Seven Ways Donald Trump’s Agencies Are Helping Foreign Workers Get U.S. Jobs
8:37
It has been 44 days since President Donald Trump promised more immigration changes to help Americans regain some of the many jobs held by imported visa workers.
The promise was made in an Executive Order he issued on April 22
Within 30 days of the effective date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall review nonimmigrant programs and shall recommend to me other measures appropriate to stimulate the United States economy and ensure the prioritization, hiring, and employment of United States workers.
But the reforms have not appeared — and his agencies continue to welcome the inflow of many thousands of foreign workers.
Here are seven ways his agencies help U.S. companies keep a huge workforce of at least 1.3 million contract workers in white collar jobs throughout the coronavirus crash:
1. The Department of State is allowing India to return absent H-1B workers to jobs in the United States, despite regulations which say that their work permits expire if their pay or job description are changed. This policy comes amid strenuous lobbying of Trump by India’s government, which blocked flights on March 16, 81 days ago.
2. The Department of Labor has done nothing visible to eject visa workers who violate their terms of employment, dubbed the “Labor Condition Application.” Foreign workers must leave the country with 60 days after their employers violate the hour, wage, or workplace terms in their LCAs. But, even as many U.S. professionals — Americans and visa-workers — are losing their jobs in the coronavirus crash, only a few thousand Indians are leaving the United States, according to flight plans released by India’s government.
3. The Department of Justice is defending the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program in a lawsuit that points out that the jobs giveaway program was never authorized by Congress, despite the loss of opportunities for American graduates. The OPT and its sister program provide work permits to roughly 500,000 foreigners each year, so helping many enter the Fortune 500 jobs also sought by U.S. graduates.
4. There is no sign the justice department is filing discrimination lawsuits against the companies, CEOs, and hiring managers who hire blocs of homogenous Indian or Chinese visa workers, even though hundreds of thousands of diverse and qualified Americans apply for jobs in the industry each year.
5. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget has blocked a regulation to end the H4EAD program, which was created in 2015 by President Barack Obama to encourage Indian H-1Bs workers to stay in the United States. The H4EAD program awards work permits to at least 100,000 spouses of India’s H-1B workers who are working for many years while waiting for promised green cards.
6. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is fast-tracking requests for H-1B approvals and H4EAD extensions that are needed by roughly 200,000 foreign workers each year.
7. USCIS has dropped plans to curb the use of H-1Bs as white-collar gig-workers for Indian-run staffing companies. A proposed regulation was demoted into a policy, which was recently suppressed by a judge at the request of the Indian staffing firms. The USCIS refused to appeal the case, leaving millions of U.S. graduates vulnerable to replacement by Indian gig-workers imported from Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Tirupathi.
The agencies’ provide “great joy” to the resident population of India’s visa workers, according to Indian visa workers and pro-Indian Twitter accounts:
Small things like premium processing, timely extensions, DL renewal, H4 EAD etc. are things of great joy in the world of EB backlog, immersed in a 100 year time travel for a US greencard.
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Nationwide, the federal government allows U.S. and Indian managers at U.S. companies to keep roughly 600,000 H-1B workers in good U.S. jobs, along with roughly 700,000 other white-collar visa workers. That army is boosted by an unknown number of white collar illegals who use fraudulent documents to hide among the legal visa workers
Trump’s agencies also allow many non-college migrants to get jobs sought by Americans.
They include roughly 66,000 H-2B laborers to take a wide variety of blue collar jobs, as foresters, landscapers, waiters, and hotel maids. Those visas are approved by the Department of Homeland Security, which has announced it will not provide an extra bloc of roughly 15,000 visas this year.
Another 100,000 foreigners get J-1 visas from the state department for work in the resort, entertainment, and hotel industry. Without the J-1 program, those jobs would provide training and cash to many young Americans.
At least 200,000 migrants are imported for work by agricultural companies, so reducing the economic pressure on farmers to develop better machines.
But the really big money is the white collar visa workforces. For example, the OPT program delivers up to $40 billion to the universities and colleges because it requires the OPT workers to enroll in education courses before getting their work permits.
Overall, the white collar visa workforce includes roughly 800,000 Indians and 250,000 Chinese, plus a growing population of illegal white collar workers.
The Indian and Chinese workers will work long hours at low wages, without public complaint, because U.S. executives have very powerful sticks and carrots. They can send disfavored workers home and reward favored workers with a huge prize of green cards.
The skewed balance of power makes the Indians and Chinese useful to U.S. executives. In contrast, many executives do not want to hire U.S. graduates who can only be paid with dollars that would otherwise inflate their companies’ stock prices. Besides, U.S. professionals will argue eye-to-eye with their executives and can quit for other jobs.
Please read @NeilMunroDC 's latest before you assume (as I once did) that H-1B "guestworkers" are all super-skilled foreign tech whizzes doing work Americans can't do. I'm sure some are, but most .... breitbart.com/economy/2020/0…
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Meanwhile, CEOs, investors, and Indian diplomats are lobbying for more Indian white collar migrants.
Companies continue to outsource American jobs — even in the critical infrastructure that needs protection from foreign hackers; The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported June 2:
The Tennessee Valley Authority is giving formal notice Wednesday to 62 [information technology] workers in Chattanooga and Knoxville that their jobs are ending in 90 days as the federal utility moves to outsource more data and programming work.Since TVA announced last year it would outsource some of the computer programming work being done at its Chattanooga computer center and its headquarters in Knoxville, nearly half of the 120 jobs being cut have already been phased out as workers found other jobs at TVA or left the agency.…The parent company of each of the three software development contractors being hired by TVA are headquartered outside of the United States.
But Trump’s agencies are not doing everything the business groups want.
The State Department is hindering the return of some Indian H-1Bs to the United States by denying embassy approval of needed “visa stamping” documents.
“There is little hope for the early return of more than a thousand unstamped H-1B and other nonimmigrant visa holders stranded in India with no official word on the reopening of U.S. missions there,” which have been closed since March 16, said a report in AmericanBazaarOnline.com. The report continued, “So far 26 people who are awaiting their visa renewals have lost their [U.S.] jobs. Only a fraction of the more than one thousand people currently in India are able to work remotely.”
Almost half of the 1,000 counted contract workers in India are “lawyers, healthcare workers, scientists, architects, students, and those employed in the financial sector,” said the website
The department is also constricting the supply of L-1 visas, which allow companies to import blocs of Indian workers and pay them minimum wages in the United States.
Also, the agency has not accepted the planned 2020 inflow of roughly 2,000 foreign doctors into hospital residencies that would otherwise go to excluded American graduates.
Another poll shows the obvious: Americans want to like migrants, but also really want companies to hire Americans - incl. their kids - before importing more migrants.
Biz responds: Stare deeply into CNN: This isn't about money, it's all about 'dreamers'bit.ly/3dbvXzF
43 people are talking about this
Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com.
- 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)
Time to Pause Immigration for a While
In the epoch of COVID-19, many have willingly abdicated personal sovereignty and liberty to the State. Many more, however, have led the continuing renaissance of constitutional nationalism that was ushered in with the election of Donald Trump.
It's high time to apply nationalism to the issue that will most singularly determine whether we nationalists keep our republic: immigration.
The United States is overpopulated (or, if you prefer, has enough people here), and it's time to seal the borders until further notice. No, I'm not talking just The Wall at our southern border or our temporary groundings of flights or refugees and asylum-seekers — no more new bodies who are coming to live in the U.S. indefinitely until further notice.
To truly put America first, we need a moratorium on legal immigration for the next five to ten years. Our national system imports one foreign national every minute of every day, 24/7, totaling 459,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2019 (572,000 more obtained lawful permanent residency — green cards — in F.Y. 2019).
Because of COVID-19, our unemployment rate is nearly 15 percent — the highest in almost nine decades, since the Great Depression. Our jobless population totals over 21 million Americans.
Please spare me the narrative that at least some of the tens of millions out of work couldn't, with some training, fill at least some of the jobs of the 190,098 H-1B visa lottery recipients in FY 2019. Even if you disagree with a full pause, shouldn't we at least somewhat reduce the number of recipients, to make it even slightly easier for unemployed Americans and recent college graduates to work at the companies addicted to foreign labor (I'm looking at you, Democrat-run Big Tech)? The balance of imported immigrants receive J-1 Visas (foreign exchange visitors) and H-2B visas for non-agricultural, blue-collar jobs.
There are also currently 13 million green card–holders nationwide.
Trump may restrict immigration visas for the next few months, but more (meaning longer) is needed. The 2018 Trump v. Hawaii U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirmed a president's broad constitutional powers to limit — or altogether cease — legal immigration. Trump would be on strong legal footing if a moratorium were challenged in the courts.
The Bodies Politic
Need convincing beyond the economic benefits? How about a moratorium for public health?
Unwittingly or not, The New York Times' recent report, entitled "The Coronavirus Is Deadliest Where Democrats Live," concurs with me.
It's been grotesquely fascinating to watch all these Democrats — who pack themselves like sardines into these cities and suburbs, to politically outnumber everyone else — lament when there aren't enough coronavirus testing kits, masks, or ventilators. When Democrats are enjoying the benefits of outnumbering everyone else (registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 7 to 1 in New York City, for example), they're pigs in mire, and they remind us that "there are more of us than you." But the Democrats' overcrowded chickens came home to roost.
What cities have coped the worst with COVID-19? Overpopulated, Democrat-majority cities: Detroit, New Orleans, and New York, among a few others. Fifteen percent of the world's population lives in a 90-mile radius around the island of Manhattan — making it the densest collection of bodies on the planet. And while New York State's overall population has been declining for years (higher taxes and redistribution of wealth!), New York City's five boroughs have been increasing since 2000; 26,000 live in each square mile, and in Manhattan, 66,000 per square mile. In San Francisco, the second most densely populated city in the U.S., 6,000 live in each square mile. Even if officials in these cities had responded flawlessly to the pandemic, there were too many bodies to avoid chaos.
Pray tell, where do those hundreds of thousands of new immigrants annually move to? Cheese farms in Wisconsin? Coal mines in Pennsylvania or Ohio? No; they live in America's big cities (more on this shortly). Though there was no precedent for the COVID-19 outbreak, the high death counts in overwhelmingly Democrat-populated cities underscored that too many bodies living in too-small municipal spaces presents public health crises waiting to happen.
Political Self-Obsolesce
A long-term pressing of the immigration pause button would elicit scorn from the Democrats and the GOP, which is precisely why it's the winning play.
The ceasing of a bodies influx into America is anathema to Democrats because large quantities of bodies are the primary reason they have monopolized control of most of America's largest cities; the primary reason they always win the political youth war; and the primary reason why their influence never seems to wane, even when they lose electorally. As I write in my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat: How to Make America Grown-Up Again, bodies are what enable the Democrats and the DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex) to never stray from their mantra of "vote blue no matter who." They move in a singular direction, unified toward a singular goal — to protect and elect Democrats, no exceptions.
Conversely, it's anathema to globalist and open-borders Republicans whose fetish is Third World–produced goods on the year 1381 minimum wage pay. Furthermore, Republicans are utterly petrified to come within a parsec of what I'm proposing, for fear of the "xenophobic" branding by the editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Bipartisanship is overrated, and it usually means that both sides have been wrong rather than one side.
America has been the most generous nation in world history. The time, though, has come for altruism to defer to science and the American workforce of small business and manufacturing.
Both of our major political parties are afraid to reform our immigration quagmire because with reform will be the revelation of how many illegal aliens live here. Our federal government has little to no knowledge of how many illegals are here. Are there "only" 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S.? Doubtful; it's been 11 million, since, well, forever, and it's likely double to triple that figure.
It is neither my nor your responsibility to render ourselves politically obsolete. Where do you think the vast majority of legal immigrants live? In small towns inhabited by AR-15-carrying Jeffersonian and Adamsian constitutionalists whose book club members are currently reading The Federalist Papers? Of course not; they predominantly live in cities that would vote for an Attila the Hun/Genghis Khan presidential ticket if it had a "D" attached to it.
Even though permanent legal residents cannot (legally) vote, they do influence (in the Democrats' favor) Congressional apportionment and federal funding grabs. And let's be candid: when legal immigrants become naturalized citizens, they are far likelier to vote Democrat than for another party.
For those who believe that a crisis justifies the abridgment of, and infringement upon, our guaranteed constitutional rights: the Framers penned the Constitution in response to a crisis — a war against a foreign power, which didn't recognize our independence until seven years after we declared it. The Founders would want us to be even more zealous in the application of these rights during a crisis.
We nationalists know dangerous freedom must always reign supreme over peaceful slavery; our Founders keenly understood that a tyranny of the majority would eventually euthanize the republic.
Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat: How to Make America Grown-up Again. He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.
In the epoch of COVID-19, many have willingly abdicated personal sovereignty and liberty to the State. Many more, however, have led the continuing renaissance of constitutional nationalism that was ushered in with the election of Donald Trump.
It's high time to apply nationalism to the issue that will most singularly determine whether we nationalists keep our republic: immigration.
The United States is overpopulated (or, if you prefer, has enough people here), and it's time to seal the borders until further notice. No, I'm not talking just The Wall at our southern border or our temporary groundings of flights or refugees and asylum-seekers — no more new bodies who are coming to live in the U.S. indefinitely until further notice.
To truly put America first, we need a moratorium on legal immigration for the next five to ten years. Our national system imports one foreign national every minute of every day, 24/7, totaling 459,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2019 (572,000 more obtained lawful permanent residency — green cards — in F.Y. 2019).
Because of COVID-19, our unemployment rate is nearly 15 percent — the highest in almost nine decades, since the Great Depression. Our jobless population totals over 21 million Americans.
Please spare me the narrative that at least some of the tens of millions out of work couldn't, with some training, fill at least some of the jobs of the 190,098 H-1B visa lottery recipients in FY 2019. Even if you disagree with a full pause, shouldn't we at least somewhat reduce the number of recipients, to make it even slightly easier for unemployed Americans and recent college graduates to work at the companies addicted to foreign labor (I'm looking at you, Democrat-run Big Tech)? The balance of imported immigrants receive J-1 Visas (foreign exchange visitors) and H-2B visas for non-agricultural, blue-collar jobs.
There are also currently 13 million green card–holders nationwide.
Trump may restrict immigration visas for the next few months, but more (meaning longer) is needed. The 2018 Trump v. Hawaii U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirmed a president's broad constitutional powers to limit — or altogether cease — legal immigration. Trump would be on strong legal footing if a moratorium were challenged in the courts.
The Bodies Politic
Need convincing beyond the economic benefits? How about a moratorium for public health?
Unwittingly or not, The New York Times' recent report, entitled "The Coronavirus Is Deadliest Where Democrats Live," concurs with me.
It's been grotesquely fascinating to watch all these Democrats — who pack themselves like sardines into these cities and suburbs, to politically outnumber everyone else — lament when there aren't enough coronavirus testing kits, masks, or ventilators. When Democrats are enjoying the benefits of outnumbering everyone else (registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 7 to 1 in New York City, for example), they're pigs in mire, and they remind us that "there are more of us than you." But the Democrats' overcrowded chickens came home to roost.
What cities have coped the worst with COVID-19? Overpopulated, Democrat-majority cities: Detroit, New Orleans, and New York, among a few others. Fifteen percent of the world's population lives in a 90-mile radius around the island of Manhattan — making it the densest collection of bodies on the planet. And while New York State's overall population has been declining for years (higher taxes and redistribution of wealth!), New York City's five boroughs have been increasing since 2000; 26,000 live in each square mile, and in Manhattan, 66,000 per square mile. In San Francisco, the second most densely populated city in the U.S., 6,000 live in each square mile. Even if officials in these cities had responded flawlessly to the pandemic, there were too many bodies to avoid chaos.
Pray tell, where do those hundreds of thousands of new immigrants annually move to? Cheese farms in Wisconsin? Coal mines in Pennsylvania or Ohio? No; they live in America's big cities (more on this shortly). Though there was no precedent for the COVID-19 outbreak, the high death counts in overwhelmingly Democrat-populated cities underscored that too many bodies living in too-small municipal spaces presents public health crises waiting to happen.
Political Self-Obsolesce
A long-term pressing of the immigration pause button would elicit scorn from the Democrats and the GOP, which is precisely why it's the winning play.
The ceasing of a bodies influx into America is anathema to Democrats because large quantities of bodies are the primary reason they have monopolized control of most of America's largest cities; the primary reason they always win the political youth war; and the primary reason why their influence never seems to wane, even when they lose electorally. As I write in my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat: How to Make America Grown-Up Again, bodies are what enable the Democrats and the DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex) to never stray from their mantra of "vote blue no matter who." They move in a singular direction, unified toward a singular goal — to protect and elect Democrats, no exceptions.
Conversely, it's anathema to globalist and open-borders Republicans whose fetish is Third World–produced goods on the year 1381 minimum wage pay. Furthermore, Republicans are utterly petrified to come within a parsec of what I'm proposing, for fear of the "xenophobic" branding by the editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Bipartisanship is overrated, and it usually means that both sides have been wrong rather than one side.
America has been the most generous nation in world history. The time, though, has come for altruism to defer to science and the American workforce of small business and manufacturing.
Both of our major political parties are afraid to reform our immigration quagmire because with reform will be the revelation of how many illegal aliens live here. Our federal government has little to no knowledge of how many illegals are here. Are there "only" 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S.? Doubtful; it's been 11 million, since, well, forever, and it's likely double to triple that figure.
It is neither my nor your responsibility to render ourselves politically obsolete. Where do you think the vast majority of legal immigrants live? In small towns inhabited by AR-15-carrying Jeffersonian and Adamsian constitutionalists whose book club members are currently reading The Federalist Papers? Of course not; they predominantly live in cities that would vote for an Attila the Hun/Genghis Khan presidential ticket if it had a "D" attached to it.
Even though permanent legal residents cannot (legally) vote, they do influence (in the Democrats' favor) Congressional apportionment and federal funding grabs. And let's be candid: when legal immigrants become naturalized citizens, they are far likelier to vote Democrat than for another party.
For those who believe that a crisis justifies the abridgment of, and infringement upon, our guaranteed constitutional rights: the Framers penned the Constitution in response to a crisis — a war against a foreign power, which didn't recognize our independence until seven years after we declared it. The Founders would want us to be even more zealous in the application of these rights during a crisis.
We nationalists know dangerous freedom must always reign supreme over peaceful slavery; our Founders keenly understood that a tyranny of the majority would eventually euthanize the republic.
Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat: How to Make America Grown-up Again. He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.
JARED KUSHNER IS BEHIND TRUMP'S BACKROOM AMNESTY
Business Lobbies Bombard Trump to Block Immigration Reforms
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.”
Please read @NeilMunroDC 's latest before you assume (as I once did) that H-1B "guestworkers" are all super-skilled foreign tech whizzes doing work Americans can't do. I'm sure some are, but most .... breitbart.com/economy/2020/0…
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.?#H1Bbit.ly/2LPRrX1
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