Fact Check: Nikki Haley Denies Favoring ‘No Limits’ on Legal Labor Migration

Claim: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley rejected a rival’s accusation that she opposes limits on legal immigration, saying, “That’s not true — you’re lying.”

Verdict: False. Haley told supporters in October, “We need to go to our industries and say, ‘What [workers] do you need that you don’t have?’ … Then you bring people in that can fill those needs.”

The clash came late in the December 6 NewsNation debate for Republican candidates.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said, “Nikki Haley said the other day there should be no limits on legal immigration and that corporate CEOs should set the policy on that. There needs to be limits on immigration.”

“That’s not true. You’re lying,” Haley responded.

She did not revisit the dispute later in the debate.

“Haley did indeed say immigration should not be numerically limited,” said a subsequent tweet from Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

On November 11, Breitbart News posted the video and described her comments.

“So for too long, Republican and Democrat presidents dealt with immigration based on [an annual] quota,” she told the roomful of supporters in New Hampshire:

We’ll take X number this year, we’ll take X number next year, the debate is on the number. It’s the wrong way to look at it. We need to do it based on merit. We need to go to our industries and say, “What do you need that you don’t have?”

So think agriculture, think tourism, think tech, we want the talent that’s going to make us better.

Haley’s reference to “think tech” refers to the many white-collar careers that are now being filled by cheap and compliant foreign graduates instead of available and trained American graduates.

Haley continued:

Then you bring people in that can fill those needs. That way you’re actually emboldening in your economy.

Yes, the fabric of America is legal immigration. But let’s get the right ones in that are goning to make America better.

Haley’s open-borders-for-CEOs speech repeated comments in an April speech: “When it comes to actual immigration laws itself, instead of doing quotas every year on how many we’re going to let through, you partner with your businesses and see what they need.”

Haley’s open-borders-for-CEOs offer echoes the “Any Willing Worker” plan pushed by President George W. Bush in 2004.

“New immigration laws should serve the economic needs of our country,” Bush announced in January 2004. “If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job,” he said.

The Haley policy also matches the semi-covert “Extraction Migration” economic strategy pushed by President Joe Biden’s deputies and the max-migration policy pushed by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.