Posted on 09/18/2019 8:33:50 PM PDT by david1292
Investors are rushing a bill through the GOP-run Senate that would reward Indian college graduates for taking U.S. college-level jobs at low wages from young American graduates.
Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee will ask the Senate on Thursday to approve his Indian outsourcing bill via “Unanimous Consent.” If no Senator objects, the radical bill will be considered to have passed the Senate.
A similar bill has already passed the House, numbered HR.1044, with the aid of 140 GOP votes.
Both bills are backed by India’s government that wishes to grow its economy by exporting more workers into jobs in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. The Lee/Harris bill would encourage this outsourcing by rewarding at least 100,000 Indian workers and spouses with green cards each year, up from the current “country cap” award of 20,000 green cards to Indians.
GOP Majority Sen. Mitch McConnell has the power to block the unanimous consent vote, as does any single Democratic or GOP Senator.
Officials working for President Donald Trump have not said if he will support or block the outsourcing bill.
The bill is being pushed by Lee and by Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who is now running for the Democrats’ presidential nomination.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Which White House number did you call?
I called the comment line to leave a message:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Could not get thru...
As a rule, I have found Indians to be polite pleasant people—I recently attended an Indian Cooking demonstration...invited by a friend...Very informative... healthy eating...mostly vegetarian.
I guess you don't remember during his campaign he lamented the notion that all those brilliant foreign stem students couldn't just stay here.
More info on Unanimous Consent:
Purpose:
Generally, in a meeting of a deliberative assembly, business is conducted using a formal procedure of motion, debate, and vote. However, if there are no objections, action could be taken by unanimous consent.[1][2][3][4][5] The procedure of asking for unanimous consent is used to expedite business by eliminating the need for formal votes on routine questions in which the existence of a consensus is likely.[1] The principle behind it is that procedural SAFEGUARDS DESIGNED TO PROTECT A MINORITY CAN BE WAIVED when there is no minority to protect.[1]
Well, I think there is a minority—at least as far as being represented by lobbyists and money—The US Family... Students recently graduating who are US citizens, etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unanimous_consent
I am in IL...I actually had decent conversation w/Durbin’s office...
They said getting calls on both sides of this...And just because Senator is a DEM, does not mean they are supporting this...After all it is UT-R Mike Lee’s bill.
Watching Fox Business News channel just now and saw presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) handing out donuts and coffee to striking GM workers—showing such solidarity etc. for US autoworkers...
Why no love for the recent college grads being pushed out of tech jobs??
oh yeah, they don’t have money to give her like the tech titans and Indian outsourcing lobbies do :/
Of course this travesty of a bill is being supported by both Dems and Repubs :/
No coverage on something that will actually affect millions of Americans and their livelihoods.
Agreed. On my block, neighbor’s grandson is studying computer science, and another’s son is interested in coding.
Not to mention that my spouse and 3 kids are in tech fields...
Yes, it will affect millions of Americans going forward! :/
Did you call WH comment line or switchboard?
One day, coding is just going to be a part of a bigger job, and that the days of people who do nothing but code are going to go by the wayside. It will be like using Excel.
I got thru she knew nothing about S.386. I am monitoring CSPAN, nothing.
As per Fox Bus. News: Zuckerberg meeting with Senator Lee right now...Ugh
https://fox6now.com/2018/05/30/facebook-to-build-massive-data-center-in-utah/
FOLLOW THE MONEY...LEE IS A FRIEND TO ZUCK...
Cornyn is meeting with Zuck too.
No mention of the bill...
"Dude, Immigration Voice is the one posting fake info. There is no vote scheduled for S386 of HR1044 in the senate.
Both these bills have been referred to the Judiciary committee where they will die. I watched the Judiciary Committee meeting live this morning and they went according to the posted schedule. Not a peep about either of these bills. Nowhere have they posted anything about these bills on the upcoming senate judiciary schedules. It's all online!"
Durbin’s office seemed to be aware of it and said action was scheduled to be taken...today. Said they were getting a lot of calls.
Maybe they pulled it due to calls?
Won’t need a vote if unanimous consent.
HR 1044 has already passed...
I think the commenter is wrong...
In all seriousness,
On that one day, will the Indians get the “part of a bigger job” as well?
Maybe.
Of course our students today are more concerned about stopping “Global Warming” than actually studying.
I was able to confirm w/one of Senator Lee’s offices that the unanimous consent was stopped by an objecting Senator :)
The office I contacted did not which Senator objected...
Action works! Score one for the US citizens :)
Still going to have to be vigilant—it will come up again!
I ask unanimous consent that the committee on the judiciary be discharged from further consideration of h.R. 1044 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the lee amendment, numbered 939 be agreed to, that the bill ab amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Is continue to work in the coming days to make it a reality. Because this is a reform whose time has come and I'd like to take a moment to explain why it deserves support from my colleagues. Again, we've got to take into account this passed the house of representatives with a vote of 365-65. It's not easy to find something that can garner that much bipartisan support. Wrangling over the nuts and bolts in fine print details of 308 si -- policy as extremely as important as that is can at times allow us to lose sight of more basic foundational principles that should shape any law or any set of laws that we put on the books among other things our laws should be consistent with our nation's deeply-held beliefs and values. A system of laws should also be clear and coherent meaning that it should not only give adequate notice of what is required in order for a person to comply with the law but it also should be something that is capable of being complied with.
Finally, the means employed by any law should be consistent with the objectives that that law seeks to accomplish. These are not partisan principles. They are simple yet incredibly important guideposts that should affect anyone entrusted with the legal system as we are in this chamber. Unfortunately the laws we pass don't always live up to the standards of fair and effective and consistent law-making. One of the starkest examples of our failure to abide by these same principles involves the way that we allocate employment-based green cards. Few ideas are more central to who we are as americans than the notion that people should be judged and treated by their government based on their own merits as individuals, as individuals with inherent god-given rights and not on the basis of the color of their skin or of the country in which they were born. As our founders wrote, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Those words are as much of a part of our national creed in this moment as they were when they were written some 243 years ago. And our laws should reflect this. They should reflect the enduring truth found in those words which I believe were inspired, they are inspirational to this day. I believe that they were inspired at the time they wrote them and that that's why they're lasting in their importance and their persuasive effect.
Despite this ideal, section 1152 of the immigration and nationality acts provides the number of employment base visas made available to any single foreign state in any year may not exceed 7% of the total number of such visas made available, close quote. That rather antiseptic language, technical and clinical on its face is on closer inspection deeply out of step with our country's commitment to nondiscrimination and to equal treatment under the law.
In practice, section 1152's 7% cap on immigrants from any one country means that if two immigrants apply for an employment-based visa at precisely the same moment and have the exact same skills and education and the other factors taken into account on their application, one of them may wait 12 months for a green card while his counterpart languishes in the green card backlog for decades. And that's not an exaggeration. I mean literally decades. The only factor that accounts for this gross and unfair, difficult to justify or defend disparity of treatment is the fact that the second immigrant in my hypothetical example happened to have been born in a different country than the first. They are otherwise identically situated to each other. One may processed within a year. The other may languish for decades. This is because under the per country cap system, immigrants from larger, more populated countries are only eligible to receive the same number of green cards annually as immigrants from smaller countries.
As a result, the wait times for immigrants from larger countries have grown and grown decade after decade with no end in sight. This amounts to a de facto cint of origin -- country of origin discrimination, plain and simple and no amount of legalese or wonkish policy arguments can cover up that fact. Beyond its incompatibility with the deep and abiding principles upon which this country was founded, the per country cap system violates another one of those commonsense maxims of good lawmaking that I mentioned earlier.
The need for clarity and for consistency in the law. Title 7 of the civil rights act provides that it's unlawful for an employer, quote, to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And yet, the conditions created by the per country caps virtually guarantee that employers on some level must take into account the national origin when recruiting certain immigrant workers. If prospective hires from one country will be able to obtain a green card in 12 months while those from another, even from a country or even a person who happens to have superior training and skills will be unable to obtain a green card for possibly decades, it's virtually unavoidable that the employer will take national origin into account. So think about that. One section of the u.S. Code forbids employers from taking national employment into account when making employment decisions. Another section makes it impossible for an employer to take that into account.
The grounds on which that kind of system can be defended as sound public policy are beyond me. And the pernicious consequences of this intrinsically flawed system do not stop there. 95% of immigrants stuck in the green card backlog are already in the united states on temporary visas. In many cases they brought their spouses and their children with them to build a life in this country. Yet, because temporary visa holders can only sponsor their foreign-born children up until the time the child turns 21, many in the backlog waiting decades for a green card are forced to choose between separating from their child as the child ages out of the temporary visa or abandoning their dream of settling in america in order to return to their home country in order to keep their family together. In those cases, in the most heartbreaking among those cases of which there are sadly far too many, a child was brought here at a very young age and may have no memory of the country to which they would be forced to return. It bears repeating, this is happening not because these individuals broke the law. They haven't done anything wrong. And not because they don't satisfy the merit-based eligibility criteria needed to receive employment-based green card -- I understand that immigration laws do have consequences and we have to follow the law. But it doesn't stem from any violation of the law or any lack of eligibility stemming from any factor other than country of origin. It happens for no reason other than the country in which they happened to have been born. Now if that made sense, if there were some sound principle and public policy that anyone could point to, then perhaps we wouldn't have occasion to be talking about changing this law. Perhaps we wouldn't have had 365 votes, democrats and republicans, join together in the house of representatives voting to pass this.
The fact is I have yet to meet anyone in this body or in the house of representatives who can defend this flawed policy on its merits because it makes no sense. Finally the per country cap system is irredeemably flawed because among its other problems, it's also incompatible with the goals that our employment-based visa system is meant to advance in the first place. The employment-based visa system is to supposed to enable american businesses to bring the best and the brightest to this country, and yet under the per country caps, a factor that has nothing to do with a person's skills or merit, distorts and in many cases ultimately determines the recruitment process. This weakens the merit-based portion of our immigration system. Indeed, it is directly at war with the supposed purpose of our employment-based green card system. Despite its obvious deficiencies, the per country caps have been part of our immigration laws since the 1950's. It is something that came into our law during the elvis presley era, during the buddy holly era , not exactly something that was intended to remain on the books very long regardless of what they intended at the time as far as how long it should last. I don't believe they had good, legitimate reasons to put it into law then. Whatever reasons they had then certainly don't apply now. They're not even discernible to anyone I know today. So it's long past time that we replace that flawed policy with a more rational and equitable approach. Fortunately the solution to these problems is not only straightforward but agreed upon by a broad bipartisan coalition of senators and of representatives. We must simply eliminate the per country caps in order to ensure a fair and reasonable allocation of employment-based green cards.
That is exactly what the fairness for high-skilled immigrants act would accomplish. Without the per country caps, our skills-based green card system would operate on a first come, first served basis, ensuring that immigrants would be admitted into the united states based purely on their merit rather than their country of origin. This reform would also ensure the hardships caused by decades-long wait times are eliminated. As I've said in the past, there's no question that immigration is one of if not the most politically fraught issues in congress right now. It makes it all the more important for us, at least to come together, to get something done in the areas where we can find common ground. The fairness for high-skilled immigrants act is an important point of common ground. Any immigration bill that has 35 senate cosponsors, 20 republicans and 15 democrats as this bill does presents a unique opportunity to secure a victory for the american people. The reason why this bill commands such widespread support if all points along the political spectrum is because as I've explained, the arguments in its favor are not your typical partisan or ideological arguments. No, they're common sense about the way any rational legal system should work in that it makes clear that the per country caps system must go. That's what is needed to make our immigration laws consistent with our principles. Consistent with other laws on the books and consistent with the merits-base objectives. This component of our immigration system is meant to promote. The other reason that fairness for high-skilled immigrants act has been so successful in attracting support from both sides of the aisle is because we've scrupulously avoided the typical poison pills that so often doom many good-faith attempts at immigration reform.
This bill is not comprehensive in its approach. It's not a comprehensive immigration reform package. It's not even close to that. And that is this fact why this bill is something that we can actually get down now. That's why this bill is so close to being passed. It's why this bill really should pass into law today. While it does not fix many of the other flaws that fix our broken immigration system, it is a great and vitally important start to reform. If we are ever to have a chance at modernizing and repairing our immigration laws, we need to recognize that we cannot necessarily solve all of our problems at once. The fact is that -- the fact that this is the case shouldn't stand in the way of us starting to work on the issues that the american people set us here to solve. We cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the excellent. That's why I've come here to seek unanimous consent to pass this legislation today. Now look, I understand that it's drawn an objection. It's drawn an objection in a way that it drew an objection a few weeks ago from another member. We've been able to work through that member's concerns. I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic that my colleague who raised an objection today can be persuaded that this bill needs to be passed. We can address his concerns and that we can resolve them. I'll be working with my distinguished friend and colleague from georgia throughout this weekend to try to find a solution, some explanation or if necessary language that can win his support. We're very, very close on what we believe is appropriate and acceptable.
Now, I remain steadfastly convinced that this law as written, as amended, as offered up by unanimous consent today could and should be the law of the land today. I believe it's ready for prime time. It's ready to become law. But when seeking unanimity on a measure in order to pass it, one must do everything one can do in order to seek actual unanimity and that is what I intend to do in the coming days. I intend to be back next week making yet another attempt to pass this bill into law, and I hope and expect that we will be able to do so. Thank you, mr. President.
F---ing outrageous.
Where did you find this?
What is the date on it?
Did you read what I just wrote about contact w/Senator Lee?
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