Free Republic

The latest 1,305-page draft House appropriations bill for 2018 uses a bureaucratic trick on page 732 to help employers cut wages for foreign H-2B seasonal workers — and indirectly, also cut wages for American workers. “Republicans in Congress still haven’t got the message that voters sent last November,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA. She continued:

The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday it would expand the number of temporary visas granted this year for workers in seasonal non-agricultural industries like tourism. In a statement, DHS said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly had consulted with Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and determined there were not enough “qualified and willing U.S. workers” to fill the needs of businesses. “Congress gave me the discretionary authority to provide temporary relief to American businesses in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary workers,” Kelly said in a statement. “As a demonstration of the administration’s commitment...

That really sounds like something out of The Onion, doesn’t it? I mean, a headline like that one has to be satire. And yet it’s a very real story brought to us by The Daily Caller this week. Their title, while a bit more direct, has the same impact. “Shortage Of Foreign Labor Forces Maine Businesses To Hire Local Workers.” The location is Bar Harbor, Maine, and yes, my friends… the struggle is real. Businesses in Bar Harbor, Maine are turning to locals to make up for a shortage of foreign guest workers that normally fill summer jobs in the...

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis is demanding the Department of Homeland Security hand over more H-2B worker visas before he allows Senate approval of a top homeland security official. President Donald Trump has appointed Lee Francis Cissna to serve as director of the DHS’s critical U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. The agency is responsible for screening arrivals and immigrants to prevent jihad attacks and other terrorism. Cissna has been approved by the Senate committee, but he won’t get a Senate approval vote soon because Tillis asked the GOP’s leader to put a so-called “hold” on the nomination. Tillis...

A pro-American employee organization is asking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly to not expand a visa program that outsources blue-collar jobs. Last week, Kelly appeared to cave on the issue of H-2B visas, telling senators that he would “likely” supply the big business lobby with more low-skilled foreign guest workers, as they continue making unfounded claims about a “worker shortage,” Breitbart Texas reported. The H-2B visa is for non-agricultural, low-skilled seasonal work, supplying resorts, hotels and the seafood and landscaping industry with thousands of cheap, foreign employees. Every year, 66,000 H-2B jobs are given and this year,...

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s new 2017 budget allows the Department of Homeland Security to import at least 20,000 extra foreign blue-collar workers for seasonal jobs in the Untied States, instead of requiring companies to recruit, train and pay marginalized Americans.

GOP leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have quietly ended an unpopular 2015 program to annually outsource another 198,000 blue-collar jobs to lower-paid foreign workers.

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in. Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired. In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries. In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has...

Donald J. Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as "one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world..." Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired. In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.... So what's Trump's excuse? That's he's a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I'm afraid, won't wash. When...

In a Tuesday morning interview with radio host Bill Bennett, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended his omnibus bill’s controversial expansion in the H-2B visa program, which would allow foreign workers to fill blue-collar American jobs, by arguing that if the provision were not included, American companies would be forced to shut their doors. Bennett pressed Ryan on the details of the H-2B visa expansion, slipped 700-pages into Ryan’s 2,009-page omnibus spending bill—asking Ryan directly, “Do you believe there are not enough Americans to fill these jobs?” In response, Ryan described the H-2B visa expansion as “a very small, discrete provision.”...

House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is still downplaying his controversial new H-2B legislation, which will pink-slip up to 200,000 more blue-collar Americans during the 2016 election year. “There’s one provision that I think has been so misconstrued… which is the H-2B visa program,” he told radio-host Hugh Hewitt Dec. 21.

House GOP Leadership: Foreign Worker Increase Needed Because of “Labor Shortage” by MARK KRIKORIAN December 17, 2015 House GOP Whip Steve Scalise sent an e-mail to his members this morning defending the immigration increase that the Republican leadership had secretly slipped into the omnibus funding bill. (It is shown below.) The provision would potentially quadruple the issuance of H-2B worker visas, which are for non-agricultural seasonal jobs. The visas are used to import cheap labor for ski resorts, hotels, factories, landscapers, and others. (See this 2010 paper on this racket by a former State department visa officer.) Most of the...

Buried in the 2,000-page omnibus spending bill released by the Senate Wednesday morning is a secret provision that many senators hope unemployed blue-collar workers won't find out about. This provision would quadruple the number of H-2B visas for low-skilled foreign "guest workers." House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., reportedly helped negotiate the omnibus deal. The spending bill also includes full funding for President Obama's refugee resettlement program, which will cost $1.6 billion and bring in another 85,000 refugees this year, many of them from jihadist hotbeds like Syria, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. "At a time when the civilian labor force participation...

Note: Contact info deleted by me. # Note: The following text is a quote: Secretary Napolitano Designates 11 New Countries as Eligible for H-2a and H-2b Nonimmigrant Visa Programs Release Date: January 22, 2010 For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano this week designated 11 new countries as eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B nonimmigrant visa programs, which allow U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary or seasonal jobs for which U.S. workers are not available. The 11 newly designated countries—Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia,...

Lance Starr says he and other immigration attorneys in Utah had heard complaints about The Alcala Law Firm but didn't have evidence until recently of any possible illegalities in how it handled cases. But then two former employees of the Glendale firm asked him last year to review their applications to legalize their presence in the United States, which had been prepared by principle attorney James Hector Alcala but rejected by the government. Starr spotted what appeared to be forged letters verifying that one of them had worked for Mexican employers. The American Fork attorney -- who had worked for...

All that Eustaquio López wanted was a job. He had plenty of experience and the energy to prove himself. But he never got a chance, he said, because as a worker in the U.S. legally, the employer would have had to pay him regular wages with adequate protections — options seen as luxuries easily skirted by exploiting Mexican workers. López and 18 other South Texans, all U.S. citizens or legal residents, are suing various agricultural companies in the region and the U.S. Labor Department in federal court in Del Rio, alleging they were passed over for jobs because of their...

BROWNSVILLE — Alberto Peña, a former administrative analyst for the Division of Student Affairs at University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College, was arrested over the summer in Houston by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents on charges of enticing an undocumented immigrant to enter the United States. He and his twin brother, Bernardo, are implicated in obtaining H-2B temporary work visas for some 88 Indian nationals through their business AMEB Business Group Inc., according to authorities. Bernardo, who has not been charged in the alleged scheme, is listed as AMEB’s registered agent, public records show. Alberto traveled to India on...

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A southeast Missouri legislator will resign his post and surrender his law license after pleading guilty Thursday to fraud charges on immigration matters, his lawyer said. Rep. Nathan Cooper, R-Cape Girardeau, an attorney specializing in immigration law, pleaded guilty to an illegal scheme to obtain temporary worker visas for his clients in the trucking business, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Reap said. Cooper, 33, was not available for comment. But his attorney, Joel Schwartz, said Cooper will step down and give up his law license before his sentencing in October. Representative Nathan Cooper "This has nothing...

Sen. Allen Squishy on Immigration Reform by Amanda B. Carpenter Posted Dec 15, 2005 Potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sen. George Allen (Va.) declined Wednesday to support the idea of a fence separating the United States and Mexico, but said he would back a guest-worker plan as envisioned by President Bush. In an exclusive interview with Human Events, Allen passed on the opportunity to take a firm stance on immigration reform -- likely to be one of the key issues among Republicans in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes. When asked directly on whether the United States has the capability to build...

Victory is in sight thanks to your tremendous efforts! The House today passed by a vote of 368-58 the final conference agreement on the Emergency Appropriations Supplemental Act (H.R. 1268) with Rep. Sensenbrenner's (R-WI) REAL ID provisions largely intact. This is a major victory for homeland security and the fight against illegal immigration! These provisions will help keep driver's licenses out of the hands of illegal aliens and the terrorists among them, will close dangerous loopholes in our asylum system, and will improve border security by enabling the completion of the San Diego/Tijuana border fence. Your continuous faxes, emails, phone...