Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi
In his State of the Union address, President Trump said some of the right things about what he hopes to accomplish to create a more effective immigration system. But his recent actions on the H-1B visa, a long-standing American tech worker job displacement vehicle, indicate that the President’s heart is elsewhere, namely with powerful corporate lobbies.
During the days leading up to the speech, anxiety was high among immigration enforcement advocates that the State of the Union platform would provide President Trump with the perfect forum to introduce his outline for an amnesty giveaway. Instead, President Trump’s official comments referred to secure borders and immigration enforcement as a “moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens.”
Although he omitted last year’s references to ending catch and release, the visa lottery and chain migration, President Trump came down hard on illegal immigration, and emphasized the role that drug smuggling and sex trafficking play in the process. Every day, President Trump also said, Americans pay illegal immigration’s price – job loss, lower wages, and overcrowded schools and hospitals.
So far, so good. But then President Trump diverged when he called for historically high legal immigration levels. President Trump’s comments displayed a disappointing lack of awareness about the links among lawful permanent residents, the employment authorization documents they receive, and the job competition they create as their presence expands the labor pool.
President Trump’s actions on the ground contradict the overall lofty State of the Union rhetoric. Gone is his Inaugural Day “Hire American” pledge. The Trump administration recently released its new H-1B guidelines. H-1B critics hoped that the long-awaited changes would restore U.S. tech workers to a more even playing field. Instead, the new regulations favor employers addicted to cheap labor.
The revised guidelines make two significant changes in how the H-1B visa lottery functions, neither of which help U.S. tech workers. First, instead of having employers enter visa petitions into the H-1B lottery, employers will enter a lottery for the right to submit visa petitions. And second, everyone among the 65,000 general H-1B lottery and the 20,000 lottery exclusively for foreign-born students with graduate degrees from U.S. universities will be put into the general lottery. Employers win because they’ll no longer need to prepare costly petitions for visas that won’t be granted because of the 85,000 annual H-1B visa cap.
During his two years in office, President Trump has been toothless in attacking the myriad employment-based visas that displace American workers. In addition to the H-1B, other employment visas that need to be eliminated or slashed include, to name a few, the L for intracompany transfers, E visas for investors, the TN visa for North American Free Trade Agreement professionals, the J-1 cultural exchange visa, Optional Program Training that has allowed about 400,000 foreign graduates to get U.S. jobs, and the O for the loosely defined extraordinarily talented. As a result of the steady flow of non-immigrant visa workers, an estimated 1.5 million foreign nationals hold U.S. jobs that should go to Americans.
On immigration, President Trump is listening to the wrong people. Instead of heeding advice from immigration expansionists, the President should be heeding and acting on behalf of working age Americans to get them back into the labor pool. About 50 million Americans are jobless; 35 million people under age 35 live in poverty; one in every five Hispanics is impoverished, and one in every three Black Americans is jobless.
Work visas don’t create American jobs; the reverse is true. As long as the large visa-holding population continues to expand, Americans – especially the most vulnerable – will face unfair, unnecessary job competition, leaving them stuck in low-wage employment or jobless.
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Not to worry, he’s going to make up for it by serving the 90,000 sealed documents and arresting Billary.
Numbers, statistics, and fluff.
The more COLUMNISTS (was going to say writers) I read who aren’t calling for immediate rope and blindfolds, the less I bother to read.
He’s not going to arrest Hillary, they’re bestest friends.
After using Clinton victims as props, he sang the Clinton’s praises on election night and on inauguration day. It was all political theater to appeal to his base.
“We owe her a lot of gratitude for her many years of service to this country.” – DJT
“I have a lot of respect for those people.” – DJT
“Oh and “I don’t want to hurt them. They’re good people.” – DJT
Gone is the Hire American pledge. What’s next? Talk is cheap and it is time for Trump to deliver on the promises he made during the campaign. I’m beginning to think Trump is as American as John Roberts.
No mention of this in his speech.
Stone Mountain, Feb 2, 2019
Armed AntiFA march. Unpermitted of course.
Get your shit squared away.
I’m one of those ‘radicals’ that thinks this is the sort of activity that is news worthy……but we only get the FOX-in-the-henhouse, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC fulfilling their government mandate of LEGALLY spreading fake news and fomenting the exact behavior on display in the video.
Smith-Mundt Act ?
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum- like what’s happening? Thank a freemason !
if a cross were burned the way the the kkk effigy was burned,in most states it would be a crime,if i’m not mistaken–
The median H1-b worker is from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan or China and holds a PhD in some computer programming field. They earn starting salaries of about $80k. Are they displacing American programmers who would otherwise earn $140k? In some cases, I suppose, but with only about 60,000 computer science degrees awarded annually in the US https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_322.10.asp?current=yes
it seems unlikely that there is a surplus of qualified Americans capable of filling all of the positions. So when employers say that they need H1-b workers, it might just be that it’s true. Which is worse, paying an Indian $80k-100k to do programming in the US or sending the work over to India? IQ-wise, the average Indian is no smarter than the average American. The average Indian is actually even stupider, but we don’t get the average Indian. We get the smartest, most highly educated (in tech fields, at least) from those countries. I can’t get that upset about Chinese PhDs who come in legally and earn $80-100k compared to people sneak across the southern border – half of whom haven’t graduated from high school and some of whom are not even literate in Spanish.
It amazes me that soooo many seemingly educated people still buy into this masonic BS that is the world of American politics……
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum- IT’S STAMPED RIGHT ON THE SEAL !!! And untold millions carry the pagan prophecy with them when they carry a U.S. dollar bill
Perhaps DRUMPF is more than a MASTERFUL actor.
Perhaps he is prescient.
better fact check that one–
Everything is going to plan
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum- and that’s the plan !
a retired teacher applied to the ad below for a job harvesting citrus–here’s the results of her interview–
Subject: LEMON PICKERS NEEDED IN FLORIDA – ONLY US CITIZENS OR LEGAL IMMIGRANTS NEED APPLY
Lemon Pickers Needed” – ad in the newspaper.
Ms. Sally Mulligan of Coral Springs , Florida, read it, and decided to apply for one of the jobs that most Americans are not willing to do. She submitted her application for a job in a Florida lemon grove, but seemed far too qualified for the job.
She has a liberal arts degree from the University of Michigan , and a master’s degree from Michigan State University. For a number of years, she had worked as a social worker, and also as a school teacher.
The foreman studied her application, frowned, and said, “I see that you are well educated, and have an impressive resume.
“However, I have to ask you, have you had any actual experience in picking lemons?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I have” she said. “I’ve been divorced three times, owned two Chryslers and voted twice for Obama and once for Hillary”.