Did you know Obama just took new executive action on immigration?

President Barack Obama speaks on the fifth anniversary of his healthcare law, Wednesday, March...

This week President Obama took unilateral executive action — again — to change the nation's immigration laws. Almost no one noticed.

Obama intends to make it easier to bring more foreign guest workers to the United States — likely at significant cost to workers already here — by loosening the rules governing something known as the L-1B visa program. Under the program, a multinational company with offices in the United States can move workers from abroad to live and work in the U.S. for as long as five years in what is known as an intra-company transfer. There are almost no rules concerning what those workers can be paid, so there is no barrier to a company firing American employees and bringing in workers from foreign facilities to replace them at much lower pay.

Companies who transfer workers to the U.S. through an L-1B visa have to show that those workers bring some sort of "specialized knowledge" to the job — that is, they have particular knowledge that would be hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere in the United States. Obama plans to broaden the definition of "specialized knowledge" so much that it could conceivably used to cover just about any foreign worker a company wants to bring here.

Companies transferring foreign workers to the U.S. have to make the case to an "adjudicator" from the United States Customs and Immigration Services. It's not a terribly tough job; the definition of "specialized knowledge" was already pretty loose. In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigated L-1Bs and found that "the program allows for the transfer of workers with 'specialized knowledge,' but the term is so broadly defined that adjudicators believe they have little choice but to approve almost all petitions." Standards were tightened somewhat after the study, but now Obama wants to loosen them again.

Also, under Obama's new rules, Customs and Immigration Services adjudicators will not be able to consider whether or not there are American workers available to do the job when determining whether to grant an L-1B visa. "A petitioner is not required to demonstrate the lack of readily available workers to perform the relevant duties in the United States," according to Obama's proposal.

In addition, the president seeks to lower the bar by which Customs and Immigration Services adjudicators make an overall judgment on L-1B applications. An applicant, or petitioner, does not have to prove that there is a need for an L-1B worker. Instead, he just has to make a case that an adjudicator can decide is "probably" true. From the Obama rules: "Even if an officer has some doubt about a claim, the petitioner will have satisfied the standard of proof if it submits relevant, probative, and credible evidence…that leads to the conclusion that the claim is 'more likely than not' or 'probably' true."

Some experts believe the new Obama rules — promised when the president announced his unilateral immigration overhaul last November — will lead to more abuse of a program that is already being abused. The few Americans who follow such topics have probably heard of the H-1B visa program that brings foreign workers to the United States, but even fewer have heard of the L-1B. "The L-1B is much worse than the H-1B program in terms of its impacts on American workers and the American economy," says Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies the immigration system. "There are no wage standards — foreign workers can be paid home country wages, which is $6,000 a year for an IT worker in India. American workers can be displaced by L-1B workers. There are no recruitment requirements and no educational requirements (the L-1B worker doesn't even need a degree)."

That's not hyperbole; terrible abuses have actually taken place. This is from the opening statement by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at a hearing last week on immigration reform:

Hira points out that Electronics for Imaging "isn't some obscure company. It is a Silicon Valley-based publicly traded firm with more than half a billion dollars in revenue."

L-1B enforcements are pretty rare, Hira says, because the visa program is "subject to virtually no federal scrutiny or oversight. We have no idea how many L-1 visa holders are here at any time. The only reason the L-1B hasn't received any scrutiny from the press is because the government collects virtually no data on who is awarded an L-1B and who they work for."

Now, the president proposes to make L-1Bs easier to obtain. "I'm pleased to announce a new action I'm also taking to make it easier for global companies who are present here today to launch and invest in the U.S.," Obama said Monday at a gathering called the "SelectUSA Investment Summit" near Washington. "My administration is going to reform the L-1B visa category, which allows corporations to temporarily move workers from a foreign office to a U.S. office in a faster, simpler way."

By "reform," Obama means more L-1B visas, more easily obtained. To the scholars who have found that such visa programs lead to American workers being pushed out of their jobs in favor of cheaper foreign replacements, that's precisely the wrong thing to do. "The president has said explicitly that the goal of this policy is to make it easier for employers to get L-1Bs," says Ron Hira. "He should be tightening the standards, not loosening them."

Let me see if I understand this ridiculous and out-of-control HB situation correctly: We import highly-skilled technical workers mainly from such Asian countries like India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan. and South Korea so that we can compete in the world market with highly-skilled scientists and technicians in Asian countries like India, China,Taiwan, Pakistan and South Korea. it makes no sense.

My question is this: If the best and the brightest scientists and technical workers in India,China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea remain in their countries, then what level of workers is the United States importing from those Asian countries?

Such distorted logic and reasoning on the part of American technical firms like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook makes no sense.

Have these greedy technical companies forgotten that America was made great by such programs like apprentice programs and internships? How do these technical companies think that American plumbers,electricians, and air-conditioning technicians learned their skills: Through apprentice programs.

We should encourage, maybe even demand, that technical companies like Microsoft, Apple, and FaceBooke develop strong apprentice and intern programs so that they wouldn't have to depend so much on HB technical workers from India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea.

I believe that the HB program should be immediately and drastically reduced or abolished completely.

My point is this: The HB program has done more harm than good in developing of technical skills among future American young people. The HB program is slowly destroying rather than helping America's ability to compete in the global market.

The severe problem of getting American young people to pursue technical skills goes something like this:

1. Schools throughout the country are working hard to encourage young people to enter the technical fields like working with computers.

2. Many young Americans are enthusiastic about entering the good-paying technical field.

3. But these same students look around and see that they have to compete not only with their fellow Americans but with technical workers imported from foreign countries, mostly Asian countries---for instance, you don't see a flood of HB workers coming from,say, Spain and England.

4. So what do these bright students end up doing? They become discouraged. They give up on their dreams to entire the fast growing and good-paying technical field, and so they decide to go into some line of easier work where they don't have to compete with foreign technical workers.

5. Then what happens? What happens is that the United States demand for technical workers ends up caught in a vicious circle.

6. The vicious circle goes something like this: Now that more and more smart American students are discouraged from pursuing studies in the scientific and technical fields by such horrible self-defeating programs like the HB program, American companies claim that they can't find enough skilled American workers to meet their increasing demand for skilled technical workers.

7. So, argue American companies, they have no choice but to beg Congress to allow them to import more and more foreign technical workers from such Asian countries as India, China, Taiwan,Pakistan and South Korea so that they can compete on the global market with the highly skilled technical workers in Asian countries like India, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, and South Korea. Huh? Am I missing something here?

8. And round-and-round we go with no end in sight to this terrible, self-defeating HB foreign workers problem.

9. Meanwhile, executives at technical and rich companies like Microsoft , Apple, and FaceBook run all the way to the bank to deposit all the money they saved by bypassing highly-qualified American technical workers for foreign HB workers.

10. Yes. Let's drastically reduce or abolish the HB foreign workers program so that we can give American youths the chance to develop the technical skills that America will need for a long, long time.

11. HB needs to be repealed, or a new law is needed, something like this:

a. "If you have a mass layoff or a mass firing of American technical workers, you must be ready to have a good explanation why you did so. IT is obscene and morally for Microsoft to layoff 18,000 American workers and then go before Congress and beg for more HB workers. Immoral, I say.

Boycott Microsoft products? Maybe we should think very hard about boycotting Microsoft products and holding demonstration at Microsoft headquarters if Microsoft does not change its hiring practices. Again, it is morally wrong for giant Microsoft to layoff 18,000 workers, while, at the same time, it goes before Congress and begs and cries for more HB workers, mostly from Asia.

What I say above holds true for other giants like Apple and Google.

b. "If your explanation is weak as to why you had such a mass layoff, you are not eligible for the HB program. Laying off American technical workers, while, at the same time, you hire HB workers is an illegal, greedy abuse of the HB program.

c. "A company or private enterprise like California Edison and Microsoft can only hire HB workers every 5 years if it has a mass layoff of American technical workers, if even then.

d. "If you have a mass layoff or fire workers because you say your business is not doing very well, you can't turn around and beg for HB workers because you need such workers to help your business recover.

e."You must pay HB foreign workers the same that you would pay American workers.

f. "Your HB workers must not all come from the same country or the same continent like Asia. Only one third (1/3) can come from one continent like Asia.

g.IMPORTANT: We need to fix this abusive loophole that I call "Cheating on resume": A company or foreign worker cannot hire a lawyer to help the company write a job description so limited that only the foreign worker who hired the lawyer can fill the job.

Obama intends to make it easier to bring more foreign guest workers to the United States â€” likely at significant cost to workers already here â€” by loosening the rules governing something known as the L-1B visa program. Under the program, a multinational company with offices in the United States can move workers from abroad to live and work in the U.S. for as long as five years in what is known as an intra-company transfer. There are almost no rules concerning what those workers can be paid, so there is no barrier to a company firing American employees and bringing in workers from foreign facilities to replace them at much lower pay.

Companies who transfer workers to the U.S. through an L-1B visa have to show that those workers bring some sort of “specialized knowledge” to the job â€” that is, they have particular knowledge that would be hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere in the United States. Obama plans to broaden the definition of “specialized knowledge” so much that it could conceivably used to cover just about any foreign worker a company wants to bring here.

Companies transferring foreign workers to the U.S. have to make the case to an “adjudicator” from the United States Customs and Immigration Services. It’s not a terribly tough job; the definition of “specialized knowledge” was already pretty loose. In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigated L-1Bs and found that “the program allows for the transfer of workers with ‘specialized knowledge,’ but the term is so broadly defined that adjudicators believe they have little choice but to approve almost all petitions.” Standards were tightened somewhat after the study, but now Obama wants to loosen them again.

Missed this when it was first posted (tho Trump had not yet made immigration such a hot-button issue at that time)—and since there were only 17 replies, many of you probably missed this as well. This is another example of our immigration system gone awry!

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