2020 Election Immigration Politics H-1B Visas J-1 L-1 Mike Pompeo Outsourcing U.S-India Outsourcing Economy visa workers
State Dept. ‘Guts’ Donald Trump’s Curbs on Fortune 500’s Visa Workers
The state department is allowing Fortune 500 companies to freely import H-1B visa workers for jobs needed by American voters, despite President Donald Trump’s June 22 Executive Order barring nearly all visa workers.
“They have totally eviscerated the requirements” of Trump’s E.O., said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “There is no doubt about it — whoever created this is thumbing their noses at President Trump,” he said, adding, “ you can bet that the guys who did this are voting for [Joe] Biden.”
‘This is an insult to the President of the United States, it is an insult to working men and women of the United States,” said Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.
There are less than 90 days to go in the election. How can he persuade Americans he’s keeping any of this 2016 promises if he allows the State Department to nullify and gut the E.O. he signed to protect Americans from [outsourcing by Fortune 500 companies]? More than that — I think it is beginning to make Trump look stupid in front of the voters. He needs to call in Pompeo and talk to him about his job prospects because [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo does not seem to give a hoot about Americans’ job prospects.
The exemptions are “expansive ,” admitted Greg Siskind, a lawyer who is working to widen the pipelines of foreign doctors into U.S. hospital chains. “They are backing off … that could be good news for thousands of you guys, ” he told his clients.
On August 3, Trump met with Lynn and several employees of the Tennesee Valley Authority to announce he would block the outsourcing of their jobs to H-1B workers imported by three staffing companies. Trump said:
It doesn’t work that way. As we speak, we’re
finalizing H1-B regulations so that no
American worker is replaced ever again. H1-Bs
should be used for top, highly paid talent to
create American jobs, not as inexpensive labor
program to destroy American jobs.
On June 22, Trump signed another Executive Order to close down the pipeline of white-collar H-1B, J-1, and L-1 workers, as well as the pipeline of H-2B manual laborers. The E.O. is expected to temporarily bar the arrival of perhaps 80,000 H-1Bs, plus thousands of J-1s and L-1s, while hundreds of thousands of new graduates and fired professionals look for jobs. Trump also directed his agency deputies to write new regulations that would reduce the Fortune 500’s widespread use of visa workers as cheap labor replacements for American voters.
Trump’s intervention to save U.S. white collar jobs is very popular among millions of American voters whose futures are threatened by the Fortune 500’s preference for docile and cheap visa workers. The CEO’s workforce policy keeps at least 1.3 million foreign graduates in U.S. jobs, even amid the dramatic economic crash caused by China’s coronavirus.
The official unemployment rate for U.S. tech grads has jumped to 4.4 percent, according to an industry association . But the calculation does not count the many U.S. tech grads who were forced into lesser careers by the many visa workers in the U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy.
But the State Department’s June 12 bulletin provides a long list of many easy exemptions for Fortune 500 companies and their Indian staffing subcontractor. The document says Trump’s directions:
… include exceptions, including an exception for individuals whose travel would be in the national interest, as determined by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or their respective designees. The list below is a non-exclusive list of the types of travel that may be considered to be in the national interest, based on determinations made by the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, exercising the authority delegated to him by the Secretary of State.
Pompeo is the Secretary of State. Carl Risch is the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs.
The list of exemptions is very wide:
Travel by technical specialists, senior level managers, and other workers whose travel is necessary to facilitate the immediate and continued economic recovery of the United States … The petitioning employer has a continued need for the services or labor to be performed by the H-1B nonimmigrant in the United States.
Miano is an expert on visa worker laws and studied the long list of exemptions:
T he first one on the list is what they needed to do to get the visas in the first place … Number 2, any of them can do that, no problem … Number 3 is totally meaningless — anyone can do that … ‘Financial Hardship’ for an employer is so loosey goosy that anyone can meet that … ‘Critical Infrastructure’ is basically anything.
Lynn was less formal;
This is effing b….. W ho the f… came up with these exceptions? … Y ou can drive a Mack truck through this …. The exemptions basically cover anyone on an H-IB or a J-1 or an L-1 …. B oom! They’re in … with all the exemptions, there is no EO — they’ve eliminated the EO through the exemptions.”
One of the most notable exemptions are for visa workers who have jobs at government agencies, usually via Indian-run staffing companies:
… individuals, identified by the Department of Defense or another U.S. government agency, performing research, providing IT support/services, or engaging other similar projects essential to a U.S. government agency.
The document also provides exemptions to foreign workers who have taken jobs from Americans in “critical infrastructure,” such as the TVA jobs blocked by Trump:
The applicant’s proposed job duties or position within the petitioning company indicate the individual will provide significant and unique contributions to an employer meeting a critical infrastructure need. Critical infrastructure sectors are chemical, communications, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, transportation, and water systems.
“The people who are doing this are ignoring the president,” said Miano. “ I can only guess at their motivations, but we can say it is Deep State acting independently.”
“In a close election, with time running out, with [2016] expectations not met … Trump needs things to go smoothly from now till November, and this list clearly he has people in the State Department sabotaging him,” said Miano.
“When word of this gets out to the public that every E.O. he writes is not worth the paper it is written on,” said Lynn. “Because through exceptions, they become get nullified by the Deep State, he loses the voters’ trust and confidence.”
He added: “What good is a State Department that becomes the tool of corporations that want to displace Americans, when tens of millions of Americans are under extreme financial duress?”
The State Department did not respond to emails from Breitbart News requesting comment.
Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC. Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020
2020 Election Immigration Politics H-1B Visas J-1 L-1 Mike Pompeo Outsourcing U.S-India Outsourcing Economy visa workers
The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics 13 August 2020 With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate of Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As was to be expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-wing candidates to run the most right-wing campaign possible.
There is a certain inevitability to the choice of Harris. In July of last year,—based on a survey of who would be the worst, most reactionary and at the same time most suitable choice for second spot on the Democratic Party ticket— predicted that Harris would most likely be named the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the nomination. She had all the ruthlessness, narcissism and careerism requisite for the job, plus the ethnic background to suit the Democrats’ obsession with racial and gender identity.
Kamala Harris is a dyed-in-the wool political reactionary.
This year has seen mass demonstrations throughout the country in response to the police murder of George Floyd. As a direct result of the policies of the ruling class, nearly 170,000 people have died to date in the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death toll now at more than 1,000. There is growing anger in workplaces over the homicidal back-to-work campaign and broad opposition among teachers to the efforts to reopen the schools. Tens of millions of people are unemployed, and they have been cut off from federal benefits and face being evicted from their homes.
In the midst of this monumental political, economic and social crisis, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American people are to be offered the “choice” between the fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California. This says everything about the degraded state of American politics.
Following the announcement by Biden on Tuesday, the media leapt into action with its nauseating effusion of state propaganda. The selection of Harris has been universally proclaimed to be “historic,” a watershed moment.
In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing “historic” about Harris. As district attorney in San Francisco (2004-2011), attorney general in California (2011-2017), and, finally, US senator (2017 to the present), Harris has compiled a track record of backing the police, locking up workers and immigrants, covering up for the banks and supporting militarism and war.
Wall Street is certainly happy with the choice. “A VP pick that big business can back,” ran a headline on the inside pages of the New York Times . As for the military, its main concern is what will happen if the aging Biden doesn’t make it through a full term. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, opposition from the Democratic Party has been focused on issues of foreign policy. Harris, who has no other agenda than her own self-promotion, will be silly putty in the hands of the military-intelligence apparatus.
The “historic” character of the Harris nomination is premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a Democratic Party administration.
As if any of this makes a bit of difference for workers, whatever their race, gender or ethnicity. As if, moreover, the world has not already had the example of Obama, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and many others.
The selection of Harris exposes the utterly reactionary character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of identity—anything but class. In response to the eruption of protests against police violence, the Democrats did everything they could to obscure the class issues, promote racial divisions and propagate the lie that the violence of the police is an expression of the oppression of “black America” by “white America.” The outcome of this racialist campaign is the selection as their vice-presidential candidate of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from their parents.
Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris “historic.” Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist and one of the chief inspirers of the New York Times ’ 1619 Project, wrote on Twitter that “the Democrats now have a presidential ticket that reflects the American people better than the GOP ticket and every presidential ticket in US history.”
According to Kendi, politicians “reflect” the American people not because of the socioeconomic forces they represent, but solely by their racial and ethnic background and their gender. Interests are determined by race. This is not progressive politics, but right-wing and racialist politics, which shares much in common with the fascistic politics of Donald Trump.
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote that he was “incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU [historically black colleges and universities] grad, chosen as a vice presidential nominee.” This was, he added, the stuff “dreams are made of.”
Commenters on Twitter quickly pointed to the contrast between this statement and his declaration in November 2018 that he would never support Biden or Harris because “they both helped build & advance mass incarceration.”
Political principles have never been a strong suit of Democratic Party hacks. They look forward to positions within the Biden administration and other opportunities that will reap financial rewards.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders won widespread support for his attacks on social inequality and his calls for a “political revolution” against the establishment. On this basis, he emerged as the main contender against Biden for the Democratic Party nomination. In the end, however, the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party got nothing.
BLOG EDITOR: SANDERS ALSO ENDORSED BANKSTER-OWNED CROOK ON THE LAM, HILLARY CLINTON!
This has not, however, stopped Sanders from praising the outcome. Sanders tweeted that Harris “will make history as our next vice president.”
Since packing in his campaign in mid-March, Sanders has assumed his assigned role as principal cheerleader for the Biden campaign, along with Elizabeth Warren, et. al. The more that social anger grows, and the more the Democrats are exposed, the more determined is his support for the Democratic Party.
What an exposure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine and other political agents of the Democratic Party who claimed that Sanders was the path to the transformation of American politics and even the realization of socialism! They make fools of themselves every election. They will tag along with the Democratic Party in one form or another, no doubt accompanied by talk about how they are building a “progressive movement” inside that party of American imperialism, along with other varieties of political fraud. Every four years, the same play is performed.
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of American politics.
Certain conclusions must be drawn from this experience, not only about Sanders, but about an entire type of pragmatic politics that hopes for easy answers to the crisis confronting the working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.
The politics of the working class must begin with a serious theoretical understanding, rooted in a Marxist and class analysis. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. The politics of race and gender identity, which it relentlessly promotes, gives expression to the interests of layers of the upper-middle class, which employ this right-wing ideology in their fight for positions of power and privilege in the state, academia and corporate boardrooms. The pseudo-left, including the DSA and associated organizations, represent this social layer.
All of this is directed against the working class and the development of a genuine movement for socialism. Objective conditions, however, have created the conditions for a powerful eruption of class struggle, in the United States and internationally. The coronavirus pandemic, as the Socialist Equality Party has explained , is a “trigger event in world history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic, social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.”
Nothing progressive will emerge except through the intervention—the interference—of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign are oriented to the development of a socialist leadership in the working class. Our campaign is the only campaign that raises critical questions of perspective, exposing the reactionary promoters of racial conflict and the cheerleaders of Sanders’ “political revolution.”
The SEP is spearheading the organization of workers against the homicidal policy of the ruling elite, in opposition to all factions of the ruling class, on the basis of a revolutionary program to put an end to inequality, war, dictatorship and the capitalist system. This is the way forward.
Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president Joe Biden grabs his mask after introducing his vice presidential running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, during their first press conference together in Wilmington, Delaware, on Aug. 12, 2020. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden Campaign Raised $26 Million in 24 Hours After Picking Harris as VP
The campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden raised $26 million in a day after announcing the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.
Biden made the announcement during a grassroots fundraising event with Harris. The former vice president said that the donations included 150,000 first-time donors.
“It’s really palpable, the excitement,” Biden said.
While President Donald Trump maintains an overall lead in total fundraising, the $26 million is a major haul for Biden and signals enthusiasm for Harris. The Trump campaign record is $14 million, which was raised on the president’s birthday in June.
The grassroots fundraiser, which occurred after the 24-hour mark, brought in another $9.6 million, according to the Biden campaign. That total beat the record set during Biden’s fundraiser with former president Barack Obama.
Trump has so far raised $342 million compared Biden’s $278 million.
Biden leads Trump by more than 7 points in an average of national polls maintained by RealClearPolitics. The opponents are scheduled to take place in three debates before the election in November.
Nearly nine out of 10 Democrats approved of Harris as Biden’s pick, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.
During her first speech on the campaign trail, Harris repeatedly criticized Trump.
“This is a moment of real consequence for America,” she said. “Everything we care about—our economy, our health, our kids, the kind of country we live in—it’s all on the line.”
“America is crying out for leadership, yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him, a president who is making every challenge we face even more difficult to solve.”
The speech, delivered in a Delaware high school gymnasium near Biden’s home, featured no cheering crowds. The two candidates wore masks as they arrived and kept their social distance on a stage flanked by state flags.
A day earlier, Trump said Harris was his top pick for Biden’s VP. He said he was nevertheless surprised at the choice because of Harris’s lackluster performance in the Democratic primaries.
The joint appearance came just days before Biden will formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination at next week’s party convention, which will take place largely as a virtual event due to COVID-19.
The Republican convention, where Trump is set to be nominated to seek a second four-year term, follows a week later and kicks off a 10-week sprint to Election Day on Nov. 3.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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