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Exposing Broadwater’s hypocrisy

by Lindsay Schubiner, Center for New Community - 06/30/15 5:42 PM ET

In his June 17 Congress Blog post published by The Hill, “2016 candidates must address high poverty rates among immigrant communities,” Tom Broadwater claims that he is concerned about the impact of immigration on “disadvantaged American communities.” The Hill’s readers deserve enough information to put his statement into its true context.

Mr. Broadwater is the managing partner of Broadserv LLC, a Maryland-based company that, according to its website in 2013, “provides professional & technical services to North American software and technology companies, leveraging high quality, low cost, international resources from India, South America, Europe and the Middle East.” After the Center for New Community exposed his ties to this company in 2013, the description was changed to reference “outsourced American labor.”

{mosads}Mr. Broadwater appears to be profiting from helping companies hire labor outside the United States. If so, his attempt to use American workers as justification for his anti-immigrant advocacy is particularly shameful.

Mr. Broadwater’s advocacy is nothing if not anti-immigrant. In 2013, he appeared on a webcast organized by NumbersUSA where he said, “Legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, they’re all bad as far as we’re concerned, for America.” NumbersUSA is a leading organization within the contemporary anti-immigrant movement, founded under the guidance and financial assistance of eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton.

Despite his vigorous condemnation of all immigrants, the online presence of Mr. Broadwater’s anti-immigrant advocacy organization, Americans4Work, virtually disappeared shortly after hosting a November 2013 symposium on unemployment. The symposium featured the stridently anti-immigrant Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has a record of voting against policies that would benefit unemployed American workers. The Center for New Community’s report on Broadwater also appeared around this time, and Americans4Work’s website and Facebook pages have been dormant since. Prior to sending a tweet linking to Broadwater’s op-ed in The Hill, the group’s Twitter account had essentially been inactive since December 2013.

Perhaps Mr. Broadwater thinks enough time has passed that the public has forgotten his disingenuous efforts to vilify immigrants while simultaneously making money by outsourcing American jobs. His opinions have no place in the immigration debate and definitely don’t belong in The Hill.

From Lindsay Schubiner, Center for New Community, Chicago

TPP a better deal with Taiwan

While President Obama’s ability to negotiate the passing of the trade promotion authority is applauded, he would be wise to use his new authority to incorporate Taiwan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. (“Obama signs trade bills,” June 29)

The president must not forget the close economic ties between the U.S. and Taiwan. It is important to note that in 2014, the Taiwan-U.S. two-way trade volume reached $67.4 billion. Furthermore, these trades, along with Taiwan’s investment on U.S. soil created more than 300,000 American jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Now that Obama has been given the trade promotion authority, he has also been given a rare opportunity to maintain America’s strategic balance in the Asia Pacific through Taiwan’s inclusion into the TPP negotiations. It is through the inclusion of Taiwan into the TPP trade pact that would continue to strengthen the economic pillars of the U.S., for the benefit of the people in both Taiwan and here in America.

From Kent Wang, research fellow to the Institute for Taiwan-America Studies, Washington, D.C.

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