Democrats Seek to Slip Amnesty for Illegal Aliens in Infrastructure Deal
Senate Democrats are seeking to slip an amnesty for potentially millions of illegal aliens into an infrastructure deal and lobbying President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to support such a maneuver.
According to the Miami Herald, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is urging Harris to get behind a plan by Senate Democrats that would put amnesty provisions for illegal aliens into an infrastructure deal.
The Herald reports:
Sen. Bob Menendez pressed Vice President Kamala Harris in a private meeting this week to include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in legislation that includes the Biden administration’s infrastructure proposal. [Emphasis added]
Menendez, who is a lead sponsor in Congress of President Joe Biden’s immigration agenda, made a “big push” to Harris on Tuesday to include the citizenship measure in emerging infrastructure legislation, according to a participant in the meeting. A spokesperson for the New Jersey Democrat confirmed that characterization. [Emphasis added]
…
Menendez would like to see the immigration proposal attached to any bill that lawmakers and Biden decide to move forward, his spokesperson said. [Emphasis added]
Likewise, the Associated Press (AP) reported this week that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senate Democrats of the Senate Budget Committee are working on an infrastructure plan that would include giving amnesty to:
- Illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] program
- Illegal aliens considered “essential” to the American economy
- Illegal aliens enrolled in Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
“I am optimistic,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told the AP of the amnesty provisions.
The Senate Democrats are seemingly taking marching orders for amnesty from corporate interests, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us which lobbies for an endless stream of foreign workers to take white-collar American jobs.
Last month, FWD.us hired a former assistant Senate parliamentarian to craft a plan for Democrats that would pass amnesty for illegal aliens through a little-known “reconciliation” rule.
Democrats, along with some House Republicans, have the support of a large amnesty coalition led by former President George W. Bush, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and a number of Koch brothers-backed organizations.
Already, current immigration levels put downward pressure on U.S. wages while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth away from America’s working and middle class and towards employers and new arrivals, research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.
Similarly, peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in U.S. data.” Albert’s research also finds that immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market.
Every year, 1.2 million legal immigrants are given green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas to take American jobs while hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enter the U.S. annually.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Dark Money Groups Fund Liberal Push To Pass Infrastructure Without Republicans
As bipartisan negotiations continue, some Dems vow to 'move on' from GOP talks
A trove of dark money is behind a liberal campaign to push President Joe Biden to abandon negotiations with Republicans and pass a sweeping infrastructure package filled with partisan priorities.
Two liberal advocacy groups that spearheaded a June letter calling on Biden to sidestep Republicans and secure a "big, bold infrastructure bill" are backed heavily by dark money. One of the letter's organizers, Invest in America Action, is part of an umbrella organization sponsored by the Hopewell Fund, a dark money behemoth that raked in $84.2 million in anonymous contributions for left-wing causes in 2019.
Real Recovery Now!—a coalition of progressive organizations designed to urge Biden to invest big in alternative energy—also organized the letter and has ties to dark money. Five of the campaign's members have combined to receive $8.7 million from funds managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm at the center of a massive dark money network.
The de facto lobbying effort shows how groups that spent millions of dollars to oust former president Donald Trump are now pivoting to sway Biden's agenda. Real Recovery Now! launched in March with a $10 million ad campaign praising the president for his coronavirus spending bill. But as the administration moved forward with bipartisan infrastructure talks, the liberal coalition shifted to twist Biden's arm to assure "investments in clean energy jobs."
"A big, bold infrastructure bill that will create jobs and deliver for working families can't wait any longer—and congressional Democrats must use the reconciliation process to pass it," the letter states.
The political advising firm tasked with leading Real Recovery Now!'s ad campaigns, Precision Strategies, has also done lucrative work for dark money groups. The firm—which Biden's campaign manager and deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon founded in 2013—took more than $1.2 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2019.
Both the Hopewell Fund and Sixteen Thirty Fund are part of Arabella's vast dark money network, which raised $715 million to boost liberals in 2019. The setup allows Arabella-backed groups to solicit unlimited contributions from wealthy donors and funnel them to outside groups, some of which are "fiscal sponsors" that are not required to file tax forms with the IRS. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, for example, poured $60 million into Democratic committees in the 2020 cycle.
Invest in America Action and Real Recovery Now! did not return requests for comment.
Real Recovery Now!'s coalition includes the American Progress Action Fund, Service Employees International Union, and the Working Families Party, among other members.
As part of the campaign's infrastructure push, the Working Families Party in March used the Real Recovery Now! moniker to call on Congress to pass the THRIVE Act. Introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), the wildly expensive legislation calls for $10 trillion in public spending to achieve "real full employment" through government jobs.
While Biden has expressed willingness to allow bipartisan infrastructure negotiations to continue, some congressional Democrats are championing the dark money-backed bid to secure significant alternative energy spending. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) vowed to block an infrastructure package "that first doesn't reduce carbon pollution at the scale commensurate with the climate crisis" during a Wednesday New York Working Families Party town hall. Twenty-six Democratic members of Congress have also signed on to a "No Climate, No Deal" pledge spearheaded by the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action.
"Transformative investments in climate, jobs, and justice are non-negotiable for any infrastructure package to pass the U.S. Senate," the pledge states. "It's time to move on from bad-faith negotiations with the GOP and move forward with an infrastructure bill that meets the moment."
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