Senate

Sessions to Obama: No more foreign worker visas

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said President Obama is meeting with corporate lobbyists in an effort to issue an executive order granting 100,000 additional guest worker visas.

“We have communities throughout America that are barely scraping by. Tens of millions of Americans are on welfare, unemployment, and public assistance,” Sessions said on Monday. “Yet the White House and their Senate Majority seem more concerned about the economic demands of large corporations, or the citizens of other countries, than about getting our own citizens back to work.”

{mosads}Sessions cited reports that tech industry lobbyists were meeting with Obama in order to request more guest worker visas to fulfill specialized jobs within the United States. According to reports, Obama is also considering an executive order to extend the expired work visas of nearly 5 million immigrants who are the parents of U.S. children.

“The increases in foreign workers demanded by corporate lobbyists would be in addition to the administration’s plan to implement amnesty by executive fiat, providing work permits to 5-6 million illegal immigrants and visa overstays who will be able to take any job in any industry, public or private,” Sessions said.

Sessions has been an ardent critic of Obama’s immigration policies, accusing him of creating an “open border” and granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. 

Before Congress adjourned for the August recess, the House passed a measure that would prevent Obama from issuing any more executive actions on immigration. Sessions praised that legislation and called for a Senate vote, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said the measure doesn’t have the votes to pass.

“This administration is actively working against the interests of the American worker. And Senate Democrats, instead of defending Congress and their constituents, are handing their vote over to Leader Reid and President Obama,” Sessions said. “Not one single Senate Democrat has publicly stood up to their Democrat leaders and demanded a vote on the House bill to block this executive amnesty. As a result, they are as complicit as if they sat in the room with these executives themselves.”