"(Haley) Barbour does not even acknowledge that when meat processing plants have been raided by ICE in the past, Americans have lined up around the block to apply for these jobs."...(Comment to Barbour claim that only Spanish speaking people will work in chicken plants.)
5/22/14, "Chicken plants, high-tech visas and the immigration dilemma," Washington Examiner, Byron York
"Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former head of the Republican National Committee, now a political fixer and influential voice in GOP circles, says he first became seriously interested in immigration policy after Hurricane Katrina....
"Spanish speakers" were willing to live in terrible conditions while at work building new homes.
The experience led Barbour — who favors raising the number of high-skilled immigrants admitted to the United States — to realize that "there is also essential lesser-skilled labor that we need."
The National Journal panel reflected much of the discussion about immigration reform in Washington Thursday. Of eight speakers, Republicans and Democrats, seven favored comprehensive reform along the lines of the Senate "Gang of Eight" bill. That's what passes for balance in the capital today.
The level of agreement was so high that some pronounced the immigration policy debate to be "over." All that is left is for lawmakers to find a political agreement to enact universally accepted principles....
Much of the discussion focused on skilled workers -- immigrants in the so-called H-1B and STEM categories, whose numbers Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans would like to increase. It's a given among reformers that the U.S. needs to admit more of them, but Bernstein reminded the panelists that there remains a lot of slack in the American labor market.
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"When you look at the skills shortage — quote — carefully, what you find is a lot of employers saying, 'I can't find the workers I need,'" Bernstein noted, "and what they're not saying is, 'at the wage I'd like to pay them.'"
It was a remarkable bit of candor in the like-minded group. But the real candor came from Barbour, who was quite open in his belief that the country needs more low-skilled workers
to do awful jobs for low wages
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"If you go in a chicken processing plant in Mississippi, there's nobody in there who speaks English," Barbour said. (Poultry is his state's biggest agricultural industry.) "There is a very loud radio hanging from somewhere playing Spanish-language music. And this is hard, dirty…work."
In fact, Barbour said, even prisoners in Mississippi's work-release program stay away from the chicken plants. "We have never had an inmate make it two days in a chicken processing plant," Barbour said. "They'd rather be in prison, literally, then work in a chicken processing plant."
"I am not very sympathetic to the idea that we're taking these jobs away from Americans," Barbour concluded.
Speaking after Barbour, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies — the only participant who opposed reform — raised a critical objection. Why don't some of the agricultural interests that Barbour mentioned, the ones that need so many low-skill workers, modernize instead? With more mechanization, they'd need far fewer workers.
"I've been to chicken plants, in Delaware, and most of the people there are Americans," Krikorian said. "It's not a horrible, filthy place to work... much of it is actually automated."
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American agriculture could adopt new technology rather than focusing solely on immigrant workers, Krikorian argued. "When you have unending sources of low-skill foreign labor, the incentive to automate is weaker."
The discussion reflected a core reality of the immigration debate. The elites of both political parties support reform."...
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12 among comments to this article and Barbour's claims:
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What a liar. He (Barbour) is factually challenged and embarrasses himself. American workers in construction trades have largely gone out of business because they cannot compete with illegal labor. Same goes for many, many respectable blue collar jobs, service jobs, jobs that young Americans have traditionally cut their teeth on to learn basic job skills.
Yet Barbour chooses to focus on one specific nasty job - chicken plant workers- while ignoring the great harm that has been done to Americans in so many other areas - driving them into unemployment and forcing wages down. Barbour does not even acknowledge that when meat processing plants have been raided by ICE in the past, Americans have lined up around the block to apply for these jobs. Nor does he discuss the fact that wages for such meat packing jobs are now far lower than they were a decade or two ago. Obviously, illegal labor has had the desired effect.
Mr. Barbour should stop the lying and shilling for the Chamber of Commerce and the ruling class who care nothing for the the other 300 million Americans who do not live in DC."
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Haley Barbour is on the Board of Directors of billionaire backed advocacy group "Americans for a Conservative Direction" which urges members of Congress to make immigration laws more favorable for the hiring of foreign workers by Silicon Valley billionaires:
5/4/2013, "Latest Product From Tech Firms: An Immigration Bill," NY Times, by Eric Lipton and Somini Sengupta
"But most who watched the commercial, sponsored by a new group that calls itself Americans for a Conservative Direction may be surprised to learn who bankrolled it: senior executives from Silicon Valley, like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, who run companies where the top employees donate mostly to Democrats.
The advertising blitz reflects the sophisticated lobbying campaign being waged by technology companies and their executives. ...
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Those deals were worked out through what Senate negotiators acknowledged
was extraordinary access by American technology companies to staff
members who drafted the bill. The companies often learned about detailed
provisions even before all the members of the so-called Gang of Eight
senators who worked out the package were informed."...
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Comment: The political class has always wanted open
borders. It's only the American people who thought they had a country. Otherwise why would they have fought and died for it? No one elected to
office in either party has the slightest intention of observing our laws and guarding our safety as they pledged to do. Ted Cruz is the only exception to this. The rest are completely detached, ie corrupt.
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Images above: 6/5/14, "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed," Breitbart Texas, Brandon Darby
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"The Wall Street Journal again calls for the abolition of the United States."
July 3, 1984, "In praise of Huddled Masses," Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jul 3, 1984.
"If Washington still wants to "do something" about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders."...
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Best comment: "I assure you, if immigrants voted Republican, Pelosi, Reid and Obama would have machine guns lined up from one end of the border to the other."
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