Sessions: Can anyone explain how this immigration bill will help struggling Americans?

Above: Highlights of Sen. Jeff Sessions’ immigration remarks on the Senate floor

In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions gave an impassioned plea to his colleagues supporting the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill to tell him how it would help Americans who are struggling in this economy.

Here are some of the highlights:

On the flood of new legalized immigrants

“Under current law, our processes calls for the legalization of a million people a year. We’re the most generous nation in the world. But you’ve got to know if this bill passes, we will be giving permanent legal status to 30 million people in the next 10 years.”

“Do my colleagues have any concerns about how this will impact the falling incomes of our middle class American citizens?… Has anybody considered that if we bring in more people than the economy can absorb, that this will create unemployment, place people on welfare and dependency and deny men and women the ability to produce an income sufficient to take care of their family, make them dependent on the state because we just simply don’t have enough jobs?”

On the significant increase of guest workers

“Can one of the sponsors of this bill explain to me the economic justification for adding four times more guest workers than proposed in the bill in 2007?”

On the negative impact the bill would have on America’s economy

“More than 4.6 million more Americans are out of work today than in 2007… Can one of the sponsors answer this basic question: how will this legislation protect struggling American workers?

“Will it help millions of middle-class working Americans who need a job, need a pay raise, need to be able to have healthcare and retirement benefits?”

“Will the flowing of this many new workers…raise wages or reduce wages? Will it make it harder for a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter, a grandchild…to get a job and a decent wage?”

“[We have] the lowest percentage of people in the workforce in America today [than we’ve had] since the 1970s.”

“Who do we owe our loyalty to? Some business who would like to have more labor, or to the American people who fight our wars, obey our laws, raise our children and pay their taxes to this country?”

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