The chamber made the January 20 press statement as it applauded Biden’s draft “U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021” that would dramatically accelerate the inflow of foreign workers into Americans’ blue-collar and white-collar jobs. The statement said:
The changes proposed in President Biden’s legislative plan would help many businesses meet their critical workforce needs. Having the world’s most talented and industrious people contribute to our economy drives growth, and in turn, creates jobs for hardworking Americans.
“Nobody believes that,” responded Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies. The chamber’s companies have shown they want to bring in lower-skilled compliant migrants to take the support jobs created by higher-skilled migrants, even though millions of creative, hard-working, and outspoken Americans are ready to fill both categories of jobs, she said.
The Chamber’s support for Biden’s labor importation bill was explained by Tom Collamore, a former vice president at the chamber. “This is key to stimulating investment of capital [money] that has been sitting on the sidelines, and which would lead to new jobs and economic growth,” Collamore said in a January 19 New York Times article.
“They’re hoarding [the sidelined capital] because they want to invest in [low wage] foreign workers … instead of using it to advance productivity, technology, or wages for American workers,” Vaughan responded. “It is a pretty straightforward admission that what they’re concerned about is their own profits, not the well-being of workers or [technological] modernization.”
