Survey Shows Few Executives Worried About Trump’s Migration Policies

A survey shows that only six percent of corporate executives are “very concerned” about President Donald Trump’s pro-American migration policies.

Seventy-four percent say they are “slightly” or “not at all” concerned about “workforce staffing challenges as a result of the Trump administration’s immigration policies,” says the May survey.

The survey included 349 “inhouse lawyers, business executives and human resources (HR) professionals.”

The survey was conducted by Littler, which describes itself as “the world’s largest employment and labor law practice representing management.” For example, the company’s Workplace Management Institute is headed by Shannon Meade, a former Vice President of Public Policy and Legal Advocacy at the pro-migration National Restaurant Association.

WATCH — ICE Agent: Biden Administration Immigration Policies Put the Public at Risk:

Democrats, D.C. lobbyists, immigration lawyers, media people, and professional activists have personal, financial, and professional reasons to describe Trump’s pro-American changes in apocalyptic terms. “I was just flabbergasted by how high the concern was among our clients,” Littler immigration lawyer Jorge Lopez told Axios on Wednesday.

Similarly, more than 130 House Democrats — including five of the six Indian American members — sent a May 1 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming that Trump’s immigration enforcement is “turning university campuses into places of fear, rather than learning”:

[I]nternational students enrolling in our universities is essential to maintain our world class STEM programs. But today, the Trump administration’s heavy-handed and politically motivated immigration enforcement is turning university campuses into places of fear, rather than learning, and these actions deter students from coming to study at U.S. institutions.

In contrast, anonymous corporate managers have professional incentives to offer a balanced assessment of Trump’s polices, aided by their expertise on supply and demand, costs and benefits, and legal risks.

The White House is pushing back against alarmist claims that their migration reforms and inflow reductions will cripple the economy.

“Over one in ten young adults in America are neither employed, in higher education, nor pursuing some sort of vocational training,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Axios.  “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s executive order to modernize workforce training programs represents this Administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential,” he said.

“The President believes that we have a workforce here that deserves jobs that pay very well with benefits and a future here in the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told a House hearing May 6.

The promise of cheap migrant labor is “a drug that too many American firms got addicted to … [and] globalization’s hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it’s been bad for innovation,” Vice President JD Vance told an investor audience in March.

“Real innovation makes us more productive, but it also, I think, dignifies our workers,” Vance said. “It boosts our standard of living [and] it strengthens our workforce and the relative value of its labor.”

Voters are also trying to balance their conflicting desires to welcome migrants and avoid migration’s pocketbook costs. In late April, Rasmussen Reports asked 1,085 likely voters, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘Today, our immigration system is broken — and everybody knows it. Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules’?”

Eighty-four percent of Republicans — but just 57 percent of Democrats — agreed “strongly” or “somewhat.”