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Erick Erickson Twitter @EWErickson – WSB 750 AM Wikipedia

Added info on Erickson Re; Obama nominated federal judge who was on GALEO board for eleven years here.

“Erickson also actually told his listeners that Lopez would have no role on immigration as a federal judge. “No spin,” pledged Erickson,…”

9-ish minutes from May 16, 2019

AUDIO

AJC coverage of the McKinsey report here.

Transcript from REV.com :

Erick Erickson:
“The President has unveiled his immigration plan today. Uh, let me start at the end, as opposed to the beginning, [inaudible 00:00:10] while I’ll explain. It’s not going to happen. The end. Reason it’s not going to happen is because Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, Lyndsey Graham and several other members of the Senate have come out and said, “There’s no need for this. We don’t want to consider this.” [inaudible 00:00:25] can’t pass in the House, and Senate Republicans are saying, “We don’t want to do this.” And in fact, the- the President has privately consulted behind the scenes through Jared Kushner, uh, on this immigration plan, but Republicans don’t want to pursue it.

Erick Erickson:
However, the President has an argument, and it’s a Georgia argument, for why they should do this. Uh, let me explain this to you. The McKinsey … the McKinsey consulting group, um, they do all sorts of studies, uh, economic studies and whatnot. Well, McKinsey & Company decided to do a study on their own; they weren’t paid by anyone, but they decided to do a study of Georgia’s economic trends. And there are some worrying signs for Georgia economically. Let me read you some numbers. According to McKinsey, Georgia has unfilled job openings in several sectors in 2018. 28,800 available jobs in transportation and logistics, 22,300 in sales, 22,200 in computing, 20,300 in healthcare, 16,700 in office and administration. Again, these are the number of jobs that are not filled.

Erick Erickson:
We are in an employment crisis in Georgia, or at least, we’re heading into one, uh, not because we have too many unemployed people, but because we don’t have enough people to fill the jobs that are available. So by the way, th- this goes back to a … Chris Burns from Dynamic Money was here two weeks ago. He made this point about the current economic news in the state. It is so good right now, there are so many openings, that if you want a new job, go market yourself. Uh, get your resume together, and start shopping it around. We are at a full employment situation; there are a massive number of jobs that are not being filled [inaudible 00:02:15].

Erick Erickson:
Again, let me read you the numbers, for these are the 2018 numbers from McKinsey & Company, in Georgia. 28,800 unfilled jobs in transportation and logistics, 22,300 unfilled jobs in sales, 22,200 jobs unfilled in computing, 20,300 unfilled in healthcare, 16,700 unfilled in office and administration. That’s just Georgia.

Erick Erickson:
So the President’s got to do something, because his advisors are starting to warn him that we need more workers in the country. And if we were to produce natural-born workers in this country, it would take a minimum of 18 years, 19 years really to get them into the workforce, because they’d be nine months in the womb, and then 18 years before they get out of high school. [inaudible 00:03:03] forget college. So it- it would take us 19 years really, to- to build them natural-born. So you know what we gotta do? The thing some of you don’t wanna do: immigration. Loosen the standards on immigration.

Erick Erickson:
I mean, I- I don’t need to read the numbers again, but you get the sense in Georgia: we need more workers here. We can lure workers from other parts of the country, but if you lure workers from other parts of the country, well, you’re … One, I mean, take for example, do we really want a bunch of people from California coming here? I mean, that was one my chief objections to Amazon, we’re getting a bunch of skinny jeans-wearing hipsters from Washington, down to Georgia with their Washington, atheistic, progressive, hostile to- to Christian values … [inaudible 00:03:45] no point.

Erick Erickson:
But where are we going to find the people, if we’re not attracting them other states? And by the way, we did attract them from other states, then those states suddenly have employment problems, ’cause you gotta fill the jobs in those states. So the President’s gotta do something, and his solution is to open borders. Now, not open borders in the way the left wants open borders. Essentially what the President is doing, is he wants to be able to, uh, open the border to more immigrants who are already skilled, already have the skills, uh, but he also wants to open schools to immigrants, who not only potentially have the skills, but could also then stay here.

Erick Erickson:
See, it’s no good for us to be bringing people into this country, educating them, and then having them go to China or elsewhere. We gotta find a way to keep them here, and so that’s what the President’s policy wants to do. Currently only about 12% of immigrants are admitted to the country based on employment and skills. 66% are admitted based on family connections, and the President wants to flip those around, so 57% of the people who are coming would be based on employment, 33% would be based on family connections. The President … As he said all along, he wants to prioritize family connections based on either bringing children or bringing spouses or bringing parents in, not the extended family of first cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed, aunts and uncles. So he- he wants to reshape that balance, but he really wants to make it easier for employers to bring into this country someone from abroad who wants to, uh, work in this country.

Erick Erickson:
Now, one of the things that this- this, um, policy for the President [inaudible 00:05:36] doesn’t touch, is the DREAMers. Um, this plan that the President’s rolling out today takes no position on current illegal immigration. What it does try to do is reset the parameters for illegal immigration. So, for example, um, instead of prioritizing people immigrating to this country who have existing relatives in this country, what the President wants to do is prioritize immigration of what he’s calling extraordinary talent, people with professional or specialized vocation, and exceptional students, that is, students in other countries with good grades who want to come to college in the United States, we’ll prioritize allowing those people to come in, hopefully then finding them jobs in the United States to develop talent here.

Erick Erickson:
Um, real world situation here: I actually … I- I was not an immigration attorney and had to help a guy, uh, with an immigration situation. But I was a lawyer, and he was a soccer coach. And he was a very, very good soccer coach, but soccer coaches … Obviously, uh, prioritizing British soccer coaches in the United States was not a high priority, uh, even for … At the time it was the Bush administration. Uh, just it wasn’t. Um, he had a job here. His visa was, uh, up for expiration, and there were people arguing that he should not be able to stay in the country, even though he had an employer in this country that wanted him to stay, wanted him to stay as a soccer coach.

Erick Erickson:
Uh, the federal government gave the run-around for a very long time, on allowing him to stay because of, uh, his classification on his visa. There were Americans who could have done the work. The problem was, there just actually weren’t any Americans who wanted to do his job, but it was a convoluted, burdensome, bureaucratic process to try to keep a British soccer coach in the United States working for a private American school who wanted to keep him.

Erick Erickson:
We … Eventually the situation we were successful, but it was still a- a pain in the butt to do. Uh, what the Trump administration wants to do … That process has actually got more complicated over time. What the Trump administration wants to do is they want to simplify the process by which if you have an employer in this country, and they want an existing employee who is an immigrant to stay, they’ll make it a lot easier for that company to keep that person’s visa renewed, but also if you have an employer or an employee out of the country who wants to come into this country, and the employer wants them to come, they’ll make it easier not only for that employee to come but to stay, and not tie it to their job; once they’ve worked for a number of years, they’ll be able to stay if they want to, if they want to seek American citizenship.

Erick Erickson:
That’s actually a pretty good idea, because what … Typically what happens is an employer brings, uh, someone from abroad here, and that person … One- one or two things happen: either they stay with the company, and you’ve got to go through the burdensome renewal process over and over and over, over time, or eventually, they decide, “You know what? I want to go work for someone else. I can get paid more. I wanna stay here. I can benefit another company.” And there’s a just nightmare process of trying to make that move, and so this will streamline that- that. The Trump administration is saying that a Byzantine process, Byzantine bureaucracy, uh, very complicated, convoluted, hard to follow … It drives up costs. People have to hire lawyers. They shouldn’t have to do that; they should be able to do it themselves, and we should prioritize finding people who want to come here to work, not people who want to come here because their family’s already here.

Erick Erickson:
That sounds like a no brainer to me. It sounds like a good idea. Of course, again, let’s go to the end of this. Congressional Republicans right now are saying this- this is a deal-starter. We- we don’t even want to consider this. We’re headed into an election season; we don’t want to do this. The President’s team this afternoon though is signaling he intends to make this a campaign issue if the Democrats won’t go along with it, but the subtle hint there … He’s saying that the Democrats won’t go along with it, but the subtle implication is, if the Republicans in Congress won’t go along with this, he’s gonna make it a campaign issue whether they like it or not, ’cause he really wants to do this. This President wants an immigration deal.

Erick Erickson:
Again though, ’cause I’m seeing people tweeting and emailing: this is nothing to do with … He’s not taking a position on the DREAMers. Illegal aliens are already here; this is only about fixing, streamlining and making more simple, the existing immigration process, legal immigration process, into the country.”