Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, running to reclaim the Alabama Senate seat he gave up to oversee the Justice Department, is one immigration hawk praising President Trump’s executive order halting most new green cards while the coronavirus rages on.
“The president did make a strong statement,” Sessions said in a video conference this week. “I think the order is a beginning, a first step. He indicated that more orders and regulations might be issued as time goes by. I think that will clearly be necessary because we’re not there yet.”
Trump issued an executive order last week curbing new immigration to limit the competition faced by nearly 27 million people in the United States who are out of work as the pandemic and resulting business closures wreak havoc on the economy. Immigration hawks almost uniformly panned it for not going far enough and for having too many exceptions, especially for temporary workers.
“This is the issue,” Sessions said during remarks to one such group of hawks, the Center for Immigration Studies. “American immigration should serve American interests. It is not in the interests of America to bring in 1.4 million people just to take jobs … when we just laid off another 4 million last week.” Trump’s proclamation also focused on jobs for the unemployed.
Sessions is locked in a Republican primary runoff for his old seat. The 73-year-old is a consistent supporter of the Trump immigration agenda, but Trump has endorsed Sessions’s opponent, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville, who is viewed by some conservatives as less of an immigration hard-liner than Sessions, narrowly finished first in the initial round.
Many of Trump’s immigration policy statements from the 2016 campaign were heavily influenced by Sessions. One of Trump’s top immigration advisers in the White House, Stephen Miller, came from Sessions’s Senate staff. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump for president, but the two had a falling out when, as attorney general, the Alabamian recused himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump later fired Sessions.
Trump’s reelection campaign took the unusual step of sending a letter disavowing Sessions. But Sessions has rolled out a number of other big conservative endorsements, including from nearly a dozen Republican senators, and has been hitting China’s response to the coronavirus.
“Right now, no one in Alabama is thinking about the U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff election. For voters, my guess is that they just hit the pause button and haven’t reassessed their candidate choice,” said Alabama-based Republican strategist Brent Buchanan. “July is a long ways away, and it’ll be interesting to see if Sessions can parlay his new round of super conservative endorsements into actual votes. His message of ‘punish China’ might also be effective once Republicans nationally start hammering China at fault for the coronavirus pandemic — just look at the recent NRSC memo on the topic.”
Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian asked Sessions about some of the immigrant and nonimmigrant workers programs left out of the Trump executive order that are currently under review by the administration. “Well, everything should be looked at carefully,” Sessions replied. “I would say the H-1B visas, the L-1 visas, some of those are really critical” to limit, he said. “We don’t have any jobs.” He then stopped for emphasis: “We. Don’t. Have. Any. Jobs.”
“Continuing to admit nearly a million guest workers while millions of Americans are in breadlines creates the impression that we have a two-tiered labor caste system — profoundly not the American way,” said Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein. “A country should do its own work, and if President Trump won’t stand up for that, who will?”
Sessions has emphasized his unrequited support for Trump on the campaign trail. “When I left President Trump’s Cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No!” he said in an ad last year. “Did I go on CNN and attack the president? Nope! Have I said a cross word about our president? Not one time.” The primary, delayed by the coronavirus, will take place on July 14.
