Columnist Krikorian: Boehner Plan Would Lead to Immigration Surge

The immigration reform bill in the Senate and the principles of reform outlined by House Speaker John Boehner would significantly increase immigration, according to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and columnist for The National Review.

"The Senate bill would double immigration and double guest workers, supposedly temporary workers who really aren't temporary … This is at a time when there's 20 million Americans, more than 20 million Americans, looking for full-time work," Krikorian told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"Something like one out of three native-born, working-age people is not working. Now some of those people are moms staying home, that kind of thing, and that's fine. We're never going to get all of those people working and you don't want that.

"But we have the highest rate of non-work among Americans in a generation or more. Is this really the time to be doubling immigration from 1 million to 2 million? If anything, we need to be curbing immigration so that we're letting in significantly fewer new people from abroad rather than increasing."

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Krikorian said Republicans mulling reform have the added burden of being perceived as being the party of the rich and Wall Street.

"That's actually become less and less true over time as the wealthy are increasingly moving to the left and voting Democrat. Nonetheless, the perception is there," he said.

"I have a lot of respect for Mitt Romney as a man; he would have been a much better president — but nonetheless, he had an elevator for his cars. He is like the almost stereotypical rich guy."

Krikorian said that for Republicans to successfully get back the working class and middle class vote, they need to make clear that the Democrats are the party of "cheap labor and crony capitalism."

"[They need to say] that Republicans are the ones who are standing with wage earners and you're not going to be able to do that if you're pushing this terrible immigration law."

Boehner this week said that the passage of a bill is unlikely for now because the president can't be trusted. But Krikorian said his words were carefully chosen to leave the door open.

"But he did not pull the plug on it and say this is finished for this year. He very carefully picked his words … Basically, he's just trying to calm people down so that they can keep working on it behind the scenes," Krikorian said.

"The pressure to do this never goes away because there is so much money … unbelievable amounts of money, pushing this in order to force the wages of Americans down.

"Boehner is not opposed to amnesty and doubling immigration. He just realizes it's kind of hard to now politically. The thinking is that they're going to want to wait until after the primaries are out of the way so that they can twist the arms of Republican congressmen and tell them, 'look, you don't have to worry about a primary race because that's over so vote for the amnesty, in two years no one will remember anyway.'"

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