Before the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia was booming. Unemployment was below 4% in 2019 – and fell to a low of 3.1%. Construction and tourism jobs increased. And our inner cities quickly became the hubs of the new global economy.
The virus changed all of that. The resulting shutdown has tumbled the state’s economy as it claimed the lives of over 7,000 of our family and friends. We are recovering from the April high of 12.6% unemployment through the sheer will of our employers and workers. But thousands of Georgians remain jobless or underemployed.
Now our workers face a new threat, this time from Washington. While the Democrats keep an eye on Congress and the White House, they plan to open the floodgates to cheap foreign labor. To stop them, we must do everything we can to keep the Senate in GOP hands.
President Trump took office and promised strict enforcement of the country’s immigration laws: no more catch-and-release for serial offenders. And he has largely kept this promise.
The Biden / Harris team promises to reverse course. They aim to make a joke about our borders and immigration laws. The campaign has already proposed an amnesty for the 11 million illegal aliens.
The Biden / Harris campaign is also aiming for a massive expansion of legal immigration: more green cards, an unprecedented five-fold increase in refugee admission and an increase in the allocation of low-skilled, non-agricultural guest worker visas.
The effects of these changes would be devastating for Georgians who are still looking for work. Immigrant competition for work would be particularly detrimental to the state’s large African-American and Hispanic communities, which make up a disproportionate proportion of the workforce in sectors most affected by the influx of foreign labor.
None of this seems to upset US Senate Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, who has fully endorsed the Biden / Harris immigration agenda.
In contrast, Republican US Senator David Perdue understands the hardships faced by workers in the US. He made it clear that “our immigration system must respond to the needs of our economy while protecting American workers”. He has passed laws to restrict the legal immigration of the low-skilled and to strengthen border security.
Perdue understands that it hurts Americans – and that inviting more workers to compete with them is a recipe for economic misery. Voters can defend their jobs by getting him back to a GOP majority in the Senate.
