Free Republic

President Joe Biden and his deputies at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have dropped nearly all border protections for U.S. graduates, allowing a mass rush of Indian graduates to grab jobs from Fortune 500 companies, experts and foreign workers say. “They’ve opened up everything,” said Jay Palmer, a civil rights, human trafficking, and immigration rights activist, who works with many of the foreign visa workers who are exploited by their U.S. employers. He continued: “The administration has basically taken down all the checks and balances, and they opened the entire immigration platform for any [foreign gradaute] that wants to...

A new electrode that could free up 20% more light from organic light-emitting diodes has been developed at the University of Michigan. It could help extend the battery life of smartphones and laptops, or make next-gen televisions and displays much more energy efficient. The approach prevents light from being trapped in the light-emitting part of an OLED, enabling OLEDs to maintain brightness while using less power. In addition, the electrode is easy to fit into existing processes for making OLED displays and light fixtures. "With our approach, you can do it all in the same vacuum chamber," said L. Jay...

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee is expected to try again on Thursday to pass his S.386 bill, which helps India’s graduates grab hundreds of thousands of college level jobs from American graduates. All GOP Senators are expected to stay silent while Lee pushes his bill that rewards roughly 300,000 of India’s contract workers in the United States with a fast track to citizenship. Silicon Valley investors back his bill, which also allows companies to annually pay 60,000 of India’s contract workers — plus 60,000 family members — with government-provided green cards after they take jobs from American graduates. Existing “country...

The Department of Homeland Security has again delayed a plan to cancel 100,000 work permits which were printed for the Indian spouses of H-1B visa workers by President Barack Obama. snip At this point, DHS has informed counsel that it believes the earliest possible publication date for that [H4EAD cancellation] rule would be in spring 2020,” said a September 16 letter to a judge who is overseeing a lawsuit against the program. “Although that timeframe is aspirational,” the letter added The rule was drafted at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to help implement President Donald Trump’s “Hire American”...

It's an appalling reality that in the entire U.S. Senate not one single member is willing to stand up for American workers. From appointed Arizona Republican Martha McSally to Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, possibly the world's only avowed socialist who won't defend his nation's workers, none stood up against the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, S. 386, and its continuum of foreign national tech workers, mostly Indian. S. 386 would eliminate the 7 percent country cap provision that controls Green Card issuance to ensure that one country, or just a few countries, do not dominate the program. The current system...

The H-1B program uses cheap foreign workers to replace American workers, and so it dramatically reduces payrolls in legislators’ districts, according to a comparison of two federal databases. The reduced payroll does not go to the local restaurants, landlords, or various members of the local Chambers of Commerce. The funds do not get to local non-profits, county governments, or city halls. Instead, the diverted payroll is transferred from the politicians’ districts to the coastal investors who hire the cheap H-1Bs in place of Americans, according to U.S. and Indian financial reports. The diverted payroll is important because the Senate is...

Most Pacific Northwesterners spend long, rainy months pining for summer. But Microsoft President Brad Smith is having a hard time celebrating because he sees three clouds on the political horizon. During an appearance at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on Tuesday, Smith told Recode’s Kara Swisher that he has three immigration-related concerns that could make this “a tough summer.” If President Donald Trump takes any of the actions Smith warned about, Microsoft employees would be directly impacted. Smith told Swisher he is worried that Republicans and Democrats will fail to reach a compromise on DACA, a program...

Infosys, the India-based information technology consulting firm with an office in Plano, is facing yet another reverse discrimination lawsuit asserting that it creates a hostile work environment for workers who aren't from India or South Asia. Erin Green, former supervisor at Infosys, filed suit this week in the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman, alleging that he and black and white staffers on his team were denied raises and promotions, and that other "non-South Asian" workers were berated by South Asian company officials. Green, of Frisco, is white and rose to the rank of "head of global immigration" while working...

In the age of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the H-1B and strict enforcement of immigration law, tech conglomerates are lobbying the Congress and White House for amnesty and more foreign labor. These are the four tech companies, according to analysis by Quartz, pushing for no reforms to the H-1B visa and legal immigration system, as the current process of bringing more than 85,000 foreigners to the U.S. each year. Microsoft In the first quarter of 2017 during Trump’s presidency, Microsoft lobbied more for immigration and the H-1B visas than any other tech company. In Microsoft’s five out of eight...

Billionaire businessman Marc Cuban insists that the H-1B visa racket is a feature of the vaunted American free market. This is nonsense on stilts. It can't go unchallenged.Another billionaire, our president, has ordered that the H-1B program be reformed. This, too, is disappointing. You'll see why.First, let's correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets are intertwined. Trade, including trade in labor, is not free; it's regulated to the hilt. If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an example of a fascistic government-business cartel in operation.The H-1B permit, in particular, is part...

Protectionism is becoming a bipartisan fad. ‘We don’t have a level playing field for our workers,” President Donald Trump told a group of workers in Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday. Truth is, if we were to ever level the playing field with countries like Mexico and China, the average American worker would be making $3 an hour and spending his pittance on Third World health care and decrepit housing. Please, don’t level the playing field. When few things are going your way in politics, though, it’s customary to return to rhetoric that made you successful. So, as Republicans have been unable...

Business advocates who want to import more foreign consumers and more foreign workers are developing plans to counter President Donald Trump’s popular call for a merit-based immigration reform. The emerging strategy is to pair offers of minor concessions to Americans and Trump with demands for giveaways to business, including a bigger supply of low-wage workers and welfare-funded consumers. The immigration “pairing” strategy is being pushed by the industry-backed Business Policy Council, in cooperation with GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.

Judges should ban the president’s immigration reform to ensure that high-tech companies can continue hiring foreign workers instead of American professionals, says a new courtroom brief submitted by almost 100 technology companies. The White House’s Jan. 27 immigration reform “threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States,” says the legal brief by the companies, who include many Silicon Valley firms. The signers include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Reddit, Paypal, Netflix, Lyft, and TaskRabbit, which helps wealthier people hire other people to do household chores.

President-elect Donald Trump’s policies on illegal immigration, particularly on the border wall and cracking down on sanctuary cities, were at the center of his election campaign. Now, advocates of immigration restriction are hoping for reform to H-1B visas that they say are hurting American workers. The H-1B is a temporary, non-immigrant visa, currently capped at 85,000 visas a year, that allows employers to hire skilled, specialty workers on a temporary basis -- particularly scientists, engineers, or computer programmers. However, critics say that the system is rife with abuse, and is no longer a limited short-term program to help employers with...

Plenty of articles of Professor Klug, whom the shooter killed (a young father and excellent teacher, by all accounts) -- but no articles or photos of the shooter himself! Praying for Prof. Klug and his family.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said Monday that adult illegal immigrants should not receive a path to citizenship under an immigration fix, but said she is open to giving their children citizenship. Mrs. Fiorina, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, also said she could support giving those who “have come here illegally and stayed here illegally” legal status. “I think legal status is a possibility for sure,” Mrs. Fiorina said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think their children maybe can become citizens.”

Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. In this corner: A number of employers, particularly tech companies, who claim they have a large number of unfilled positions and can’t find enough skilled American workers to fill all their needs, and thus need to attract skilled foreign workers through an expanded H-1B visa program. In the opposite corner: Immigration skeptics, including probably every unemployed programmer in the country, who think tech companies simply prefer to hire cheaper imported labor rather than more expensive American workers. From this perspective, even one unemployed American tech worker is proof that the...

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers. The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

Before U.S. employers can hire a foreign worker using an H1-B visa, they are required by law to prove that there are no U.S. workers who are qualified to do the job. In this video, the speaker gives employers advice on how to place job ads in such a way so that no U.S. worker will get hired, so they can then hire foreign workers at lower wages. At 1:43, the speaker says “… our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Cruz has long supported higher levels of legal immigration. When he cited concerns over wages and subsequently backtracked on increasing the levels of guest workers and legal immigrants, many saw a new policy intended to appeal to Republican grass roots, but also the influence of the Senate's foremost immigration hawk. The controversial argument that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are depressing the wages of the lower and middle class has become something of a calling card for Alabama senator Jeff Sessions. Over the past decade, his office has essentially served as ground zero for the war against comprehensive immigration reform...