Since mid-March, more than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment. With that knowledge, former U.S. Attorney General and Alabama U.S. Senate-hopeful Jeff Sessions on Thursday called for a moratorium on employment-based immigration until the U.S. unemployment rate goes back down below 3.5%, where it was in February 2020.
“American families and workers must come first. It is morally wrong and economically disastrous to import more foreign workers when millions of Americans are out of work through no fault of their own,” said Sessions. “Before the pandemic, our economy was booming with record low unemployment and wage growth. President Trump’s leadership has proved vital to restoring American economic strength. But the Chinese government’s dangerous and deceitful behavior has enabled the Wuhan Virus to explode worldwide and savage our health and our economy.
22 million Americans filing for unemployment equates to roughly 12 percent of the American labor force going without a paycheck.”In Alabama, more than 200,000 workers have claimed unemployment in the past few weeks. This number is continuing to grow,” Sessions added. “It is insanity for this nation to invite foreigners to come in and take any of the few jobs available during this crisis.
Sessions explained the United States issues more than 1.4 million ‘temporary’ visas to foreign workers per year, not counting new green cards (permanent residents), refugees, illegal aliens, or those who illegally overstayed their visas from previous years.
“Now is the time to suspend employment immigration so that we can make sure that jobs are available to the millions of Americans who have been displaced by this pandemic,” he concluded.
