JARED KUSHNER IS BEHIND TRUMP'S BACKROOM AMNESTY
Business Lobbies Bombard Trump to Block Immigration Reforms
1 Jun 2020299
6:56
Business lobbyists are bombarding
President Donald Trump with demands that he drop his draft plan to let
Americans get some of the U.S. jobs now held by at least one million foreign
contract workers.
The
alarm among business groups suggests that Trump has decided — although not
announced — to shut down part of the Fortune 500’s special pipeline of foreign
workers, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“I
think they are clearly nervous that in this [economic and political]
environment that a president who ostensibly champions American workers may go
against the recommendations of the technology industry,” he said. “They are
right to be nervous,” he said, adding, “but they shouldn’t be that worried
given this administration’s track record.”
Cutbacks
of foreign workers “would substantially limit the ability of many companies to
help get the American economy moving again,” said a May 26 letter by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce to Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic
Council.
The
May 26 letter arrived as U.S. unemployment numbers headed towards 30 million —
including many swing-voting college graduates who will either vote for or
against Trump in November.
Any
cutback to foreign workers “would be potentially devastating to [our members’]
ability to grow their business and drive innovation,” said a May 28 letter from
a trade association for hiring managers, SHRM.
“Our
members have similarly signaled alarm at the prospect of any curtailment of the
Optional Practical Training [OPT] program,” said the SHRM letter, referring to
the huge OPT program that gives tax-subsidies to U.S. employers that hire
foreign graduates, usually by dangling the promise of free citizenship.
The
letters from the Chamber and SHRM follow a March 26 letter from many large and
smaller firms, which suggested that any visa cutbacks will force companies to
unfairly discriminate against foreigners:
We
urge you to avoid outcomes, even for temporary periods, that restrict
employment-authorization terms, conditions, or processing of L-1, H-1B, F-1, or
H-4 [visa worker] nonimmigrants. Constraints on our human capital are likely to
result in unintended consequences and may cause substantial economic
uncertainty if we have to recalibrate our personnel based on country of birth.
The
pipeline of H-1B, OPT, and other visa workers allows Fortune 500 companies,
including many technology firms, to keep at least 1.3 million foreign workers
in U.S. jobs. It also allows the firms to provide on-the-job training to
hundreds of thousands of additional workers in India and elsewhere, so helping
the companies to shift at least one million additional jobs overseas via the
U.S-India Outsourcing Economy.
But
Trump’s draft cutbacks would pressure Fortune 500 companies to hire U.S
professionals and graduates.
Polls
show the pro-American plan has at least 2:1 support among swing voters in what
will be a hard-fought reelection campaign.
“It
is mystifying that the president hasn’t done anything meaningful to keep
his [2016] campaign promise about ending the H-1B program,” said Krikorian.
“They’ve done some very minor administrative things, but there is plenty more
they could have done and could still do. Why they are not acting now when the
economy is so weak, and there is widespread political support for reforming
H-1Bs, I’m not sure … [but] they’re too solicitous of the concerns of tech
lobbyists.”
Critics
of the OPT program say the numbers show it is used by companies to hire foreign
graduates instead of qualified U.S. graduates.
U.S.
CEOs prefer foreign graduates because foreign workers will stay put and do
repetitive skilled work for many years to get green cards. The OPT program also
allows companies to keep importing foreigners for jobs in the high-cost
districts along the coasts, instead of setting up offices in lower-cost
employees and locations, such as in the districts of Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH).
But
Stivers is trying to collect signatures from fellow legislators for a letter
urging Trump to preserve the OPT program:
We
urge the administration to publicly clarify that OPT will remain fully intact
so we send the right messages abroad about the U.S. as an attractive
destination for international students.
…
The
last thing our nation should do in this area is make ourselves less competitive
by weakening OPT. The program is essential to the many international students
who desire not just to study in the U.S. but also have a post completion
training experience.
Stivers
appeal for more hiring of foreigners — instead of graduates in his own 15th
District — is echoed by several additional signatories to his letter. The other
signatories include Reps. Bill Flores (R-TX), Peter King (R-NY), Rodney Davis
(R-IL), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), John Katko (R-NY), and Rob Woodall (R-GA).
The
SHRM letter included a threat from one of its members saying they would rather
shrink recruitment than hire older Americans or Americans from lower-prestige
universities:
The
OPT program serves largely as a pipeline for talent in the U.S, also most often
for our engineering department. Our on-campus recruiters have shared with us
that at the top-tier schools where they recruit, the vast majority of computer
science/engineering students are foreign students who rely on OPT to work in
the U.S. after graduation. In 2019, we had roughly 45% of software engineering
training class hires that were in need of OPT work authorization. Without
support of OPT work authorization, we would likely hire 45% less people that
would be contributing to engineering work as we can’t find enough qualified
U.S. workers to fill these positions.
“What
the companies are saying is that Americans are not good enough to staff the
modern economy,” said Krikorian. “You have to admire that gall — they are
arguing with a straight face that 25 percent of unemployment is not high enough
for them to resort to hiring Americans.”
The
government’s job is not to provide favored companies with planeloads of
suitable workers, Krikorian said. “It is not Congress’s job to maximize their
share price — the role of federal policy is to create the rules within which
American companies and American workers hash out their relationship” in the
free market, he said.
But,
he added, “the point is to make sure that companies hire Americans [because] it
is really of little benefit [to Americans] if the people they are hiring are
not Americans.”
Supporters of the OPT foreign-employee
scheme release data showing OPT sends jobs & wealth to wealthy, coastal
states.
Why would heartland Senators & Reps. support a GWBush/Obama scheme that
sends their jobs to the coasts & their wealth to Wall St.?#H1Bhttps://bit.ly/2LPRrX1
The
List: 47 Republicans Lobby for More Foreign Workers While 36M Are Jobless
Getty Images
28 May 20203,586
6:48
Thirty-eight
House Republicans have joined nine Republican Senators in lobbying the White
House to continue importing foreign workers to the United States even as more
than 36 million Americans are jobless.
In a letter to Trump, Republican lawmakers
including Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) — running against Kris Kobach for Kansas’s
open Senate seat — and New York Representitives Elise Stefanik and Peter King ask
that businesses continue to be allowed to import blue-collar foreign workers
through the H-2B visa program amid mass unemployment.
Every year, U.S. companies are allowed to
import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign workers to take blue-collar,
non-agricultural 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.
The Republican lawmakers claim that even
though a record number of Americans in many states are jobless, businesses are
still suffering from labor shortages — a claim that is made year-round by the
cheap labor lobby.
The Republican lawmakers who signed the
letter include:
- Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD)
- Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI)
- Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA)
- Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH)
- Rep. David Joyce (R-OH)
- Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH)
- Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA)
- Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI)
- Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO)
- Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
- Rep. Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC)
- Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH)
- Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD)
- Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-LA)
- Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI)
- Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
- Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC)
- Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL)
- Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK)
- Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)
- Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA)
- Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)
- Rep. Mike Conaway (R-MD)
- Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA)
- Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS)
- Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA)
- Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA)
- Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA)
- Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH)
- Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT)
- Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI)
- Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY)
- Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)
- Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI)
- Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL)
- Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA)
The Republicans write:
On behalf of the thousands of small and
seasonal businesses in our Districts that are struggling in this unprecedented
and uncertain economic climate, we respectfully urge you to refrain from
imposing any further restriction on the H-2B nonimmigrant seasonal guest worker
program as part of any forthcoming executive action relating to immigration
and/or economic recovery.
The letter continues:
This is evident as, despite active
recruitment by seasonal employers, very few US workers are seeking and
accepting seasonal temporary jobs. Therefore, it is important that
the H-2B program continue to be available to our seasonal employers as
a failsafe in the event that we see a rapid drop in unemployment and a return
to the extremely tight labor markets of just a few months ago. Such flexibility
to meet business needs is critical to rapid, solid and fulsome economic
recovery. [Emphasis added]
…
As such, we urge you to maintain
the continued, uninterrupted operation of the H-2B program with the
continued requirement that all employers only have access to it based upon
their proven and certified need within the statutory cap. [Emphasis added]
The full letter can be read here:
Likewise, this week, nine Republican
Senators sent a letter to Trump asking the administration to
allow businesses to import more foreign workers.
Specifically, the Senators said businesses must
be able to exempt themselves from some existing labor regulations so long as
they claim they cannot find qualified Americans to do the work. The Republican
Senators who signed the letter include:
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
- Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
- Sen. James Risch (R-ID)
- Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD)
- Sen. Todd Young (R-IN)
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
- Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
- Sen. James Lankford (R-OK)
Today, federal employment data reveal that
there is no labor shortage of working- and middle-class Americans who want a
job. There are currently more than 36 million Americans out of work, spurred by
the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The H-2B visa program has been widely used
by businesses to drag down the wages of American workers in landscaping,
conservation work, the meatpacking industry, the construction industry,
and fishing jobs, a 2019 study from the Center for Immigration
Studies finds.
When comparing the wages of H-2B foreign
workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar industry, about 21
out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign workers than
Americans.
In the construction
industry, wage suppression is significant, with H-2B foreign workers being
offered more than 20 percent less than their American counterparts. In the
fishing industry, foreign workers were offered more than 30 percent less for
their jobs than Americans in the field. In the meatpacking industry, foreign
workers got 23 percent less pay than Americans.
Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2
million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country.
In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart
News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Trump's attacks on Jeff Sessions anger immigration
hawks
| May 28, 2020 12:00 AM
President Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t want Jeff Sessions returned to the Alabama
Senate seat he held for 20 years, but the president’s Twitter tirades against
his former attorney general could reverberate beyond the Yellowhammer State to
produce a backlash among Trump voters concerned about immigration.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter, once
an immigration-centric supporter of the president and author of the book In
Trump We Trust, has called Trump a “blithering idiot,” “complete moron,” “lout,” and
the “most disloyal actual retard that has ever set foot in the Oval Office” for
attacking Sessions, the “ONE PERSON in Trump administration who did anything
about immigration.” Fox
News host Tucker Carlson has told an
Alabama radio host that “Sessions was Trump long before Trump” and had been
“the single most impressive member of the Senate.” Sessions announced his
comeback candidacy last year on Carlson’s show.
Sessions was the first senator to
endorse Trump for president in early 2016, having been persuaded that the
businessman and reality TV star was the best vehicle for his populist brand of
conservatism. Trump borrowed heavily from Sessions’s immigration policy
handbook during the campaign and plucked top adviser Stephen Miller from the
73-year-old Alabamian’s Senate staff. But as Attorney General Sessions recused himself in the Trump-Russia investigation, paving the way for the appointment
of special counsel Robert Mueller, he was forced out of the Justice Department
over a year later.
Trump hasn’t forgiven Sessions. He has
not only endorsed his Republican primary opponent, former Auburn football
coach Tommy Tuberville, he has railed against Sessions on Twitter, calling him “slime”
who had his chance but blew it. “Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions,” Trump
posted. “He let our Country down.” Tuberville edged out Sessions in the first
round of voting thanks to Trump’s endorsement. The two will face each other in
a July runoff.
What impact Trump will have on that race
is unclear, but immigration hawks nationwide are outraged. "I refuse to
believe what’s happening to Jeff Sessions right now is entirely due to
recusal,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for
American Immigration Reform. “It may be a factor, but don’t forget that those
aligned with big business and the GOP establishment have taken hold of
President Trump’s policy agenda and campaign strategy. So, no surprise that the
man who has long fought for an immigration system that puts the American people
first is being thrown under the bus."
Hardliners speculate that son-in-law and
senior adviser Jared Kushner, who sparred with the former attorney general over
criminal justice reform as well as immigration, played a role in Sessions’s
demise. Now, Trump’s choice, Tuberville, is not well-liked by immigration
hawks.
“Even voters attracted to Trump because
of his ostensible hawkishness on immigration, but who don't closely follow
immigration politics and policy, are likely to be influenced by Trump's
ravings,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies. “But for those who know the issue, the vendetta against Sessions is
just one more indication that Trump isn't actually a restrictionist. I don't
mean that he's lying about supporting the wall, etc. — I think that genuinely
comes from his gut — but when it comes to the level of legal immigration and
guestworker admissions, he's more in tune with Obama and Jeb and Pelosi and
Schumer than with Sessions.”
Many MAGA activists are taking the
president’s side in the argument, however. Sessions’s replacement, Attorney
General Bill Barr, has forcefully unraveled the Trump-Russia investigation and defended the
president’s prerogatives. Aspects of the investigation, from warrants to
surveil Trump campaign associates to the case against former national security
adviser Michael Flynn, have since been revealed to be flawed. The Mueller
report found no collusion between Trump and Russia to swing the 2016 election.
The normally mild-mannered Sessions has
surprisingly hit back at Trump and defended his recusal as required by law and
resulting in the president’s exoneration. Trump’s interventions in Alabama
politics have failed before. He endorsed interim Sen. Luther Strange in the
last Republican primary for this seat, but voters chose the controversial Roy
Moore instead. Almost alone among national GOP leaders, Trump backed Moore in
the special election, but he lost to Democrat Doug Jones.
Sessions didn’t have a Democratic
challenger last time he ran for reelection and won 97.5% of the vote. Coulter
has accused Trump of risking “another Roy Moore fiasco” in the state, but local
insiders think Trump could fall on deaf ears again.
“Twitter is an echo chamber, and there
are zero undecided voters on the platform,” said Alabama-based
Republican strategist Brent Buchanan. "It changes nothing in the Alabama
Senate runoff." Either Sessions or Tuberville should be heavily favored
over Jones later this year, with Trump at the top of the ticket. It's a rare
GOP pickup opportunity as the party defends Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado,
North Carolina and Maine.
“Trump's attacks hurt both Sessions and
himself, but the question is what's the net effect, and with whom,” said
Krikorian. “In Alabama, specifically, they probably hurt Sessions more than
Trump, though I still don't think they guarantee a win by Florida Man,”
a residency-related nickname for Tuberville.
We could be living through the final months of the Trump
presidency.
What kind of message does it send when the president, five months
before his reelection contest, throws the first senator ever to endorse his
presidency under the bus?
For supporters of Jeff
Sessions, President Trump’s decision to snub his former attorney general and
endorse a goofy RINO football coach instead is more evidence that the
America First agenda that won him the White House, and that Sessions pioneered,
has become an afterthought for his administration.
The president rages at
Sessions for his recusal from the Russia probe. But here’s a thought
experiment: what are the odds that Tommy Tuberville would have distinguished
himself as some maverick against the Russia hoax had he been in the Senate? Any
takers?
To ask the question is
to answer it. It’s because the Republican Party is so unprincipled and
unimpressive that Sessions (and Trump) stood out in the first place. Sessions
is a decent man, and his patriotic convictions carried him, with justice, to a
place of prominence in American history.
Trump, a man of
instinct, interprets Sessions’ recusal as a sign of weakness, ignoring his
loyalty to the president before, during, and after his White
House tenure and his vigorous efforts to pursue the president’s America First agenda as
attorney general.
Still
America First?
The president, if it
wasn’t obvious by now, is not some Leninist ideologue who was planning to methodically
deport millions of illegal immigrants. This comes as a disappointment to some
of his most ideologically driven supporters as well as to his most delusional
detractors.
Sure, the president
doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) adhere rigidly to doctrine, but
Trump’s personal feud with Sessions is disappointing and counterproductive.
While not by itself dispositive, it is part of a familiar pattern of setbacks
for some of the strongest advocates of the “America First” message, who have started
to weary of his inconsistent attention to the Greatness Agenda.
Because of the
coronavirus pandemic, Trump has been granted a public mandate by a clear
majority of Americans to effectively shut down all immigration into the United States. Outside the predictable partisan
noises from liberal media and activist groups, it would be a hugely popular
decision. Of course, voters have wanted to reduce immigration for many years. They would reward
Trump for it without a doubt.
But the president’s
much-hyped immigration “moratorium” followed a familiar playbook: after the
excitement of the news died down, it was apparent that Trump left a massive
exception for hundreds of thousands of guest workers, hardly a logical decision
in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades, and unfair to college
graduates entering a brutal job market.
The Trump base has been
inured to these reversals. While Kushner is often seen as the culprit, the lack
of focus in the president’s governance cannot be overlooked.
It came as a shock when
Trump, in a recent tweet, complained that Big Tech is controlled by the “radical Left” and that he
would do something about censorship of conservatives. Just by acknowledging the
problem, the president thrilled beleaguered members of his base who have been
fighting to stay online, with little support, over the last four years.
The president doesn’t
have much to gain by liberalizing the MAGA movement, but in the wake of Biden’s
“you ain’t black” moment, the president has sought to highlight his efforts to
reform the criminal justice system, something that his supporters never voted for in 2016.
Why not, instead of
desperately trying to expand the coalition, focus instead on retaining the core
voters who got Trump elected in the first place?
What’s
Next?
We could be living
through the final months of the Trump presidency. Victory is by no means
assured in November, and it’s anybody’s guess what will become of the MAGA
movement if Trump loses to Joe Biden. The Left will seek revenge without mercy.
Trump is a courageous
man, and his ability to survive four years of daily, relentless
counter-insurrection is admirable. The nationalist awakening that he inspired
would never have been possible without him. He is an American original, and
there is no doubt that he is the only choice for American patriots and
conservatives in November.
That is what makes the
president’s distractions so disappointing. Yes, it doesn’t help that Trump has
had to contend with a vicious media, an obstructive permanent bureaucracy, and
hoax after hoax for years on end. Neither has the weak, gelded Republican party
been of much use.
But none of these
excuses will make a difference in November, and they won’t matter years from
now when posterity looks back on the Trump era. Will this time be remembered as
an inflection point for a dying Republic, the moment America came roaring back,
or a tragic disappointment?
There is now even talk
that President Trump wants to end the war in Afghanistan before November—an aspiration of
noble Trumpian proportions—and he appears to finally have taken serious notice of Twitter censorship (five months before the
election!) It remains to be seen if these are momentary, or lasting,
attentions.
The last four years have
been great fun, but the president wasn’t elected to trigger the libs with memes
or let criminals out of prison. He was elected to serve the American people and
put America First.
The decisions Trump
makes now will resonate loudly.
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