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So here's another update on F Around and Find Out. As Steve Inskeep writes, this is fascinating, a red state construction CEO, and it's in Texas, goes on record not wanting to lose immigrant workers. Who would have thought? He favors a guest worker program to legalize employees along the same lines as DACA, hopes Congress will act. You mean like comprehensive immigration reform?
You mean when President Biden was trying to push for strong borders, which we all agree we should have? but also to ensure that there is a labor force of people here who are not criminals, who are working hard to support our economy. And red state governors like yours and Republican voters and MAGA Republicans all said, kill that bill, kill that bill. You're now saying you want what?
What Biden was proposing now that Donald Trump wants to do bloody mass deportations combined with 25% tariffs on Mexico, which is about to do retaliatory tariffs on the United States and 25% tariffs on Canada. Let's dig into this article from this Texas red state CEO who apparently wants what Biden had been proposing and which Republicans gutted. Let's take a look.
It's articles from NPR by Julian Aguilar. Here's what it says. Clear signals President-elect Donald Trump's plans to make good on his campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants in his second term has sparked concerns among some in Texas's business and economic sectors who say mass deportations could upend
some of the state's major industries that rely on undocumented labor, chief among them the booming construction industry. I just want to pause there too, because it's my firm view also that if you have a path towards citizenship, as this Republican's red state CEO is talking about. Then you can also treat labor with dignity. We shouldn't have like indentured servitude.
We should treat labor with dignity. And these are jobs that American workers are not filling. I just think it's important that I acknowledge that at the top of this video. Goes on to say, quotes Stan Merrick, CEO of Merrick, a Houston-based commercial and residential construction giant. Quote, it would devastate our injury. We wouldn't finish our highways. We wouldn't finish our schools.
Housing would disappear. I think they'd lose half of their labor. I think, this is just me talking, it's more than half of their labor. That's what common sense and my own observations of these types of things instruct. It goes on to say, talk of the mass roundup comes as Texas is booming.
Texas cities regularly appear on lists of the country's fastest growing communities and construction cranes and workers donning safety vests are common sites in most major cities. That Texas relies on undocumented labor as one of the state's open secrets, despite Republicans tough on immigration stances. I don't really think it's a secret. I just think it's hypocrisy. But I digress.
In 2022, more than half... A million immigrants worked in the construction industry, according to a report by the American Immigration Council and Texans for Economic Growth. Nearly 60% of that workforce was undocumented. Again, my own view, it's probably closer to 85%, but that's just my own view.
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