THE BIDEN INVASION - Health inspections for foreign nationals entering our country illegally have gone out the window. That's enabled the importation of many diseases which affect livestock and other agricultural output, and already these things are happening. Legal immigrants and even returning U.S. citizens must pass these inspections to protect the U.S. food supply. But under Joe Biden's catch-and-release, illegals are exempt from such cumbersome requirements. MONICA SHOWALTER
Friday, May 15, 2020
HIRE AMERICAN DURING TRUMP DEPRESSION? BUT TRUMP AND PELOSI BOTH HAVE WINERIES AND DON'T BELIEVE IN PAYING LIVING WAGES TO LEGALS!
Hire American 20 Presidential Actions Needed to Reduce Work Visas and Permits
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies outlines 20 actions the president could take immediately that could potentially reduce the number of temporary foreign workers by 1.2 million, or nearly 50 percent. This would provide employment opportunities for many of the 18.2 million native-born Americans and 4.3 million immigrants now out of work, and the millions more who have stopped looking for work.
These short-term actions include putting a hold on all employment visa programs (temporary and permanent) to assess employer needs and labor conditions; examining the operation of these programs to curb fraud and abuse; and preventing employers who have downsized or accepted pandemic relief from the government from sponsoring workers from abroad. These actions should be maintained until the country returns to full employment and full labor force participation for American workers, ensuring that the employers who have become dependent on these programs, or who have chosen a business model that depends on these programs, are able to adapt. To break employers of dependency on visa workers and to curb over-issuance of work permits, more durable regulatory reform is needed. The Center recommends seven critical actions, including rescinding a rule implemented by the Obama administration providing for the issuance of work permits to certain dependents of temporary work visa holders. There is no statutory basis for these work permits, and the replacement regulation has been sitting in limbo in the White House for more than a year. Meanwhile, in 2019, more than 45,000 work permits were approved, representing lost job opportunities for U.S. workers.
Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies, said, “Suspending the entry of new temporary workers is a no-brainer in the midst of a pandemic and unprecedented economic collapse. It’s equally important to slash the number of discretionary work permits, because these create unfair competition for American workers and encourage visitors and illegal entrants to remain here when they would otherwise go home.” Vaughan continued, “In addition, taxpayers should not have to provide relief to employers who have chosen guest workers over U.S. workers.”
Vaughan will discuss her recommendations on a livestream next week:
When: Tuesday, May 19 at 1 p.m. EDT
Stream: Scheduled streams will be live on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Questions: Questions can be sent prior or during the event to mrt@cis.org or on twitter to @CIS_org
DHS Allows Foreign Workers with Expiring H-2B Visas to Stay in U.S.
While more than 33 million Americans file for unemployment due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is issuing a new rule allowing foreign workers on expiring H-2B visas to stay in the United States to take blue-collar jobs.
Every year, U.S. employers are allowed to import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign visa workers to take nonagricultural, seasonal jobs. For some time, the H-2B visa program has been used by businesses to bring in cheaper foreign workers and has contributed to blue-collar Americans having their wages undercut.
On Thursday, DHS issued a new rule at the behest of the business lobby that allows U.S. employers to keep foreign workers with expiring H-2B visas in the country to take American jobs.
Under standard guidelines, H-2B foreign visa workers would have to return to their native countries for at least three months before applying for another H-2B visa.
The new rule, though, will allow foreign workers with expiring H-2B visas to stay in the U.S. so long as they are hired by eligible employers to take American jobs. Employers will also be allowed to rehire their existing H-2B foreign visa workers without those workers having to ever return to their native countries. The rule, according toRoll Call, will last through May 15, 2023.
This is the second time in the midst of mass unemployment that DHS, the State Department, and the Agriculture Department have pushed to keep foreign visa workers in the U.S. to take American jobs.
In late March, as Breitbart News reported, the three federal agencies joined forces to fast-track H-2B foreign visa workers and H-2A foreign farm workers into the U.S. by issuing a series of visa waivers. The policy is similar to that of former President George W. Bush’s waivers issued after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
DHS officials have previously confirmed that newly arriving foreign workers on the H-2B and H-2A visa programs are not being tested for the coronavirus. Only those exhibiting symptoms upon their arrival are tested for the virus.
Last month, President Trump signed an executive order halting the issuance of some employment-based green card categories. The categories account for less than ten percent of all legal immigration to the U.S., where about 1.2 million green cards are given to foreign nationals and another million visas are issued to foreign workers annually.
Now, GOP lawmakers like Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Josh Hawley, as well as Congressmen Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) are urging Trump to expand the order to halt foreign visa worker programs while unemployment of Americans is expected to climb beyond 33 million.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Three million more US workers apply for unemployment, reaching 36 million in two months
15 May 2020
According to the most recent government figures, almost 3 million workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in the United States, bringing the total number of jobless claims to roughly 36 million in the two months since the coronavirus forced businesses to shutter their doors. In addition, 842,000 people applied for aid through a separate federal program designated for self-employed and gig economy workers.
The report, issued by the US Department of Labor, indicates the premature reopening of the economy has done little to get Americans back to work, as its proponents have claimed. In fact, the number of unemployment claims last week is four times the record high recorded before March this year.
In Georgia, one of the first states to begin reopening parts of its economy, the number of unemployment claims reached 241,000. Florida, which allowed restaurants to open at one-quarter capacity, saw its claims rise to nearly 220,000 last week. Florida’s unemployment agency is struggling to process the claims, meaning the actual number of unemployed is higher.
A woman looks at signs at a store in Niles, Ill., Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Some states that have lifted restrictions, such as Texas and South Carolina, have experienced a decline in claims, prompting Donald Trump to tweet “America is getting its life back.”
Despite Trump’s proclamation, many Americans are still facing hardship. The official unemployment rate for April soared to 14.7 percent from 4.4 percent in March as 20.5 million jobs were eliminated. In one month, the total number of jobs created in the last decade were wiped out.
The official unemployment numbers fail to fully grasp the severity of the issue. Government reports stated many workers who were furloughed or absent from work were still counted as employed in April. Additionally, millions of workers who were laid-off were discouraged and did not seek employment. If these workers were included in the official unemployment rate, it would reach nearly 24 percent.
According to projections by Goldman Sachs strategists, US economic activity as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by a staggering 39 percent in the second quarter, a revision of a previous prediction of 34 percent. Jan Hatzius and other economists predict that a 29 percent growth rate is expected in the third quarter, but growth will fall by 6.5 percent for the full fiscal year.
Goldman Sachs also predicts official unemployment will continue to rise. Previously, economists expected the unemployment rate to reach a high of 15 percent. However, new projections suggest a peak as high as 25 percent.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reported that 40 percent of US households bringing in less than $40,000 a year lost a wage earner in March. This reveals the impact that the economic catastrophe wrought by the coronavirus has had on the poorest sections of the working class.
A report released by the Fed Thursday found that six percent of all adults either had their hours reduced or were forced to take unpaid leave. Altogether, 19 percent of adults reported either losing a job or experiencing a reduction in work hours in March.
“This reversal of economic fortune has caused a level of pain that is hard to capture in words, as lives are upended amid great uncertainty about the future,” Powell said at a virtual event hosted by the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington.
“The scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent, significantly worse than any recession since World War II,” Powell said. “We are seeing a severe decline in economic activity and in employment, and already the job gains of the past decade have been erased.”
Jobless workers in some states are still reporting difficulty applying for or receiving benefits amid the crisis. These include free-lance, gig and self-employed workers, who became newly eligible for jobless aid this year.
The federal stimulus payments from the CARES Act have still not been fully doled out to workers in dire economic straits. As of this week, the IRS has issued 130 million payments worth a total of $200 billion. This still leaves approximately 20 million Americans who are still awaiting financial assistance.
The levels of economic crisis currently experienced by tens of millions have not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to Feeding America, up to 18 million children in America could become food insecure as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. All across the US, families wait in long lines at food banks to receive what little aid they can.
A massive crowd in lines hundreds of cars long turned out Thursday for food assistance from the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas, Texas. The organization told NBCDFW it has helped more than 32,000 families since the onset of the pandemic. The food bank has seen an influx of households who have not requested aid before, with one spokeswoman estimating up to half of those seeking aid now are doing so for the first time. The same scene is unfolding in cities large and small all across the United States.
The coronavirus pandemic has unveiled the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Faced with an immense public health crisis, the American ruling class has shown it is utterly incapable of implementing elementary measures to protect the population from illness, hunger or economic devastation. Instead, the lives of the working class and their families are subordinated to the will of a tiny parasitic layer that elevates the pursuit of profit over human life.
Powell warns of a possible sustained recession from pandemic
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of the threat of a prolonged recession resulting from the viral outbreak and urged Congress and the White House to act further to prevent long-lasting economic damage
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday of the threat of a prolonged recession resulting from the viral outbreak and urged Congress and the White House to act further to prevent long-lasting economic damage.
The Fed and Congress have taken far-reaching steps to try to counter what is likely to be a severe downturn resulting from the widespread shutdown of the U.S. economy. But Powell cautioned that numerous bankruptcies among small businesses and extended unemployment for many people remain a serious risk.
“We ought to do what we can to avoid these outcomes,” Powell said.
Additional rescue aid from government spending or tax policies, though costly, would be “worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery,” he said.
Powell spoke a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, that would direct money to state and local governments, households, and health-care workers. This money would come on top of roughly $3 trillion in earlier financial assistance that the government has provided. The Fed itself has also intervened by and creating numerous emergency lending programs.
Yet Trump administration officials have said they want to first see how previous aid packages affect the economy. And Republican leaders in Congress have expressed skepticism about allowing significant more spending right now. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, to act.
Powell, though, made clear his concern that a recession may last long enough to cause extensive damage to the economy and make a recovery weaker and slower. In such a scenario, unemployed workers would lose skills and their connections in the job market, making it harder for them to find new employment. And with many small businesses bankrupt, fewer companies would be available to hire the jobless.
“Deeper and longer recessions can leave behind lasting damage to the productive capacity of the economy,” the chairman warned in his prepared remarks before holding an online discussion with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Avoidable household and business insolvencies can weigh on growth for years to come.”
Powell’s sobering warning about the risks facing the economy weighed down Wall Street on Wednesday.
“It was a soothing tone from Powell saying the Fed will do what they need to do, but it was also somber in that basically the Fed can’t do everything,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was down a sharp 2.4% as of 3 p.m. Eastern time, with the deepest losses hitting stocks that most need a healthy economy for their profits to grow.
Powell said the Fed would “continue to use our tools to their fullest” until the viral outbreak subsides. He gave no hint of what the Fed’s next steps might be.
But Powell shot down the idea of cutting the Fed’s short-term interest rate, which is now near zero, into negative territory, as central banks in Europe and Japan have done. Such a move would require banks to pay interest on cash reserves that they hold at the Fed. That would be intended to encourage them to lend the money instead. Yet negative rates appear to have done little to stimulate the economies of the countries that have adopted them.
President Donald Trump, who has frequently expressed his desire for the Fed to adopt negative rates, tweeted Tuesday that “as long as other countries are receiving the benefits of Negative Rates,” the U.S. should also implement them.
“I know there are fans of the policy,” Powell said. But “this is not something that we’re looking at.”
The chairman argued that negative rates would likely hurt the banking industry, and he noted that all Fed policymakers had expressed opposition to negative rates during their last discussion of them in October — a rare show of unanimity among all 17 officials.
He repeated his previous warnings that the Fed can lend money to solvent companies to help carry them through the crisis but that a longer downturn would likely bankrupt some previously healthy companies without more help from the government.
Powell’s downbeat view contrasted with a speech Monday by Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Evans sketched a more upbeat outlook and suggested that “it’s reasonable to assume a legitimate return to growth in the second half” of this year and into 2021.
And Tom Barkin, head of the Richmond Fed, suggested Tuesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the economy has “bottomed” and is likely “headed up.”
Powell, in his remarks Wednesday, underscored some of the painful consequences of the recession. Among people who had been working in February, nearly 40% of households earning less than $40,000 a year lost a job in March, Powell said.
Last week, the government reported that the unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in April, the highest rate since the Great Depression. And there are roughly 30 million Americans out of work.
Powell said the economy could eventually return to where it was before the pandemic, with unemployment at a 50-year low of 3.5%.
“It’ll take some time to get back to where we were.” he said. “I have every reason to think we should get back there.”
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