Ralph Nader

Last Updated: August 4, 2000

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Campaign Website: http://www.votenader.com/

Main Campaign Address:

Nader for President 2004
P.O. Box 18002, Washington, DC 20036

phone: (202) 265-4000
fax: 202-265-0182

Email: info@votenader.org

REDUCE LEGAL IMMIGRATION -- SUPPORTS

Mr. Nader recognizes that our nation cannot absorb the population growth of high immigration, and the wage depressing effects of continuing to allow in 2 million more people a year -- both through legal immigration programs and by not enforcing our immigration laws.

In his June 21, 2004, interview with Pat Buchanan for The American Conservative, Mr. Nader said:

"Buchanan: The U.S. population now—primarily due to immigrants and their children coming in—is estimated to grow to over 400 million by mid-century. Would that have an adverse impact on the environment?

"Nader: We don’t have the absorptive capacity for that many people. Over 32 million came in, in the ’90s, which is the highest in American history.

"Buchanan: What would you do about it?

"Nader: We have to control our immigration. We have to limit the number of people who come into this country illegally.

"Buchanan: What level of legal immigration do you think we should have per year?

"Nader: First of all, we have to say what is the impact on African-Americans and Hispanic Americans in this country in terms of wages of our present stance on immigration? It is a wage-depressing policy . . ."

CHAIN MIGRATION

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VISA LOTTERY

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ANCHOR BABIES

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AMNESTY: LONG WORK PERMITS FOR MOST ILLEGAL ALIENS -- supports

This is what Mr. Nader has to say about amnesty on his website under "Immigration":

"There is no evidence that an amnesty for those already present and working constitutes an attraction to would-be immigrants outside the country: again, even from Mexico the immigrants constitute a relatively small percentage of the poor population of that country. We must leave aside the fiction that everyone in the world seeks to live in the United States: people love their homes and leave them, at great risk, only as acts of desperation when their previous way of making a living has become impossible. We in the United States have a special responsibility to those who have come here since it so often been our own government and corporations that have ruined the livelihoods and homes of immigrant workers, and to those in foreign lands that they will not have to make the same choice themselves. Changing these policies is the best way to limit further immigration to levels that are in the interests of both the U.S. and poor nations, and an amnesty for those who are already here is the least we can do as reparations to those whose lives our government has directly or indirectly wrecked. "

This is different in significant ways from what he said in his June 21, 2004, interview with Pat Buchanan for The American Conservative.

In that interview, Mr. Nader said:

“Ralph Nader: This is very difficult because you are giving a green light to cross the border illegally. I don't like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next? I like the idea of giving workers and children--they are working, they are having their taxes withheld, they are performing a valuable service, even though they are illegally here--of giving them the same benefits of any other workers. If that produces enough outrage to raise the immigration issue to a high level of visibility for public debate, that would be a good thing.”

On his website it was changed to:

“Regarding amnesty, this is very difficult issue because it gives a green light to cross the border illegally. Many are concerned with the issue of amnesty because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next? I like the idea of giving workers and children equal rights – they are working, they are having their taxes withheld, they are performing a valuable service for their employers and customers even though they are illegally here it is humane. There is no alternative except allowing crueler exploitation, poverty, disease and their consequences for the general public. If that produces enough outrage to raise the immigration issue to a high level of visibility for public debate, that would be a good thing.”

Then the pro-amnesty paragraph was added.

AMNESTY: CITIZENSHIP FOR ILLEGAL AG WORKERS -- supports

See text under: "Amnesty: Long Work Permits for Most Illegal Aliens."

AMNESTY: CITIZENSHIP FOR ILLEGAL TEENAGERS - supports

See text under: "Amnesty: Long Work Permits for Most Illegal Aliens."

IMPORT LOW-SKILLED WORKERS -- OPPOSES

In his June 21, 2004, interview with Pat Buchanan for The American Conservative, Mr. Nader said:

"Nader: Let’s get down to the manual labor. This is the reason the Wall Street Journal is for an open-borders policy: they want a cheap-wage policy. There are two ways to deal with that. One is to raise the minimum wage to the purchasing-power level of 1968—$8 an hour—and then, in another year, raise it to $10 an hour because the economy since 1968 has doubled in production per capita.

"Buchanan: Say we went to $10 an hour minimum wage. It is 50 cents an hour in Mexico. Why wouldn’t that cause not 1.5 million, but 3 million to head straight north where they could be making 20 times what they can make minimum wage in Mexico?

"Nader: Because 14 million Americans are unemployed or part-time employed who want full employment or have given up looking for jobs. The more the minimum wage goes up, the more they will do so-called work that Americans won’t do. They are not going to do it at $5.15 an hour and have another used car, another insurance policy, another repair bill to get to work, but they are much more likely to do it at $10 an hour.

"The second is to enforce the law against employers. It is hard to blame desperately poor people who want to feed their families and are willing to work their heads off. You have to start with Washington and Wall Street."

Mr. Nader is wise to recognize the wage-depressing impact that illegal immigration has on low-skilled jobs. Enforcing employer sanctions is an important component of detering illegal immigration, as well. Nader fans should encourage him to advocate making the workplace verification system mandatory for all employers. [To learn more about this system, go to http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/workplaceverification.htm] He is right that wages and working conditions need to be raised, but none of that will matter if employers can still employ illegal workers for less.

IMPORT HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS -- OPPOSES

In his June 21, 2004, interview with Pat Buchanan for The American Conservative, Mr. Nader said:

"In addition, I don’t think the United States should be in the business of brain-draining skilled talent, especially in the Third World, because we are importing in the best engineers, scientists, software people, doctors, entrepreneurs who should be in their countries, building their own countries. We are driving the talent to these shores— "

and

" I don’t believe in giving visas to software people from the Third World when we have got all kinds of unemployed software people here."

[For the full Pat Buchanan interview go to: http://www.amconmag.com/2004_06_21/cover.html.]

However, here is the version posted under "Immigration" on his web site:

"The United States should not be in the business of Brain Draining skilled talent, especially from developing countries. We are importing the best engineers, scientists, software people, doctors, entrepreneurs who should be in their countries, building their own countries. The long term solution to immigration is reducing the rich poor divide between the United States and other nations by peacefully supporting democratic movements.

In addition to this being a long-standing brain drain of developing countries, often it undermines employment in the U.S. We have got many unemployed software people here."

The doctored website version steps back from not giving high-tech visas to foreigners and reframes the solution as "reducing the rich poor divide between the United States and other nations."

[To read all of Mr. Nader's Immigration page go to http://www.votenader.com/issues/index.php?cid=33]

Mr. Nader voiced an opposition to importing high-skill workers since 2000:

On June 21, 2000, Mr. Nader appeared on the National Public Radio call-in show "Talk of the Nation" discussing the issues of his Presidential campaign. A listener asked his position on H-1B skilled worker employment visas. He replied by saying that many of the jobs could be filled by American workers whose skills were convertible. Mr. Nader concentrated his answer on the damage to the sending countries, emphasizing the problem of the brain drain effect on places like India and China. The United States is "piling them up in this country leaving their native countries without their talents," he responded. American companies are "sucking out of the entire world the most talented, skilled, knowledgeable people." Mr. Nader also opined that American immigration policy should include the consideration of the brain drain on sending countries.

HIGHLY SECURED BORDER

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VIGOROUS WORKER VERIFICATION

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FEDERAL AND LOCAL COOPERATION TO REMOVE ILLEGAL ALIENS

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FEDERAL FORCED DOUBLING OF U.S. POPULATION -- supports

Mr. Nader is concerned about the effects of high immigration -- what it does to wages, working conditions, population growth, and the environment. He is right to focus on enforcing the law against employers who hire illegal aliens as one of the keys to stopping illegal immigration. He opposes the importation of workers at this time of high unemployment. By advocating amnesty for all illegal aliens, however, he is supporting a faster doubling of U.S. population. His claim that there is no evidence that amnesty is a magnent for more illegal immigration needs to be challenged.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Ralph Nader is nothing less than the founder of the modern consumer movement. He is a unique character on the American scene. His first book, "Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)," was not merely a call for higher standards of automotive safety, it was also a challenge to the unsophisticated American acceptance of corporate authority of that time. For his effective portrayal of the General Motors Corvair as a criminally dangerous car, the company unsuccessfully attempted to entrap Nader with call girls in the cookie section of a grocery store. His subsequent winning suit against GM provided the seed money for the first Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C.

http://www.salon.com/bc/1999/01/26bc2.html

Born in Winsted, Connecticut, in 1934, Ralph Nader was raised by his Lebanese immigrant parents in an atmosphere of citizen activity. Mr. Nader remarked in an April 2000 interview, "It was a very civically responsible upbringing. My parents said to the children, 'The other side of freedom is civic responsibility.' So we were always encouraged to participate and try to improve our community and not be passive onlookers or bystanders. Our parents would take us to town meetings in my hometown, which were often pretty robust displays of discussion between the citizenry and the selectmen and mayor."

http://www.progressive.org/intv0400.htm

Nader graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955 and received an LLB from Harvard in 1958. He is the co-author or editor of more than a dozen books and founded many organizations including Public Citizen and the magazine Multinational Monitor. His public interest career has focused on several related topics, including corporate responsibility, greater citizen empowerment, government accountability, more citizen control over public assets, public funding of political campaigns and worker rights. He wrote the Concord Principles in 1992, a 10-point program which briefly outlines his political objectives.

http://www.votenader.com/issues.html

The excesses of corporate power have been a major focus. In particular, Nader has drawn aim on corporations' immense power, which has been favored by pliant legislators in the form of tax breaks, giveaways, bailouts, overseas marketing assistance and the varieties of corporate welfare from the taxpayers.

http://www.votenader.com/press/Corporate/corporate1.html

In order to see how loyal the business community was to the country that provided the freedom in which to grow and prosper, Mr. Nader contacted 100 of the largest corporations and proposed that the CEO lead the next shareholders' meeting in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Only one company found the suggestion to be amenable.

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/board.html

Nader's level of expertise on his chosen issues has made him reticent on other subjects of public importance. In the past, Nader has been downright unresponsive about numerous mainstream issues, such as abortion, gun ownership or school vouchers. William Safire noted in a New York Times column (3/21/96) that Nader would not "be smoked out on such issues as immigration or affirmative action, preferring his own turf: restraining corporate power, term limits, public campaign financing, product safety and 'a new model of electoral politics.'" Candidate Nader has declined to answer the detailed Project VoteSmart (www.vote-smart.org) survey on its wide array of issues (including immigration) despite being contacted on six different occasions.

Mr. Nader overcame his reticence about speaking on the immigration issue during his June 21, 2004, candid interview with Pat Buchanan. The fact that Nader's website now has an Immigration page, a modified version of his responses to Mr. Buchanan, indicates how much father he is willing to come out on this issue.

Candidate Nader seems to be well aware of the negative impacts of high immigration, but unaware of the solutions already available: for example, making the national workplace verification system mandatory and fully implementing the visa tracking system. [For more on these issues, visit http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/workplaceverification.htm and http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/visatracking.html.] Nader supporters would do well to show him news stories of the Border Patrol surveys that document the impact the promise of amnesty has on the flow of illegals across our southern border as well as educate him on the myriad of solultions avialable. The NumbersUSA website is a good source of information on these topics.

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