Are you sick of one administration official after another calling for even more foreign labor?
The more immigration we have, the more it feeds the insatiable appetite of the crony monopolies created by government for even more cheap labor – be it farm work or entry-level white-collar jobs. This culturally gerrymanders Americans out of these jobs, as foreign labor interests work with U.S. special interests to monopolize them with immigrant workers. But it apparently will never be enough for people like White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
The Washington Post reports that during a private speech in London, the top gun at the White House said the following. “We are desperate — desperate — for more people. We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.”
Did Hillary Clinton hack into the White House?
Amid the sudden clamor for more foreign labor, Trump returned to Phoenix, Arizona, this week for a campaign rally, the home of his famous immigration speech on August 31, 2016, when he promised to put American workers first. “While Hillary Clinton meets only with donors and lobbyists, my plan was crafted with the input from federal immigration officers, along with top immigration experts who represent workers, not corporations,” charged Trump at the 2016 rally.
In point 10 of the plan that Trump laid out that night, he said, “We will reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers.”
Some might say he was only referring to low-skilled manual labor, not high-skilled foreign workers. However, there are two problems with this excuse.
First, the administration is pushing more low-skilled labor as forcefully as calling for more “high-skilled” labor, aka nothing more than entry-level IT and nursing jobs. The vice president and the agriculture secretary are rumored to be pushing for massive amnesty for illegal aliens working on farms and the creation of a permanent underclass of indentured servants on H2 visas that will depress wages beyond anything Trump warned on the campaign trail. Moreover, this administration has increased the existing H2 visas for low-skilled migrant workers more than any other administration – to the point that even Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., signed on to a bipartisan letter telling him to slow it down.
“Well, Americans just don’t want to do those jobs” is the typical mantra from purveyors of mass migration. The problem with that assertion is that our willing suspension of disbelief dissipates the minute these same people suddenly demand more giveaways for Indian workers in IT and nursing. Really? Americans can’t or don’t want to pursue basic white-collar jobs like that? So they don’t want blue-collar or white-collar jobs?
When seeking the votes of these very forgotten Americans, Trump’s campaign recognized the truth. “We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program,” stated Trump’s immigration policy outline for the 2016 campaign.
Again, Trump understood the reality that the same way low-skilled foreign labor drives down hourly wages for blue-collar jobs, the endless supply of foreign IT labor will drive down annual salaries of entry-level white-collar jobs too.
“More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two,” observed the Trump campaign white paper. “Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas.”
These are not hypersensitive specialties dealing with rocket science that are only magically found in other countries. These are entry-level IT, nursing, or almost any other white-collar job.
One would think that with record high immigration and visas, it would be enough. But no. Hiring Americans is not even an option when they have the boundless visa pork and the ability to lobby for more.
The Indian contract companies like Infosys, HCL, Wipro, Cognizant, and Tata have already successfully used the vast pipeline of H-1B, L-1, F-1,and Optional Practical Training (OPT) to own Silicon Valley and the American tech companies with a supply of cheap labor, boxing out Americans and treating the Indian recruits as indentured servants.
This is the same thing we are seeing with low-skilled labor. The same self-fulfilling prophecy of meat-packers only relying on African refugees and farm conglomerates only relying on Latin American laborers has created a culture and climate that is discriminatory toward Americans getting into the industry. Indian companies are using the “high-skilled” visas to do the same to Americans in everything from IT to banking.
As the Perry News reported this week regarding one Tyson Foods plant in Iowa, “The company currently employs 1,368 workers at the Perry plant, and about 800 of the employees are refugees, with 400 each of Africans and Asians. … Some nine languages are spoken among Tyson’s refugee workers.” Once such a dynamic is in place, manipulated by immigration policies that are harmful to the country for numerous other reasons, Americans have no ability to break into that culture, even putting the wage depression aside. Don’t think for a minute that this isn’t occurring in Silicon Valley too.
It’s for good reason that Congress banned contract labor immigration in 1891. Sections 3 and 4 of the Immigration Act of 1891 prohibited all companies and travel agencies from marketing or soliciting for any immigration with the promise of employment. Our Founders wanted productive Americans who would come to assimilate into our political system and work anywhere they wanted; they had no interest in running a foreign labor mill.
What is truly disgusting is that because the OPT program is completely lawless without statutory backing, the lobbyists who pushed for its creation benefit from their crime. OPT workers, who are largely foreign students remaining here indefinitely (illegally, according to statute) to work are hired without payroll taxes. So why would any company hire an American fresh out of college when they can hire a foreign student OPT counterpart and save 16% on payroll? Trump should immediately abolish the lawless OPT program, which he can do overnight the same way he can get rid of DACA. Then see what the labor market looks like.
As the Trump campaign wrote in 2016, “Every year, we voluntarily admit another 2 million new immigrants, guest workers, refugees, and dependents, growing our existing all-time historic record population of 42 million immigrants.” That number is now up to 45 million. The number of foreign-language-speaking residents is now over 68 million, roughly 20% of the population, and much higher in certain states and cities. We now bring in 1.3 million foreign students a year, which creates a pipeline for cheap labor to compete with Americans for jobs, as hundreds of thousands of them are given defector permanent status under the OPT program. As Neil Munro estimates, there are now one million contract workers just from India alone in this country who remain here indefinitely.
At what point is enough enough? As Trump said recently, “We’re full.”
Well, full should mean full.
The administration has already moved away from cutting the numbers, has moved away from the no-amnesty pledge, and has moved away from mandatory E-verify. Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has become the most popular governor by touting it and the proposal enjoys supermajority support.
What exactly happened to putting Americans first, and what exactly is waiting for us on the other side of this election? Inquiring minds would like to know. (For more from the author of “American Workers Last: WH Chief Of Staff Mulvaney Thinks Record Immigration Is Not Enough” please click HERE)
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