Posted on 04/17/2020 1:15:51 PM PDT by Kaslin
America's economy is in freefall. More than 20 million people have filed unemployment claims in recent weeks. And the worst is yet to come. Unemployment could reach 30 percent in the second quarter, according to the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Yet America's immigration policy is running on autopilot. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is scheduled to start doling out 85,000 "H-1B" guest-worker visas this month. Most of these aren't for foreign doctors or nurses either -- the visas will largely go to computer programmers and IT technicians.
There's zero reason to import foreign laborers while millions of Americans are losing their jobs. President Trump could protect American workers by canceling this year's H-1B lottery -- but it looks like it’s going to proceed as usual.
Even in good times, the H-1B program was rife with abuse. Congress created it in 1990 with the idea to allow businesses to import foreign workers for highly specialized jobs that couldn't be filled domestically. But the legislation was written in such a way that the program could be used to displace qualified Americans with lower-wage guest workers.
Corporations took advantage of this source of cheap labor. Fully 80 percent of H-1B workers earn less than their American peers in similar jobs.
That's hardly surprising. Foreigners, often desperate to work in this country, have little leverage during salary negotiations and are usually willing to accept significantly lower compensation. Most of them lack truly unique skill-sets. According to the Government Accountability Office, the majority of H-1B visa holders work entry-level jobs. One in four H-1B job postings doesn't even require a bachelor's degree.
The program has ballooned in recent years. There are now roughly 900,000 H-1B workers in the United States. They account for one in every eight tech workers. And their visas can be extended up to six years.
All this competition depresses Americans' income. Wages for American computer scientists, for instance, would have been up to 5 percent higher in 2001 had the H-1B program had never been created, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Diego.
In many cases, corporations haven't merely hired H-1B workers in lieu of Americans -- they've actually laid off high-performing citizens and then hired cheaper foreigners.
Often, they'll do so indirectly via an outsourcing firm. In 2018, Verizon inked a $700 million contract with Infosys, an Indian firm that specializes in offshoring IT services. Verizon employees warned the deal with Infosys -- which applied for a stunning 11,000 H-1Bs visas in 2019 alone -- would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. Similarly, AT&T hired Accenture, another outsourcing firm and heavy H-1B user, to offshore a reported 3,000 finance jobs last year.
Disney did the dirty work itself, infamously forcing 250 American workers to train their foreign H-1B replacements in 2014 before laying them off.
Many American college graduates -- even STEM degree holders -- struggled to find good jobs even before the coronavirus struck. Only half of STEM graduates actually take jobs in STEM fields after graduation. That's due in part to our immigration system. "Annual inflows of guest workers amount to one-third to one-half the number of all new IT job holders," according to a damning report from the Economic Policy Institute.
President Trump has long talked about the need for secure borders and reliable domestic supply chains -- and the coronavirus crisis has proved him right. So it'd make no sense for his administration to grant tens of thousands of guest-worker visas to multinational corporations next week. Such a move would merely encourage more layoffs and offshoring at the worst possible time.
Chuck and Nasty will have a stroke.
These seem like easy low hanging fruit for the president, where am I going wrong?
The last sentence is correct - and rebuts the first two. H-1B was never really about "highly specialized jobs that couldn't be filled domestically" - that was just the con that the Uniparty was running. And depressing American wages with pseudo-qualified Third World serfs is not "abuse" but the way H-1B was built to work.
There was never a reason to import them in the first place other than to suppress wages in those fields. There are plenty of American workers for any IT field out there, they just won’t do it for $20K a year.
This is a damned disgrace - and allowing it to continue is a significant stain on our President's record.
Amen.
I have a bad feeling that keeping these bullshit programs going is one way we’re paying for HCQ.
> pseudo-qualified Third World serfs
Indeed. But they get back at management with zero transparency, zero perspective, and terrible communication.
Except the farm workers who have been coming back and forth for generations. All certified etc.
Cancel the H1B program and get real Americans back to work.
I say get the visa program back to it’s original intent. Highly skilled and some specific skilled foreign workers in jobs that can’t be filled by Americans. No loopholes and there should be no visas for semiskilled or unskilled workers.
That was never Congress' intent - that's just how they sold it to us.
All work visa holders are "certified" - and all are depressing American wages and taking American jobs.
Did anyone notice that at nearly full employment there were millions of unfilled jobs.
Most of those jobs were lower paying, entry level jobs.
There is a need for workers. Where are the going to come from?
Moveon.org (Lib site): To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Stop H1B Visa holders taking American IT jobs
Probably the same sponsor of whitehouse.gov petition: Stop H1B Visa program depriving highly qualified AMERICAN CITIZENS and professionals from IT jobs
‘Did anyone notice that at nearly full employment there were millions of unfilled jobs.’
“Yet it’s not clear that employers are trying very hard to fill all their open jobs. Online job boards and software that makes it easier to scan resumes for keywords also make it easier for employers to post openings and initially screen applications, even if they’re not actually prepared to hire.
“The surest sign that employers were scrambling for workers would be steady pay gains, as businesses bid higher for the workers they need. Yet wage increases remain sluggish, compared with previous periods when the unemployment rate was this low.”
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-u-s-now-has-more-open-jobs-than-job-seekers/
“Lib petition painting the issue as Republican caused...
Moveon.org (Lib site): To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Stop H1B Visa holders taking American IT jobs”
The White House and Senate are in Republican hands; if they don’t act to put this firmly in the House of Representatives’ lap, they’ll deserve any political consequences.
I thought pay has been rising for the last few years.
The big question is how the H-2A seasonal agricultural worker visa will be managed. If foreign labor will not be allowed in to pick our produce, we (consumers and producers) will be in a big hurt. It’s got me thinking about going back to gardening in a big way.
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