Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sparked controversy by attempting to defend massive influxes of undocumented immigrants into the US by arguing that Florida farmers needed the newcomers to harvest their crops there.
The California Democrat said the startling things during a press conference, agreeing that the US must safeguard the border but must also acknowledge the value of immigrants to our country.
“Right now, the best thing that we can do for our economy is comprehensive immigration reform. We have a shortage of workers in our country, and you see even in Florida, some of the farmers and the growers saying: ‘Why are you shipping these immigrants up north? We need them to pick the crops down here,’” she mused.
Pelosi made her remarks without naming anyone, but it was clear that she was criticizing Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis for orchestrating the migration of scores of migrants from Texas to the affluent liberal community of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts earlier this month.
Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona, two other Republican governors, have already bused hundreds of migrants to so-called sanctuary cities this year, including New York and Washington, D.C.
Pelosi faced fierce outrage on Twitter when it was claimed by many that she had advocated for the US to open its borders in order to take advantage of cheap immigrant labor.
Rep. Andy Biggs of the Arizona GOP tweeted, “It’s clear Pelosi and Democrats are exploiting illegal aliens and only view them as cheap labor.”
Other detractors charged Pelosi with racism for associating immigrants with farm labor.
