How Business Interests Abandoned Immigration Reform

For years, the one good thing you could say about American business interests is that they were pro-immigration. Yes of course it was for selfish reasons, but at least that was one area decent people could agree with across the aisle. Remember, back in 2006, George W. Bush held a prime time press conference to push the point, even though he didn’t have the political capital to see it through. Well, no more. Business has completely abdicated the position, despite their economic interests in doing so. ProPublica has a good piece on this and the answer isn’t really that surprising--it is a combination of fear of Trump AND personal fear from the right-wing lunatics these people have in their personal lives, such as at church.

“Businesses are inherently risk-averse,” said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum. In an earlier role, she ran the forum’s Corporate Roundtable for the New American Workforce, an immigrant worker-integration program co-founded by Walmart and Chobani.

Murray pointed to recent episodes in which Trump and other Republicans have directly attacked private companies as reasons why the business community doesn’t want to do as much public-facing advocacy on this issue right now. (Trump has gone after Twitter, the NFL, Amazon, Apple and General Motors, among others; for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s Disney.)

Murray said that some businesses and business groups are still working with the federal government in a more behind-the-scenes way, on issues like processing visa backlogs, advancing immigrant worker training and developing services for refugee employees.

Bob Worsley, a real estate and energy business owner who was also an Arizona state senator and is now co-chair of the board of the American Business Immigration Coalition, said that the recent relative inactivity of the business community on immigration can partly be attributed to a type of “cancel culture.” In an atmosphere in which your political party (he’s a Republican) and even your church expect you to be in favor of things like deporting migrants, Worsley said, business owners have developed a “fear of coming out” about their support of immigration. Doing so, he said, can actively be bad for business.

Several business owners highlighted last year’s right-wing boycott of Bud Light as a worst-case scenario — losing customers en masse for taking even a mild stand on a hot-button political topic.

“It’s become almost an impossible juxtaposition,” Worsley said. Many of his fellow businesspeople support Trump, “and yet their business relies on these workers, or they would not be in business.”

Denyse Sabagh, a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a longtime immigration advocate representing businesses and others, said that she hears from businesspeople “every day” who want help obtaining visas or legal status for their current or future employees. She said she often recommends that they contact their representatives in Congress, “because the more that [lawmakers] hear from business, the more likely it’s going to be effective.” But her clients haven’t been taking her up on that, she said.

“It’s surprising to me that they’re not more involved,” Sabagh said. “They’re all clamoring for workers.”

Even if individual businesses are afraid of speaking up, it would ostensibly be the job of the business associations and coalitions to publicize and advocate for what their members’ long-term labor needs are. But they too have been shying away from doing so of late.

Everyone is pre-obeying Trump.