Their ROI with Perry is the ability to be able to NOT have Obama take away their money and “redistribute” it.
Their ROI with Perry is an unwavering support of a guest worker program for many years - They were giving money to Perry years before anybody had ever heard of Obama.
There was a
FReep thread discussing an open letter that some major Perry donors signed. That letter and article has mysteriously disappeared from the Dallas Morning News, but thankfully many people on the web, including FReepers, saved it, and
saved the names of those who signed it.
Now that
Forbes article that kicked off this thread, they seemed to be kind of selective, leaving off Bob Perry, along with Bo Pilgrim and a few others. Not surprising.
Who heads the top of Forbes' list though? Harold Simmons.
What does he have in common with Bo Pilgrim and Bob Perry, besides all three donating to Rick Perry. That letter I mentioned, the first three signers of that letter were Bo Pilgrim, Harold Simmons, and Bob Perry.
What is the full letter from that FR thread you might ask? Let me repost it:
Often, in the middle of a heated debate, people forget exactly what they're arguing about. But we employers on the front lines of American business cannot forget -- we know why the nation must come to grips with illegal immigration. We know that Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing and bring them under the rule of law, for their sake and ours.
We own and run a variety of businesses: agriculture, food processing, hospitality, construction, banking and more, mostly but not exclusively in Texas. And we know, if not firsthand, certainly at close reach, just how much the economy depends on immigrant labor.
It's not that Americans don't work hard. They do. But the native-born workforce is changing rapidly. In 1960, half of all American men dropped out of high school and looked for unskilled work; today, less than 10 percent do. Baby boomers are retiring. Fertility rates are declining. Yet every year, the economy creates hundreds of thousands of new jobs that require few if any skills, and in the next decade, we will be millions of workers short.
Not all employers mean well, of course. Some companies exploit illegal immigrants. But most who turn to foreign workers do so out of necessity. We aren't looking for "cheap labor." We're looking for available labor, period -- and for some businesses, the choice is to hire immigrants or close shop.
Think for a minute about one Texas sector that relies heavily on immigrant workers: construction. A typical Texas construction worker earns more than $50,000 a year if he regularly works overtime. Employers say they do everything they can to attract native-born workers. But few young Americans want to do hard physical labor, particularly in our climate. And in the less-skilled construction trades -- masonry, concrete, drywall, tile -- more than 80 percent of Texas' workforce is Latino.
Meanwhile, sectors like farming, which compete with construction and pay less, often can't find workers. Things have gotten so bad this year that one Rio Grande Valley farmer had to stand by and watch as $400,000 worth of cantaloupes rotted in the fields because he couldn't find workers to pick them.
These immigrant laborers aren't just the backbone of their companies; they're also the backbone of the regional economy. Out in the Rio Grande Valley, at least a dozen other local businesses -- from grocery stores to companies that supply fertilizer and farm machinery -- see their profits rise and fall with those of the local farm. And scores of native-born workers would be out of work if the farm closed or moved across the border.
As for construction, Dallas-area school systems alone underwent $750 million worth of construction this summer. According to industry executives, without foreign-born workers, few of those new or renovated classrooms would have been ready when school opened this month.
You hear the same story across the U.S. A relatively small number of foreign workers keeps millions of native-born Americans employed. This, in turn, keeps the economy growing, and we all share in the prosperity that results.
Not only that, but immigrant workers renew and reinvigorate America. They remind us what it's like to give a job your all. We talk about old-fashioned family values; they live them. And those of us who cherish our faith and love our country can only rejoice at their devotion to both.
Not only that, but immigrant workers renew and reinvigorate America. They remind us what it's like to give a job your all. We talk about old-fashioned family values; they live them. And those of us who cherish our faith and love our country can only rejoice at their devotion to both.
We understand that this will include workplace enforcement. In fact, we welcome reform that gives us the tools to stay on the right side of the law. The important thing is that this vital part of the economy be brought under the rule and protection of the law.
Neither the immigrants here today nor those we will need in the future should have to live in the shadows. These are good people with good values doing work that we need done, reaching for the American Dream and helping make it a reality for all. As we value the work, let us value the worker -- and let's fix the law so that it serves all Americans.
A year later, in mid-2007, Rick Perry was telling reporters that those illegal immigrants, I mean undocumented workers, were needed, quote "We need those individuals to continue to grow our economy" and that securing the border with fences or walls was "idiocy". That bit about growing the economy, Perry lifted that right out of his donors' letter, and that makes for a powerful argument, because after all, who are we to argue with something that grows our economy, right? It's also interesting to note that Perry says that people who are breaking the law should have the book thrown at them and yet he's against mass deportation.
If Perry's backers got their way, how many "guest workers" would come out of the woodwork looking for both jobs that Perry's backers say Americans can't or won't take, and jobs that many Americans would jump at?
And does anybody else wonder just how close to an open borders scenario a "guest worker" program like what Perry has talked about for years is? He wants a program where people can crossover and work without dealing with citizenship, implying that they would cross back over or go to their native countries at some point. Easy moving of workers who keep their national citizenship across our borders. It feels pretty open borders to me.