Free Republic

President Donald Trump hosted a campaign rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the same night the Democratic National Convention was scheduled to kick off in Milwaukee. While Democrats instead opted for a virtual conference to avoid spreading the coronavirus, Trump drew a crowd of at least 1,000 people. In off-the-cuff remarks, Trump suggested to Republicans that if they wanted to win elections, they had to keep cannabis legalization off the ballot. Though the Trump Administration has attacked cannabis reform in behind-closed-doors proceedings and by blocking legislative action, this is the first time the President has made negative comments about cannabis in public....

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A Sterling man was arrested today on charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and for inducing aliens to come to the United States using fraudulently obtained H-1B visas. According to court documents, Ashish Sawhney, 48, allegedly used four corporations to orchestrate the improper submission of fraudulent applications for H-1B specialty-occupation work visas. The six-count indictment identifies Sawhney as the director or registered agent for Value Consulting, LLC, Value Software Products, Inc. (formerly known as Value Consulting, Inc.), Business Pointers, Inc., and E-Train ERP, Inc., each of which had offices located in the Eastern District of Virginia...

An IT staffing services firm, with an office in Hyderabad, India, discriminated against qualified Americans for white-collar jobs in favor of foreign workers with the Optional Training Program (OPT), the Department of Justice (DOJ) concludes. This week, DOJ attorneys announced a settlement with AllianceIT — which has billion-dollar corporate clients such as Cisco, CVS, Expedia, Humana, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — after the firm was found to have discriminated against Americans for jobs in favor of foreign OPT workers. AllianceIT, according to the DOJ, discriminated against Americans with job postings where they advertised for “ONLY OPT’s who can...

In the last 24 hours we have learned a bit more about the decision of the Department of Homeland Security that it had to run a second lottery in the H-18 program on the questionable grounds that there was a need to use all of the 85,000 slots for new H-1B visas this fall.Apparently there was a substantial reduction in demand caused by the virus crisis.We have been told that there is a not-yet published, in-house legal memorandum saying that the agency had to follow that course. The Center for Immigration Studies will file a Freedom of Information Act request...

My daughter and son-in-law have been camping in the Wisconsin northwoods with some of his family. This morning one of the family built a campfire; 2-year-old Kato escaped from his grandmother's arms, ran to the fire, and got burned on his hand and arm to the point that the local hospital put him on an IV and is sending him to a burn center in Milwaukee. Please pray for the child and his family.

Over the weekend, it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security has run a second H-1B visa lottery for the apparent reason that "the agency did not receive enough applications for individuals selected in the first round" according to an article, partially behind a paywall, at Law360.The article quotes a USCIS spokesperson as saying "additional registrations needed to be selected to reach the numerical allocations." No details were offered on which companies had lost interest in the program, or the size of the "shortfall".In other words, the government is taking every possible step to make sure that every one...

The skilled American workforce is being cannibalized by Congress’s H-1B outsourcing program, a top White House aide told Breitbart News Daily. “The H-1B visa is sort of a Trojan horse to bring in folks who cannibalize our own workforce and ultimately take any number of intellectual property secrets, or proprietary information, back to their home countries,” Theo Wold told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow. Wold is a deputy assistant to the President for domestic policy. The program’s flaws are highlighted by President Donald Trump’s August 3 decision to stop the H1B outsourcing of up to 300 jobs...

Hundred of Indians are reporting caste-based discrimination by Indians employed by American tech companies, following the filing of a lawsuit against Cisco, according to Vice. Under the headline, “Silicon Valley Has a Caste Discrimination Problem,” Vice reported: 'In the weeks since the lawsuit was announced, more than 250 Dalits from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, and dozens of others in Silicon Valley have come forward to report discrimination, bullying, ostracization, and even sexual harassment by colleagues who are higher-caste Indians, according to data provided exclusively to VICE News by Dalit advocacy group Equality Labs. 'There have been 33 complaints from...

The primary lobby group for India’s contract workers in the United States is turning its invective against Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) after he blocked the bipartisan bill to supercharge the flow of India’s visa workers into U.S. white-collar jobs. The group, titled Immigration Voice, quickly posted a Facebook image of Scott in KKK garb after his August 5 surprise intervention in the effort by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to pass his unpopular outsourcing bill. The group’s post was quickly removed, amid criticism by other would-be immigrants and by Americans [...] The group’s invective continued right up to Durbin’s August 5...

Newly-released data shows the majority of Colorado’s youth are participating in healthy behaviors and that marijuana use among school-aged children has not significantly changed since legalization. The data comes from the bi-annual statewide Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) conducted last year with more than 100,000 students participating. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) released the results of the survey Monday. The survey shows marijuana use among school-aged kids has stayed relatively flat since legalization, but the way kids are using marijuana has changed. In 2019, 20.6% of youth said they use marijuana compared to 19.4% in 2017....

A Lake Zurich man who was the second known COVID-19 patient in the nation to undergo a double-lung transplant thought the virus was a hoax until he contracted it. "This disease is not a joke," 62-year-old Brian Kuhns said during a news conference at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. "I was perfectly healthy. This thing took me down, hard." Wearing a hospital gown and protective mask, Kuhns appeared at the media event with fellow double-lung-transplant recipient Mayra Ramirez, a 28-year-old Chicagoan, who was the first known coronavirus patient to undergo the procedure. Ramirez had the surgery at Northwestern Memorial on...

My overall view of the H-1B program is that it is used to bring low-cost labor to the U.S. IT industry, and that this lowers wages in the industry, and denies some half a million or so U.S. citizens and green card holders jobs. Young Indian males from the south of the country get the lion's share of these jobs as non-immigrant workers.Here's another, quite different take on the program: some of those working in the program – largely from India – have few skills but their hiring and their continuing to hold jobs is riddled with India-based fraud. And...

The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better! https://t.co/1NzbR57Oe6 [Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs - NY Post]— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2020

[...] No matter what happens federally, it's unlikely that marijuana's scheduling will be changed anytime soon. This means state-level cannabis legalizations will continue to play a major role in growing the U.S. pot industry.This coming November, residents of three states are guaranteed to be voting on a cannabis measure in their respective states. However, four additional states may join.New Jersey: Will be on the ballot While there's no such thing as a lock when it comes to voting on the legalization of marijuana, New Jersey's constitutional amendment that aims to legalize adult-use marijuana appears to have a very good chance...

The New York Times column "Trump Suspends Visas Allowing Hundreds of Thousands of Foreigners to Work in the U.S." covers the Administration's recent order to halt foreign work visas through the end of this year, while the nation suffers massive job losses stemming from the pandemic. Included in the halt are the H-1B program for skilled workers, the H-2B program for seasonal workers and the J-1 cultural exchange program that allows for the hiring of au pairs.Corporations aligned to oppose this order, as businesses continue the myth that foreign workers are needed to fill crucial gaps in the U.S. labor...

[...] “That is just outrageous,” responded Rosemary Jenks, policy director of NumbersUSA.“The idea that they would be clamoring for cheap foreign labor right now is obscene –they have completely lost touch with reality” amid the coronavirus crash, she said, adding: If you’re doing business in the United States, you should create a business based on American labor and livable wages. There are many companies that do that [because] there is plenty of labor in the country to fill all these jobs. […] The fact that the labor supply effects wages is Economics 101. Amid evasive denials by immigration advocates, the...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the Department of Homeland Security seeking to throw out immigration restrictions, including those placed on H-1B visas issued to highly skilled workers with expertise in specialty fields [precious few of those; most H-1Bs are diploma-mill fake-resume drones - NF]. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, argues that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority last month when he temporarily halted access to several employment-based visas, affecting hundreds of thousands of people seeking to work in the U.S. The Chamber seeks to overturn “these sweeping and unlawful immigration restrictions that are...

Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin is expected to ask the Senate on Tuesday afternoon to fast-track four bills that would dramatically increase immigration levels. Three of the Durbin bills offer giveaways to the many foreign white-collar workers who have been used to replace American professionals in Fortune 500 jobs. One bill is the Democrats’ main 202o amnesty bill, the “American Dream and Promise Act of 2019.” Under the fast-track Unanimous Consent rules, all four bills will pass the Senate unless GOP Senators formally object. “This is more of what we expect from the left — putting American workers and professionals last,...

One of the many trade-offs inherent to immigration policy is efficiency vs. distribution in the labor market. Importing more workers from abroad can lower the cost of production, but the savings come in large part from holding down wages. Anyone who claims that immigration offers only benefits or only costs to the labor market is not being honest about the issue. Unfortunately, immigration advocates have a habit of developing exactly those sorts of one-sided talking points. One of the most prominent right now is the idea of a "labor shortage". Forget all this talk about trade-offs, they say, employers simply...

CLAIM: Joe Biden doesn’t want to abolish or defund the police; he just wants to redirect police funding to other uses. VERDICT: Mostly false. Even many activists say defunding the police and redirecting police funding mean the same thing. Fox News’ Chris Wallace generated buzz on Friday afternoon with the release of a clip from his White House interview with President Donald Trump, which will air in full on Sunday. Wallace “fact-checked” Trump’s claim that Biden wants to abolish or defund the police [...] Trump was incorrect about the “Biden-Sanders Unity” platform, which did not discuss defunding the police. Moreover,...