Republican Blasts Bernie Sanders: ‘Build Back Better’ Immigration Proposals Will ‘Harm American Workers, Take Away Opportunity From’ American Kids

A Republican colleague has asked U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) why he supports little-known immigration provisions of the “Build Back Better” plan that would allow foreign workers to take American jobs and lower the wages of the middle class. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said he was puzzled that the Vermont-based democratic socialist would support “the crown jewel of corporate lobbying.”

The proposal would allow Silicon Valley tech firms “to employ a functionally limitless supply of cheaper foreign labor in place of willing, able, and qualified American workers,” Hagerty wrote in an October 22 “Dear Colleague” letter to Sanders, obtained by this reporter and later posted to social media.

“These Big Tech companies can hire as many foreign workers as they want. They don’t have to worry about discriminating against American workers; they can do it all day long,” Senator Hagerty told Laura Ingraham on Monday night.

“The big issue here is we’re going to harm American workers, and we’re going to take away the opportunity from our kids,” he continued. “The last thing we want is for those jobs to be given to foreign workers. … This will knock out opportunity for a generation to come.”

Sanders and Democrats favor #BigTech & corporate lobbyists over American workers and their wages.

Don’t believe me? Look at the radical provisions hidden in their tax-and-spend spree that I’ve written @SenSanders about. pic.twitter.com/9z0bJhDTm7

— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) October 26, 2021

Pages 905-912 of the “Build Back Better” act contain controversial provisions allowing the U.S. government to “recapture” every unused family-sponsored and employment-sponsored green card since 1992. It would also “exempt family-sponsored and employment-based applicants from numerical limits on visas for an additional fee,” according to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), who advocated for the measure along with Congresswomen Kathy Manning (D-NC), and Deborah Ross (D-NC).

Critics call recapturing visas an “accounting gimmick.” Under current immigration law, legal immigrants have two years to use the minimum number of available visas, with the unused minimum of family visas shifting to the employment category the next year and vice-versa.

Hagerty addressed Sanders because the two-time presidential candidate long broke from Democratic Party orthodoxy by opposing H-1B visas and other green card programs that he believes undercut American citizens’ earnings.

“Wages keep going down” for middle-class Americans, he told then-CNN host and immigration enforcement advocate Lou Dobbs in 2007. “I don’t why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will