Saying the jobs report shows the Obama administration has more “work to do,” Thomas Perez said on CNBC that immigration reform, in addition to promise zones, was needed to jumpstart the economy.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said that is exactly the wrong approach to take, as the Congressional Budget Office determined that comprehensive immigration reform would lower the wages of American workers. Sessions said that if Obama gets amnesty legislation passed this year he will have to create more economic “promise zones” for the American workers that would be displaced after comprehensive immigration reform.
Sessions also said that Obama’s announcement of economic promise zones on Thursday “represents an admission that five years of tax, spend, borrow, and regulate have produced economic misery for countless Americans” and noted that Obama’s “policies are growing the government and shrinking the middle class.”
“Yet what is the President’s top second-term priority? Is it a plan to help Americans on unemployment and welfare find good, paying jobs?,” Sessions said. “No, the top priority remains an immigration bill crafted by CEOs that will double the flow of new workers from abroad to compete in every industry and sector throughout the U.S. economy. If the President succeeds in pushing through the House his plan to take jobs needed by Americans, he will have to create many more ‘promise zones’ for the millions of displaced workers.”
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