Democrats and Labor Unions Block Meaningful Immigration Reform

Democrats Protect Unions with low immigration quotas for Construction JobsIn a conference call with U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) late last week, I learned that Democrats are working against meaningful immigration reform to appease growing opposition from labor unions by setting unrealistically low quotas from labor visas for construction workers. Cornyn told me that labor unions have discriminated against the construction industry by setting the false quotas in order to protect the unions. Hispanic voters should take a deep look at what the Democrats and labor unions are up to and how it will affect immigration numbers.

Construction Citizen's Scott Braddock also reported this last week on a report from Engineering News Record (ENR) about the artificially low caps that will be placed on construction immigration quotas. It is very interesting that Democrats continue to dangle the carrot of immigration reform to Hispanic voters, but they are really beholding to their more traditional base - the labor unions.

ENR reports:

Since mid-April, when the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” unveiled an immigration bill stuffed with compromises and trade-offs, the construction sector has focused on the “W” visa, a proposed guest-worker designation that would limit to 15,000 the number of immigrants allowed to work in construction each year.

That cap, lobbied for and now cherished by the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. as a protector of U.S. Workers, is strongly opposed by the Associated General Contractors (AGC), the Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC) and pro-management legislators. “We sure hope [the cap] gets eliminated,” says Jeff Shoaf, the AGC’s senior executive director for government affairs. “The 15,000 number is arbitrary and is not based in any way on the flow of immigrant workers the construction industry will need of the next 10 to 20 years.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) told ABC News that the construction industry will need an additional 1.8 million new workers by 2020. That works out to well over 200,000 per year, and yet Democrats are only going to allow 15,000 per year. More false promises from Democrat leadership. But then, Leahy was also pushing to include language to allow gay marriage as part of the immigration reform package... Just to make certain no Republicans would actually vote for the bill. It is very clear, Democrats really aren't interested in immigration reform. They would much rather own the issue than solve the problems facing our nation.

Read more about this issue and how the continuing practice of employee misclassification impact the immigration process at ConstructionCitizen.com.

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