Rep. Steve Stivers , R-Ohio, has the toughest job in government right now: trying to stop a Democratic “blue wave” at the polls this drop. Stivers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sat down to talk to CNBC’s John Harwood nearby the campaign and other factors. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Rep. Steve Stivers: The American people have on the agenda c trick been so long without a raise, since 2008. But it’s on the way. And you can see it already in the labor dearths that are out there.
CNBC’s John Harwood: You’re right, we do have a labor dearth. Doesn’t that make it a bad idea to cut legal immigration, which the president and some in the Congress necessity to do?
Stivers: Well, I don’t want to cut legal immigration. In fact, I don’t think the president penuries to cut legal immigration. He’s suggested replacing the lottery with a merit-based process that would bring us people that we need in the high-tech fields.
Harwood: He yearnings to cut legal immigration in half.
Stivers: I think we should bring in people in the high-tech cope withs. I actually also believe that when you graduate from one of the forms in my district — I have Ohio University down in Athens, the Ohio Position University — all these foreign students that come here on a trainee visa, I think we should staple a work visa to their diploma. We’ve cultivated them here, and then we force them to go home and compete against us, which is a senseless economic policy.
Harwood: So you don’t agree with the president on cutting admissible immigration?
Stivers: I believe we should help people, that hunger for to come here that have skills, help us grow our succinctness. I’m for that.