The establishment GOP-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), recently touted by the White House as the “most progressive trade agreement in history,” is also a “Trojan horse” to advance Obama’s “unrestricted immigration” agenda, according to political insiders and critics who have studied the secretive scheming. With the Big Government wing of the Republican Party currently plotting to empower the Obama administration with fast-track Trade Promotion Authority to make it easier to impose the TPP and other radical agreements on the American people, opponents are warning that the White House immigration agenda may become all but impossible to stop. Critics say Congress must refuse to empower Obama on the issue.
The controversial TPP, of course, is disguised as a treaty to promote “free trade” — more properly described as managed or corporatist trade — among nations surrounding the Pacific. However, the TPP agreement, currently being negotiated behind closed doors by governments, dictatorships, and special interests, includes some major surprises. As The New American reported recently, a leaked chapter of the TPP deal would create NAFTA-style international “tribunals” with the purported authority to override American laws, courts, and even the U.S. and state constitutions — all for the benefit of special interests, foreigners, and crony capitalists. The American people and self-government would be the big losers.
Another chapter of the agreement making headlines this week, meanwhile, purports to regulate immigration policies among TPP signatories. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership includes an entire chapter on immigration,” observed Curtis Ellis, executive director of the American Jobs Alliance, in a post for The Hill. “It is a Trojan horse for Obama’s immigration agenda. House members who were ready to defund the Department of Homeland Security to stop President Obama’s executive action on immigration must not give him TPA, which he will use to ensure his immigration actions are locked in when he leaves office.”
Despite harsh rhetoric and various empty threats about stopping the Obama administration’s executive decrees purporting to provide amnesty for illegal immigrants, Republican leaders in Congress, who promptly caved to White House demands on amnesty, have failed to even mention the TPP immigration schemes since 2012. In fact, beyond simply refusing to address the subject, establishment GOP lawmakers are working overtime — with establishment Democrats — to empower Obama with Trade Promotion Authority. This week, lawmakers unveiled S. 995 to surrender their constitutionally delegated authority over trade to Obama via fast-track TPA.
Under TPA, any pseudo-free-trade deal negotiated by Obama, foreign governments, and special interests would merely get an up or down vote in Congress, denying lawmakers an opportunity to amend it. The scheme would also bypass the constitutional method for ratifying treaties — two-thirds majority support in the Senate — in favor of a simple majority vote in both houses of Congress. If approved, Obama’s immigration machinations, including a drastically expanded “temporary worker” program, would reportedly be set in stone, beyond the reach of the American people or their elected representatives.
“All these ‘21st-century trade agreements’ are written by the same corporate interests and negotiators, and all have the same goal: more visas for foreign workers,” continued Ellis with the American Jobs Alliance. “If TPP goes into effect, they will be beyond the reach of any future Congress. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another instance of Obama using every means he can to advance his immigration agenda, as he said he would.”
The plot to use TPP as a back door for advancing Obama’s immigration agenda has received virtually no coverage by the establishment press. But it is not because the information is not there. In fact, Obama’s Trade Representative in charge of negotiating the pact with foreign regimes and special interests even boasted that the “temporary entry” guest worker scheme is a “key feature” of the controversial “trade” regime being negotiated. “TPP countries have substantially concluded the general provisions of the chapter,” the administration said, referring to the TPP chapter on immigration matters. “Specific obligations related to individual categories of business person are under discussion.”
As Ellis also explained in The Hill, the TPP is not the first time Obama has attempted to use “trade” scheming to rewrite immigration law. The U.S.-South Korea pseudo-“free trade” regime, for example, expanded the L-1 visa program — blasted by the Homeland Security Inspect General for fraud — used by corporations to bring more foreign workers into the United States. Obama even celebrated his machinations on the L-1 immigration program last month at a corporate summit, saying it “allows corporations to temporarily move workers from a foreign office to a U.S. office in a faster, simpler way.” He also boasted that “hundreds of thousands” of foreign workers could benefit from his scheme.
Of course, Big Business and special interests — especially the anti-sovereignty internationalists hoping to crush national sovereignty in favor of regionalism and globalism — have made their support for massive, uncontrolled immigration clear. Aside from openly supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants already in the country, one corporate trade association cited in The Hill piece said it hoped to abolish all barriers: “The TPP should remove restrictions on nationality or residency requirements for the selection of personnel.” In other words, de facto open borders.
“Remember this: nothing Congress puts in TPA will alter what’s already been negotiated over the past six years,” argued Ellis. “It would be inexcusable for Congress to give Obama TPA so he can fast-track his immigration agenda.”
In a column published last week, meanwhile, pundit and former Bill Clinton advisor Dick Morris also sounded the alarm about the mass-immigration-by-stealth agenda being pursued by the Obama administration. “Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement, Congress could lose the power to restrict immigration,” he explained. “We could find ourselves back in the era before the 1920s when there were no restrictions on immigration and anyone from anywhere could come to our shores. And Republicans, from Mitch McConnell and John Boehner on down, are unwittingly helping Obama achieve this goal.” More likely, of course, is that the establishment wing of the GOP is wittingly helping Obama.
According to Morris, the TPP “contains a barely noticed provision that allows for the free migration of labor among the signatory nations.” Indeed, that element is actually patterned after similar provisions in the treaties foisted on European peoples to destroy national sovereignty and impose the unaccountable super-state now known as the European Union. The provision on immigration, Morris said, “would override national immigration restrictions in the name of facilitating free flow of labor.” That could “easily be interpreted” as “allowing farm workers and others to flow back and forth without legal regulation,” he added.
Aside from the open borders component, it would also be a massive blow to the U.S. Constitution. “The treaty could lead to the effective repeal of the specifically enumerated power granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution to regulate immigration and naturalization,” Morris said. “While the treaty is still being negotiated, the current focus on white-collar immigration [is] sufficiently elastic to allow open borders.”
“It is odd, indeed, to see Republicans falling all over themselves to reward this president with more power, voluntarily reducing Congressional oversight and increasing executive authority,” Morris argued. “At the very least, one would assume that TPP would give the GOP bargaining power to force Obama to backtrack on amnesty for people immigrating illegally and possibly on Obamacare. But far from forcing concessions, Republicans are lining up in support of fast track and, by implication, TPP.”
In a follow-up this week on Newsmax TV’s America’s Forum, Morris also noted that the TPP immigration provisions would allow “free flow of workers” between the countries being targeted for submission under the supranational TPP regime — Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Communist Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, and Peru. Eventually, Communist China could join, too. That little-noticed provision would create what Morris described as “unrestricted immigration,” all beyond the reach of Congress.
“This is huge,” Morris said. “I hope everybody listening takes action, call your senator about it.” Phone numbers for lawmakers can be found here.
On April 21, Executive Director Roy Beck of the immigration-focused NumbersUSA also put lawmakers on notice. “President Obama has made it abundantly clear that he believes he has virtually unfettered authority to change U.S. immigration law,” the group warned in a message to every member of Congress explaining that a vote in favor of TPA would be scored as a vote against American workers. “It should not be surprising, therefore, that his administration is attempting to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement to commit America to immigration increases that Congress has neither debated nor approved.”
“Despite a U.S. labor force participation rate that is at its lowest level since 1978, President Obama wants to use the TPP to further reduce the jobs available to U.S. workers and instead reserve certain jobs for foreign workers under the agreement,” NumbersUSA continued. “It is indefensible that Congress would now consider surrendering even more of its authority over immigration to this President in order to fast track a trade agreement that will harm American workers, and the text of which Congress has not even seen.”
As of now, faced with an avalanche of opposition from across the political spectrum, it is not clear that the establishment wing of the GOP has enough votes to ram through the bill to empower Obama with TPA. However, if the American people do not get educated, active, and organized, the threat of TPA, TPP, and other schemes will continue to grow.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]
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