Sessions Calls Out Big Business for Pushing Amnesty After Laying Off US Workers

by Tony Lee

Aug 18, 2014 4:31 PM PT

Companies that have recently laid off workers are scheming to get President Barack Obama to give them more guest-worker visas by executive action. 

After the New York Times reported that Obama is working on crafting executive actions behind closed doors after having met with representatives from "Oracle, Cisco, Fwd.US, Microsoft, Accenture, Compete America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce," which Politico detailed, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) blasted the White House for "actively working against the interests of the American worker."

Sessions mentioned that American politics is at "a crisis point," as companies that "are laying off current employees in droves," are meeting with "senior White House officials" to get guest-workers that will make it tougher for Americans of all backgrounds to find jobs.

"We have communities throughout America that are barely scraping by. Tens of millions of Americans are on welfare, unemployment, and public assistance," Sessions said in a Monday statement. "Yet the White House and their Senate Majority seem more concerned about the economic demands of large corporations, or the citizens of other countries, than about getting our own citizens back to work into stable jobs that can support a family and uplift a community.”

Obama is reportedly considering granting temporary amnesty and work permits to millions of illegal immigrants for them to work in any sector. In addition, he may grant more guest-worker visas to high-tech firms--even though there is a surplus of American high-tech workers--and low-skilled industries, even though Americans at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are having trouble finding jobs, which Americans supposedly will not do. 

A recent Center for Immigration Studies reportfound that, as Breitbart News noted, in "all 472 civilian detailed occupations as defined by the Department of Commerce," there were only six "majority immigrant (legal and illegal)" occupations, which means Americans were employed in the low-skilled jobs that pro-amnesty advocates say they will not do.

Sessions, citing a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors study, noted that "construction workers hit by the recession have seen their wages fall by 23 percent" and there are "seven unemployed workers for every one job opening" in the industry. 

In the high-tech sector, companies that are laying off American workers are pushing Obama to allow them to import more foreign workers. Cisco, which slashed 6,000 jobs after pushing for the Senate's amnesty bill last year, had a representative at the White House. So did Microsoft, which "announced it would lay off 18,000 American workers a week after its former CEO Bill Gates called for an unlimited number of certain guest-worker visas in a New York Times op-ed." 

Oracle, which was recently sued by a manager who alleged that "he was fired for complaining when he was told to offer an Indian worker he sought to transfer to California substantially lower pay than white workers in the same position," also had a seat at the White House table. 

Sessions noted that "same group of CEOs who helped write the Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill in secret is now scheming with the White House to extract by executive fiat what was denied to them by the American people and Congress." 

He also called Senate Democrats out on their complicity, saying that "instead of defending Congress and their constituents," they "are handing their vote over to Leader Reid and President Obama."

"Not one single Senate Democrat has publicly stood up to their Democrat leaders and demanded a vote on the House bill to block this executive amnesty," Sessions said. "As a result, they are as complicit as if they sat in the room with these executives themselves."

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