Business-first GOP leaders are walking President Donald Trump into a post-election trap where he will be forced to approve more wage-cutting visa-worker programs if he wants an extra $3.4 billion for his border wall.
The cheap-labor legislation which is in the draft House appropriations bill would dramatically expand several visa-worker programs which suppress blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. Before the election, Trump can pressure House Speaker Paul Ryan to drop those unpopular wage-cutting programs. But after the election, GOP leaders can offer extra border-wall funds to pressure Trump into accepting the cheap-labor programs.
The House’s 2019 spending bill, drafted by appropriations subcommittee chairman Rep. Kevin Yoder, includes $5 billion for roughly 200 miles of border wall in 2019. That is $3.4 billion above the $1.6 billion offered by Senate Republicans.
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But Yoder’s bill also betrays Trump voters by giving business groups another huge inflow of cheap white-collar and blue-collar immigrant labor. Business donors want those cheap-labor programs to reverse the impact of Trump’s popular low-immigration policies which are pushing wages up before the 2018 and 2020 elections. In August, for example, voters’ wages rose by 2.9 percent above 2017 levels as companies competed for workers and pushed up productivity.
“That is why the administration needs to be engaged with Congress and insist that the Yoder provisions are either be stripped in the Rules Committee or by a manager’s amendment,” before the House approves Yoder’s plan, said RJ Hauman, policy director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
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