Posted on 02/21/2020 6:02:04 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security will import 45,000 extra foreign workers for GOP-aligned small businesses, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper reported February 20:
The Department of Homeland Security plans to announce the additional seasonal-worker visas next week, an administration official said. They will become available in two waves: the first 20,000 will be immediately available, while employers can apply for the remainder for jobs beginning June 1.
It wasn’t clear whether the White House has fully signed off on the numbers, and an administration official cautioned they could change.
The additional visas are being made available ahead of the summer, when demand for short-term work is typically highest.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf “has made no decision yet on the issue,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Any numbers reported on at this time are being pushed to press by junior staff who are not privy to all of the discussions taking place.”
The H-2B program allows companies to import 66,000 foreign workers for seasonal work, so reducing pressure on companies to raise blue-collar wages.
Legislators in Congress have added a provision in the 2020 funding bill which allows DHS to award additional visas. That back-door measure allows the legislators to avoid public blame for importing the workers, while also allowing the legislators to get credit from donors for pressuring the DHS to import the extra workers,
The H-2B program is one of many programs that allow companies to import roughly 1.5 million white-collar and 500,000 agriculture and blue-collar contract-workers in jobs that otherwise would have to be performed by Americans and machines. The blue-collar workers are imported via the H-2A, H-2B, and J-1 visa-worker programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
With no visible interior enforcement and no tracking, how will we know if these “temporary” workers ever leave?
More than half of the 30+ million illegal aliens already here started as legal visitors.
The Trump Organization’s favorite plan for seasonal hiring.
The Trump Organiztion has reuqested permission to hire 80 workers at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach through the federal government’s H-2B visa program, according to CareerSource Palm Beach County, the nonprofit job placement agency. That’s up from 78 foreign workers hired at Mar-a-Lago in 2018-19.
The Trump Organization also asked for 14 visas for workers at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, up from 12 during the 2018-19 high season.
Who is going to staff resort hotels in northern NH and ME?
Who is going to pick apples in VT, ME, WA, etc.?
I actually don’t have a problem with the program. We vacation often on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks. The high school graduates 8-10 kids a year and you can only reach the island by ferry. It’s tough to find workers, so a number of the businesses take advantage of the program. I just don’t think one can make the same case for resorts in Palm Beach and New Jersey.
Another use for H2B workers is crab pickers. No takers for those jobs from US employees. Used H2B workers every year (yes, they went home again and came back the next year) and without them a true financial hardship on the eastern shore (Delmarva).
Our government hates America and Americans but they love their swamp. WTF x 1000 do we f-ing IMPORT people when there are AMERICANS who should come first?! MAGA my ass. This President should just Executive Order this BS out of existence as long as he is still President.
I can understand the agriculture workers HOWEVER the white collar workers I am having a tough time with!!!
My step-son said to me these people do the work Americans won’t do. I said the only reason Americans won’t do the work is the stupid Government gives them taxpayer money not too.
End welfare for able bodied men. Work or starve.
I’d say Americans won’t do some jobs because the government allowed immigrants (legal or not) into the field, driving down wages. There is no job Americans won’t do.
Those 60+ million abortions left their mark.
Illegals also spoiled employers in terms of working conditions, since illegals are in no position to complain.
They need the nudge of a more competitive labor market to clean up their act.
Ridiculous. There are college-aged kids across the country who’d love a summer working with a few other college-aged kids in a beautiful vacation location.
Employers just need to get creative in luring them there again—like they used to before we flooded the market with illegals.
Pay enough for crab picking and you’ll have enough Americans for the job.
We have American, union garbage collectors across the country. And in, for example, NYC there is a program to help the formally incarcerated transition back into the workforce through a nonprofit street-cleaning business.
We don’t need to import workers, just make those yucky jobs more competitive in the American low-skill market.
The open borders, along with LEGAL immigration, have definitely set back American workers. Age discrimination is alive and well, and young Americans workers see little point in investing in job skills; whereas before the foreign scabs were low-skilled Hispanics, now our companies are importing a whole new white-collar middle class from Asia. I see what happened in tech happening in the financial sector as well; “Americans need not apply”.
I’d be find with a decade moratorium on immigration, as the legal Asian ones bring hypocritical leftist politics along with their significant economic contribution.
But it that is still on an order of magnitude difference than the carnage on the low end. (E.g., It is still the case in tech that if you have in-demand skills you can get a six-figure job pretty easily.)
It should be the opposite: low-skill is where they cause the most damage. Ag employers should have been required to invest in tech and compete on the appeal of their working conditions just like the rest of the economy.
The white collar ones, though I’d still close the door to that for a good decade while we realign to a more resilient and local economy, at the very least contribute more than they take economically.
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