Flashback: Tom Cotton Bends the Knee on Mass Migration

On August 28, 2020, immigration restriction group U.S. Tech Workers made a tweet calling out the immigration patriotism of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton.

The group tweeted, “No one is who they appear to be…”

They highlighted a tweet that Cotton posted on, where he expressed his happiness with meeting up with Immigration Voice, a legal immigration advocacy group.

Great to see friends from @immivoice. I’m proud to cosponsor the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Skilled immigrants should be able to earn green cards in a timely manner, regardless of the country they came from—enabling them to further contribute to our communities.

The bill in question, H.R. 1044, would enable Indian nationals, among other groups, to displace American workers in the tech sector. The bill overwhelmingly passed the House. Although it has not made much progress in the Senate, H.R.1044 has a similar companion bill in S.386, which is currently facing roadblocks

That said, Cotton has reversed course —to some extent — since his 2019 legal migration boosting. A few months ago, he signed on to a letter calling for the Trump administration to suspend all new guest worker visas for sixty days and likewise suspend some types of guest worker visas for at least a year or until unemployment goes back to normal levels. Grassroots pressure is clearly making a difference, as politicians now recognize there is a strong demand for immigration patriotism.

This goes to show the importance of citizen pressure in changing elected officials’ behavior. The only way that patriotic immigration reform can be taken up by the GOP is through relentless grassroots activism. For an issue as high stakes as immigration, the grassroots must be ready to turn up the heat on politicians, no matter what they say on immigration. The failure to do so could see America radically transformed into an amorphous political blob, where traditional freedoms are no longer respected.