ACU Chair Matt Schlapp Cheers on Mass Immigration While Getting Lobbying Cash From H-2B Industry

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Jul 22, 2019

American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp is cheering on President Donald Trump’s acceptance of a huge wave of legal immigrants coming over to the United States to crowd American workers out of the growing job market.

After making the post on Twitter, it was quickly pointed out that Schlapp’s lobbying firm, Cove Strategies is making a great deal of money lobbying on behalf of the Seasonal Employment Alliance (SEA), an organization that pushes Congress and the Trump administration to accept more workers by expanding the H-2B visa program.

Schlapp began his lobbying career as a shill for the Koch brothers, the libertarian oligarchs who are powerful opponents of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda on trade and immigration. Schlapp’s values have not seemed to change much since leaving the Koch orbit.

Schlapp left the administration of globalist George W. Bush to join the Koch brothers as the executive director of federal affairs for their Washington D.C. lobbying outfit. Heading up the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Schlapp has overseen an apparent blacklisting of immigration hawks from the event program while receiving sponsorship funds from Google.

Michelle Malkin, one of the few ‘America First’ conservatives allowed at the event in 2019, took the event organizers to task for their obvious gatekeeping efforts.

“Congress has repeatedly mandated a nationwide visa entry-exit system to track legal short-term visa holders. But one has yet to be built—even in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were perpetrated in part by several illegal alien visa overstayers. E-verify has been stalled. Sanctuary cities metastasized,” Malkin said at CPAC on March 1.

“And BOTH parties are to blame – yeah I’m looking at you, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, the Bush family, Mitt Romney and the ghost of John McCain,” she added.

“Ultimately our future will not be secured in a Fox News anchor chair or a think tank office or on a cruise ship or at a cushy GOP retreat,” Malkin said, calling out Schlapp and other country club conservatives used to the beltway lifestyle. “The future is on the frontlines. At the edge of the bridge.”

Unfortunately for Malkin and other right-wing immigration hawks, the lobbying efforts of Schlapp and his ilk have been effective at shifting the policy proposals of the administration. Trump has drastically changed his tune on immigration since being sworn in as President.

“We want to have a very strong border, but we want to have a lot of people coming in,” Trump told reporters in March. “A lot of people don’t understand that. They think we’re shutting it out. We’re not shutting it out. We want people to come in, but they have to come in through a process.”

“We’re going to let a lot of people come in because we need workers,” Trump added. “We have to have workers. These are low numbers, and in one way I love it, but in another way I don’t want to make it hard for you to get those companies rolling … with really great people.”

Congress recently approved legislation that intends to replace American workers by banning per-country quotas for employment visas. This measure, praised by Silicon Valley tech firms, will open up the flood gates for workers, particularly from India, to receive green cards.

House Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of the measure, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and it passed by a 365-65 margin earlier this month. This betrayal and other like it are orchestrated by veteran lobbyists like Schlapp, who always seem to get their way at the expense of Republican constituents and American workers.

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