While most of the focus has been on the multiple amnesties and other benefits that S. 744 bestows on illegal aliens, only scant attention has been paid to the strategy and tactics that powerful business interests will use to get a business-friendly amnesty bill passed that is not necessarily in the interest of the citizens or the nation.
S.744 is very similar in many respects to Utah's amnesty bill (HB116), which was passed in 2011 and has been touted as a model for the nation.
HB116 was largely developed and written by the powerful Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests all across the state of Utah and counts the Mormon Church among its "Chairman Level" sponsors. As such, the Chamber supported HB116's passage with the help of a wide range of Utah groups who never read the bill.
The Chamber was careful to have other groups take the public lead on the bill, even going so far as to use the Mormon Church as a front group, in order to ensure that its key role in getting the bill passed was largely hidden.
One of the groups that provided strong support for the Chamber's bill was the self-proclaimed conservative Sutherland Institute. Sutherland's President, Paul Mero, has traveled to Washington to help push the Utah amnesty bill forward and has bragged that the Obama administration, along with Schumer and Rubio, have adopted many of the provisions of HB116:
"What Marco Rubio describes is very close to what the Utah Legislature did", Mero said. "I like the idea. I like the concepts involved. I'm sure Sen. Rubio is going to get grief, but so did we."
It's important to note that Utah's amnesty bill was put together by a small group of legislators and business representatives, received inadequate committee vetting, was rushed through both houses of the state legislature with only minimal debate and passed in the dark of night on a Friday, resulting in a deeply flawed bill.
In order to pass its amnesty bill, the powerful Salt Lake Chamber created and masterfully used the disingenuous "Utah Compact" to garner religious and community support for HB116.
The Chamber focused on the broad, feel-good, outlines of the bill and never discussed its details. HB116, therefore, passed in spite of the fact that the vast majority of legislators and virtually none of the groups supporting it had ever read it.
Following the passage of HB116, in a conference call moderated by Tamar Jacoby of immigrationWorks USA, a senior Salt Lake Chamber official, Robin Riggs, candidly described the strategy and tactics used by business to pass the bill.
Riggs' comments give an insight into how powerful business interests will move their agenda forward on the national level by using good-hearted and extremely naive individuals to do much of the dirty work for them. (Click here for a full transcript of Riggs comments and here for the complete audio of the conference call.)
MR. RIGGS: So, if you look in – and I call tell this group that – but if you look online and look anywhere where the genesis of this came from, you're not going to Chamber's fingerprints on it. And so we just ran the two parallel tracks – we ran – we kept pushing on legislation but also very, very strongly pushed the Compact forward.
Then in Utah – those of you who don't know the specific religious politics in Utah, you know that this is the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Mormon Church, and they don't weigh in on politics very often, at least not locally. I mean, there are moral issues, you know, we've probably heard of Prop 8 in California and so forth. They don't – they don't step up much. And so when they do – or if they do, it's big news. Well, they weren't signatories to the Compact but they came out publicly and endorsed it which meant that you've got, you know, 70 percent of the population now raising eyebrows about it. Okay, now our church leaders like this approach, like this more pragmatic approach. What is that – how does that play into those more conservative members who have an opposite view? And that almost immediately also changed the discussion a bit in Utah.
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MR. RIGGS: And we were the primary driver of the Guest Worker approach….
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MR. RIGGS: ... and we're getting calls from the Obama administration, we're getting calls from Justice Department, we're getting calls from Homeland Security, not for their saying, you know, of course we'll do it but they're interested, they're intrigued, and that's more than we can say for most of any issues we've pushed at them in the past.
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MR. RIGGS: ... The sponsor of the Guest Worker Program, in fact, in the Utah House was a dairy farmer and one of the things – one of the hallmarks of his bill, the Guest Worker bill, is that he allows – he doesn't require E-Verify or any kind of verification on the part of agricultural employers because for them it's such a difficult thing to do. So in Utah, the Guest Worker Program – the Guest Worker card or permit simply – once you have it, then there's no longer a requirement for verification on the part of agricultural employers. [Note: Representative Bill Wright was defeated in a Republican primary following passage of his guest worker bill.]
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MS. JACOBY: [Bill] Wright. Wow, he's a dairy farmer. So how – I mean – now, let me ask a slightly tough question. Are you not worried that people will show up from – you know, from Maryland and California and Colorado and all over the country wanting the – wanting a Utah Guest Worker permit?
MR. RIGGS: They did except there is one provision to go through, you have to have already lived or worked in Utah as of May 10th of 2011. (Inaudible) – they've got at best six weeks left.
MS. JACOBY: Okay, okay. (Laughs.) All right, maybe we should advertise. Great. It's such an interesting call. Thank you so much, Robin Riggs from Utah, Glenn Hammer from Arizona, and Franklin Coley from Florida. Good luck as things unfold in the future, and thank you all for being on the call.
Business interests that support S. 744 in the U.S. Senate are now following the same strategy that they used in Utah in 2011. Business lobbyists will do their best to get the public to focus on anything but the benefits for employers. They will use the "pathway to citizenship", the DREAM Act, and compassion for illegal alien families to distract attention away from what is in the bill for employers, including multiple amnesties, in order to get everything they want without anyone noticing it until it is too late.
So rather than only looking at what's in S.744 for illegal aliens, which is exactly what business wants, it is important to read the entire bill in order to find out why business is so excited about it and what employers gain from it at the expense of illegal aliens, taxpayers, and national and public security.
In Utah, when groups supporting illegal aliens – including the Catholic Bishop of Salt Lake City, the ACLU, and the state's major, liberal-leaning newspaper – finally got around to reading HB116 after it passed, they had a terrible case of buyer's remorse.
Only then did they realize that they had been sold a bill of goods by business interests – illegal aliens relegated to virtual involuntary servitude, tax breaks for employers that hire illegal alien "guest workers" rather than American citizens, and legal status for criminals and intending terrorists.
Unless careful attention is paid to the employer benefits in S.744, business interests will get everything that they want. And just because business wants something does not mean that it is good for individual citizens or for the nation.
