A Blast from the Past: Jeff Sessions calls for immigration moratorium due to coronavirus

 

Fox News reports that Alabama Senate hopeful and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions yesterday called for a moratorium on employment-based immigration until the United States returns to pre-coronavirus crisis unemployment levels.

“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,” he said in a statement.

Sessions is running for the Republican nomination to fill his old Senate seat in Alabama. President Trump has backed his opponent, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, over his former attorney general.

Session's statement begins as follows:

“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.

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.

Tens of millions of Americans are out of work and hundreds of thousands of small businesses teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Americans need to go back to work to rebuild our economy. But it should be American, not foreign, workers taking those jobs, providing for their families, and restoring our economic strength.

That is why I am calling on the federal government to immediately halt immigration to the United States until Americans are back to work."

KJ