Mitt Romney Thinks ‘Expanding the Number of Work Visas’ Will Fix Inflation

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 08: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) speaks to reporters in the Senate S
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Neil Munro

Republican Senator Mitt Romney wants to cut inflation by cutting Americans’ wages, including the wages earned by the GOP’s own voters.

Sen. Romney (R-UT) urged the cuts in a November 10 Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he echoed Goldman Sachs’ May demand for more migration to cut inflation by cutting wages:

Exit polls of voters confirmed that inflation remains a top voter concern. Midterm campaigns largely focused on assigning blame for rising prices. Now … Congress can actually help by increasing legal immigration [and] expanding the number of work visas in sectors that face worker shortages.

In May, Goldman Sachs argued that President Donald Trump’s 2020 migration cuts ensured that “the substantial gap between the number of workers and the number of jobs …  has led to wage growth of 5 1/2% over the last year.”

“We have estimated that the [worker] gap would need to close by around 2 ½ million [extra migrants] to return wage growth to the 4-4½% range,” or roughly $100 billion lower, Goldman Sachs declared.

Romney worked alongside Goldman Sachs in the finance sector for many years before getting elected to Massachusetts governorship and losing the 2012 presidential election.

“He is completely out of out of touch, as out-of-touch as all of the elite Democrats in Hollywood,” responded Rosemary Jenks, the government relations director for NumbersUSA. She told Breitbart News:

[Landslide Gov.] Ron DeSantis has very strong positions on immigration. [Newly elected] J.D. Vance … [and] Ted Budd have strong positions on immigration. There’s no evidence anywhere that taking the right stance on immigration hurt any [candidate] …

A  YouGov poll in February asked 1,500 citizens: “Do you think the following measures intended to reduce inflation are a good idea or a bad idea? …. Increase immigration to reduce worker shortages?”

Just 27 percent of registered voters agreed that importing workers to reduce inflation is a good idea, including 45 percent of President Joe Biden’s 2020 voters. Fifty percent of registered voters said it was a “bad idea,” including 83 percent of President Donald Trump’s 2020 voters. Since February, Americans’ wages have fallen further, amid Biden’s cheap-labor migration and rising inflation.

Romney’s support for more visa workers also threatens to crash the accelerating automation of specialty crops, such as apples and strawberries.

Romney did not mention the massive wave of illegal migration that has been invited by President Joe Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

Romney was one of six GOP Senators who voted to confirm Mayorkas, who has since delivered roughly 3 million blue-collar and white-collar illegals into U.S. housing and labor markets. The extra inflow is in addition to the regular annual inflow of roughly 1 million legal immigrants and roughly 500,000 visa workers.

Mayorkas’ wave of illegal migrants has helped to cut inflation because it shrivels Americans’ ability to negotiate decent wages with their employers and the investors.

But Mayorkas’ migration also raised inflation by driving up the price of houses, rents, used cars, and myriad retail items.

Romney’s op-ed also declared: “We need new legal immigrants—at least a million a year to keep the population from declining.”

“The population is still growing — where does he want to put all these [extra] people?” Jenks responded.

The inflow of migrants also spikes government spending by pushing more Americans onto the economic sidelines and into welfare and aid programs. Yet Romney complained that the increased government spending is boosting inflation:

Rather, it is automatic “nondiscretionary” spending on entitlements, such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, and on servicing the debt. It’s this spending that is growing faster than the economy … Excessive spending not only adds to the national debt, it is highly stimulative and inflationary.

Romney’s understanding of immigration economics “is embarrassing for him, but it’s tragic for the rest of us,” Jenks added.

Since Trump’s immigration curbs expanded wages for ordinary Americans, immigration reforms are a core demand of the GOP’s base.

The CNN exit polls in the 2022 midterms showed that immigration was the top issue for one-in-seven Republican voters. Immigration was deemed more important than crime, abortion, or gun rights, and was ranked second in importance after inflation. Immigration was tied with abortions as the second-most important issue in a Fox News poll of more than 100,000 people which was taken from October 31 to Nov 8.

Romney’s op-ed did include one interesting anecdote about immigration politics within the Democratic Party:

 I asked a leading Democrat why his party hasn’t acted to secure the border, especially since its failure to do so gives my party a huge advantage in swing states such as Arizona and Nevada. His answer: “You don’t understand the power of the immigration lobby.”

That lobby has encouraged hundreds of thousands of migrants to take their children through Panama’s jungle, where thousands of migrants have died:

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