Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton confirmed he would vote against Joe Biden’s pick for the Department of Homeland Security in the event Biden is inaugurated, citing Alejandro Mayorkas’s track record of delivering cheap labor visas to elite Democrat donors and business interests as the Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mayorkas served as USCIS Director in the Obama administration.
Cotton explained his rationale on opposing a tentative Mayorkas nomination in a tweet thread over the weekend. Cotton cited a report from DHS’s Inspector General who indicated Mayorkas consistently approved visa applications for workers that would be employed by politically-connected and influential Democrats for American jobs.
Mayorkas had provided free visa workers to companies owned by Democrats such as former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Nevada arch-Democrat Senator Harry Reid. The 2014 DHS IG’s report on Mayorkas’s corporate welfarism indicated that the Democrat-affiliated bureaucrat had expressed annoyance at inquiries from USCIS employees on improving counter-fraud efforts, instead demanding that they focus on approving as many migrant visas as possible. The IG’s report had accused him of “an appearance of favoritism and special access” through his political use of visa programs.
Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies pointed to Mayorkas’s migration corporate welfarism in a statement provided to Breitbart News after news of his shadow nomination. (Biden hasn’t even secured the presidency yet, as final results in contested states await litigation.)
“He is the exact kind of nominee that people didn’t want to see — someone in favor of corporate interests on immigration, of looking the other way on fraud, of rubber-stamping every [migration] application.”
Mayorkas has cited his connection to refugee resettlement in the United States, and would be likely to massively increase refugee admissions as well as approve as many visa applications as possible as Secretary of DHS. If Biden ends up being inaugurated, his confirmation vote could prove a key indicator of which Republican Senators plan to fight for the interests of Americans on immigration policy, and which intend to look the other way in favor of corporate and billionaire special interests.