Thursday, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) announced that he and five other members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent a letter to President Donald J. Trump (R).
“38+ million Americans have lost their jobs in the last 2 months,” Rep. Brooks wrote on social media. “The April unemployment rate was 14.7%, the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is now more important than ever to put the interests of American workers first. I, along with five conservative colleagues, sent a letter urging President Trump to suspend the guest-worker program for at least one year. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order suspending certain green cards for 60 days. That’s good, but more can be done to protect American workers. Suspend the guest worker program!”
“We should not force Americans to compete with foreign nationals while jobs are scarce, and Americans should get priority consideration for employment when businesses are able to reopen,” the letter stated. “We urge you to suspend granting any new guest-worker visas for at least one year, and potentially longer depending on the strength of the economy.”
The letter was also signed by Reps.: Andy Biggs (R-Arizona), Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Brian Babin (R-Texas) and Steve King (R-Iowa).
The US economy shrank by an annualized 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, ending the longest period of expansion in the country’s history, an advance estimate showed. It was the steepest pace of contraction in GDP since the last quarter of 2008. Joblessness is estimated at 23 percent, the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s. 40 percent of Americans who make less than $40 thousand per year are now jobless. The forced economic shutdown was implemented at the urging of the Centers for Disease Control, the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and other public health officials to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
America rewrote its immigration laws in 1965. At that point there were only 9.6 million foreign born persons in the entire country. That number has risen to more than 45 million, due to both legal and illegal immigration. High rates of immigration has driven U.S. population growth as American family size has continued to drop; but it has also helped keep median incomes largely flat from 1980 to 2017. This helped keep inflation from becoming a significant brake on the economy; but it also contributed significantly to growing wealth inequality as upper income earning Americans saw their wealth and incomes increase at a far higher rate than the bottom three fifths of the population. There was some significant wage growth during the Trump administration through February, though that appears to now be a casualty of the forced economic shutdown and the shelter in place orders that closed thousands of business, some who now appear unlikely to ever reopen.
As of early Tuesday morning, 5,607,726 people across the globe have tested positive for the coronavirus strain, SARS-CoV-2. The new virus was first identified late last year in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. Of those 2,384,589 have already recovered and 348,256 have died from COVID-19. 99,806 Americans have already perished in the global pandemic. President Donald J. Trump (R) recently halted nonessential travel from Brazil because of the growing coronavirus situation there. The virus has recently been spreading rapidly in Latin America where many of our guest workers come from. 68,620 Mexicans now have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and 7,394 have died, including 215 on Monday alone.
Congressman Mo Brooks represents Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District. Brooks is presently in his fifth term.
(Original reporting from the Hill contributed to this report.)
