to immi­grant work­ers.  This remark­able trend occurred even as the num­ber of work­ing-age native work­ers increased by near­ly 17 million.

Here a few more statistics:

• Near­ly 1 in 4 Amer­i­cans in their prime work­ing years (ages 25–54) are not work­ing. This includes 10 mil­lion Amer­i­can men and 18 mil­lion Amer­i­can women.
  Real medi­an week­ly earn­ings are low­er today than they were in 2000
  Medi­an fam­i­ly income is down $4,000 since Novem­ber 2007

It is in this con­text that we must con­sid­er the eco­nom­ic fall­out from the President’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al exec­u­tive amnesty.  In plain vio­la­tion of law and the expressed will of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, the Pres­i­dent has ordered 5 mil­lion work per­mits to be issued to those here ille­gal­ly – who will now be able to take any job in America.

This ille­gal amnesty is part of a broad­er immi­gra­tion vision from the Pres­i­dent.  The leg­is­la­tion he end­less­ly cham­pi­ons – the bill writ­ten behind closed doors with immi­gra­tion activists and open bor­ders bil­lion­aires – surges immi­gra­tion rates yet high­er.  After four decades of record immi­gra­tion, the President’s bill – sup­port­ed unan­i­mous­ly by Sen­ate Democ­rats – triples the issuance of per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy cards and dou­bles for­eign guest work­er admis­sions over the next ten years.

The Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Study explains that this leg­is­la­tion would, in a mere six years from today, increase the per­cent­age of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion board abroad to a lev­el nev­er before reached in Amer­i­ca his­to­ry. And by 2033, near­ly 1 in 6 U.S. res­i­dents under this plan will be foreign-born.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the non­par­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office pro­ject­ed that the result of this leg­is­la­tion would be low­er wages, high­er-unem­ploy­ment, and reduced-per capi­ta GNP.

All of this begs a sim­ple ques­tion: who is look­ing out for Amer­i­can workers?

Who is look­ing out for their inter­ests, fight­ing to help them get bet­ter jobs and pay, work­ing to help their com­mu­ni­ties climb out of poverty?

The immi­gra­tion debate in our nation’s cap­i­tal is always cen­tered on the needs of ille­gal immi­grants, for­eign work­ers, or large employ­ers.  Isn’t it time, after decades of open immi­gra­tion, to focus on how we can help Americans?

Is not the sen­si­ble and ratio­nal thing to do to slow down a bit, allow wages to rise, assim­i­la­tion to occur, and to help those strug­gling here today rise into the mid­dle class?

The Amer­i­can peo­ple have begged and plead­ed for a law­ful sys­tem of immi­gra­tion that serves the nation­al inter­est – not the spe­cial inter­ests.  But the politi­cians have refused, refused, refused.  This sum­mer alone the White House met 20 times with busi­ness exec­u­tives, amnesty lob­by­ists, immi­gra­tion activists to craft their exec­u­tive amnesty.  You know who wasn’t invit­ed into that room? You, the Amer­i­can cit­i­zen.  You don’t get a say.

These super-elites in Wash­ing­ton and Wall Street dream of a world with­out bor­ders, a par­adise where things like laws and rules and nation­al bound­aries can don’t get in the way of their grand chimera.  The only chal­lenge these great glob­al cit­i­zens face are these pesky peo­ple called vot­ers, who cling to the old-fash­ioned idea of a nation as a home and a bor­der as some­thing real and worth pro­tect­ing.  These elites, you see, know bet­ter.  If you’re wor­ried about your jobs or wages, if you are con­cerned that the pace of immi­gra­tion into your com­mu­ni­ty is too fast and too large, if you feel like your needs aren’t being con­sid­ered, well, you’re just a nativist you see.  You’re being selfish.

So when an elec­tion hap­pens, and the peo­ple rebel against this open-bor­ders agen­da, there is real­ly one thing for these wise elites to do.  They must impose their own laws.

How Con­gress answers this chal­lenge will shape the future of this Repub­lic.  Will we defend and pro­tect the peo­ple who sent us here – their laws, their Con­sti­tu­tion, their com­mu­ni­ties – or we will aban­don them?  I pose that ques­tion to this body, and I sug­gest there is no pur­pose to our being here if it is not to serve and pro­tect and defend the loy­al peo­ple who sent us here on their behalf.”