Omnibus Bill Wipeout for Americans

By Joe Guzzardi
December 18, 2015

Little wonder that Americans are in open rebellion against the Washington establishment. Despite being swept into office and scoring landslide victories last November after vigorously campaigning against President Obama’s multiple executive overreaches, GOP leadership conspired with the White House to pass a $1.1 trillion, 2,000-plus page Omnibus spending bill that contains provisions that the electorate unequivocally rejected.

Specifically, on the three issues of most concern to the nation, terrorism, immigration and jobs, the Omnibus bill ignores the concerns the public has repeatedly expressed. Instead, the bill increases the probability of more terrorism, expands immigration, and will create greater American job displacement.

First, on terrorism, the Omnibus ensures that Obama’s Syrian refugee resettlement program will go forward in 2016 despite the anxiety the presence of 10,000 more Syrians creates in the mainstream. Ironically, at a congressional oversight committee held as Congress prepared to vote on the bill, a State Department official confessed that the administration had no idea where to find thousands of foreign nationals whose visas were revoked because of terrorism threats. 

Logic would dictate that in light of the San Bernardino tragedy, enabled by Pakistani-born and Saudi resident Tasfeen Malik’s visa fraud, all bets would be off. Wrong! Refugee resettlement will, with House Speaker House Ryan’s blessing, accelerate. As Ryan told the Washington Post, limiting refugee resettlement is “not what this country is about.”

Second, on immigration, the bill doesn’t comply with the 2006 Secure Fence Act to complete a mandatory 700- foot, double-layer border fencing, mandated by a law that has been on the books for nearly a decade. Ironically, a tall fence with equally tall bushes and an on-duty agent surrounds Ryan’s Wisconsin home to provide him with the safety and security he’s unwilling to provide Americans.

The Omnibus also funds through federal grants the nation’s more than 300 sanctuary cities, trivializes Kate Steinle’s family’s grief as well as the thousands of others whose loved ones have been murdered by aliens harbored illegally in those cities.

Third, on jobs, an Omnibus provision will quadruple the number of H-2B visas for unskilled guest workers to more than 250,000, and hurts America’s most vulnerable who traditionally fill these jobs—single women, the disabled, the elderly, minorities, teenagers, students, and first-generation immigrants. A BuzzFeed investigative report revealed the extent to which unscrupulous employers will go to dissuade Americans from applying for available jobs so they can hire cheaper, more pliant foreign labor.

One employer in a signed statement to the Department of Labor, admitted that “Basically we never hire U.S. workers. I don’t conduct interviews or take their applications. Basically I just tell them we have no openings.” And the Equal Opportunity Commission found that another employer fired or pushed out the “overwhelming majority” of its American workers, but “few to none” of its 340 Mexican visa holders.

Taken in its totality, the Omnibus represents a huge triumph for Obama over the GOP-controlled Congress, and thumbs its nose at irate, frustrated Americans. Rubbing salt into the wounds, Obama and Ryan insist that opposition to refugees and immigration increases is anti-American.

Apparently, neither Obama nor Ryan understands what being an American means. In 1802, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.”

Hamilton’s warning echoes as true today as it did 213 years ago, and is wisdom the White House and Congress should take to heart.