I hadn't heard that turn of phrase before. :)
http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/entry/house_gop_holds_another_hearing_to_push_mass_deportation_agenda_while_revea/"Today,
the leaders of the House Mass Deportation Caucus, Reps. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Steve King (R-IA) and Lamer Smith (R-TX), have organized a hearing that they've disingenuously titled “Making Immigration Work for American Minorities.” That's not what it's about. Yes, the Gallegly/King/Smith crew now feign concern about how immigration affects African-American and other minority groups. This new found concern is a particularly craven attempt to rebrand their mass deportation agenda on immigration. Once again, their actual voting records differ substantially from their rhetoric.
It's just another day and another hypocritical attempt by Republican immigration hardliners to disguise their mass deportation agenda in more popular terms. But these politicians have been voting against the rights of workers for years. This hearing is a transparent attempt to rebrand their extreme, anti-immigration agenda, and it won’t work. Instead of a public relations strategy, voters want a policymaking strategy that results in real, comprehensive immigration reform.
Not that the Mass Deportation Caucus wants to let facts get in the way, but the facts are facts. Specifically:
Immigration Does Not Drive American Unemployment: A 2010 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that native-born U.S. workers experience modest wage increases from immigration and that any negative effects on wages were felt largely by the workers who are the most substitutable for new immigrants—that is, earlier immigrants. According to the study’s author Heidi Shierholz, “Americans are right to worry about the declining quality of jobs over the last few decades, but immigration has had very little to do with that.”
Other studies specifically looking at minority workers have come to a similar conclusion – there is little relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates among African Americans.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Would Boost the Economy & Help ALL American Workers: As opposed to the mass deportation, enforcement-only approach, addressing and fixing the immigration system in a wholesale manner will be a boon to the U.S. economy and all U.S. workers. That is why both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win created The Labor Movement’s Joint Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.