President Joe Biden and Democrats are already overreaching on immigration and energy policy, Reince Priebus, who served as former President Donald Trump's first chief of staff, said Friday in response to Biden's saying he wants to increase refugee numbers.
"The reason why President Trump dropped the refugee number to 15,000 is that the president has the right to determine each year that number," Priebus, also a former Republican National Committee chairman, said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "So I understand philosophically why Biden and Democrats feel like there is this global responsibility for the United States to absorb all of this, but we dropped the number because of the pandemic."
American jobs are declining, and will only be made more difficult when "you are going to be hauling in another 95,000 to 125,000 refugees," Priebus added. "You guys saw the jobs report today. It showed 49,000 jobs in January. And that's a problem, so to me, this is about putting the American worker first. I totally agree that there is some responsibility to people that are destitute and persecuted and I agree with that global admission but I don't agree with sacrificing American jobs."
He added that it is a "wild move" to increase immigration at a time when Democrats are "stripping committee assignment and they are going forward with impeachment. Why not haul in another 125,000 refugees into the United States? It makes no sense."
It's another sign of Democrats "going into their wish list, checking off boxes," said Priebus, but at the same time, it will make it "a lot easier" for Republicans to regain control of Congress.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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