Saturday, December 19, 2020

MORE THAN 4.8 MILLION AMERICANS FALL INTO POVERTY - BIDEN AND WALL STREET DEMAND BOATLOADS OF FOREIGNERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND CORPORATE PROFITS SOARING

Congress dithers over token relief bill as 4.8 million more Americans face poverty in January



Despite claims of “good progress” and assurances of “getting a deal done,” Democratic and Republican congressional leaders adjourned Friday without passing an estimated $900 billion coronavirus relief bill. The completely inadequate bill, which is still subject to change, would reportedly provide a $300-a-week federal unemployment benefit for 10 weeks and a one-time direct payment of $600 to low- and middle-income people.

Auto workers leave the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren Truck Plant after the first work shift, Monday, May 18, 2020, in Warren, Mich. [Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

The short-term federal jobless benefit is 50 percent less than the $600 weekly supplement that expired on July 31, and the one-time stimulus check is only half the amount provided under the CARES Act, passed by a near-unanimous bipartisan vote in March. That bill provided some $6 trillion in low-interest loans and cash handouts to banks and corporations, dispensed by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

The new bill is being touted by the Democrats as a “down payment” on a second stimulus package to be enacted under the incoming Biden administration, which will undoubtedly provide trillions more for the financial markets and the stock portfolios of the financial oligarchs.

The current measure, under the rubric of the “small business” Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), includes billions of additional dollars for large businesses and another multibillion-dollar bonanza for Wall Street banks in the form of loan fees. The vast bulk of small businesses were frozen out of the two previous iterations of the PPP, resulting in the permanent closure of hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of layoffs. This round of the program promises to be no different.

Congress passed a two-day continuing resolution to extend federal spending and prevent a government shutdown while remaining differences are thrashed out and the relief bill is passed and signed into law by President Trump, who has signaled his support. The bill is to be attached to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package.

As of this writing, it was not clear whether the bill would include an extension of the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium, which expires in less than two weeks. According to the Aspen Institute, failure to enact an extension will result in a wave of evictions leaving up to 40 million people homeless.

A study released this week by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University estimates that without the immediate renewal of the $600 weekly federal unemployment supplement and other CARES Act programs, such as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), an additional 4.8 million people, including 1.3 million children, will fall into poverty next month. This is on top of the already eight million who have been driven into poverty since the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits at the end of July.

Overall, the authors of the Columbia study estimate that without any action, 17.5 percent of the US population, and over one in five children, will fall into poverty. Even if a deal is struck immediately, for the roughly 13 million people making use of the PUA and PEUC programs, including the self-employed, contract workers and “gig” workers, there will be a delay in receiving checks that could last weeks, according to Michele Evermore, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project. “It usually takes around two to three weeks to turn benefits back on,” Evermore told CNBC.

Data from the Census Household Pulse Survey conducted between November 25 and December 7 gives some indication of the suffering and hardship endured by millions of people due to congressional inaction and indifference. In several states, over half of the population surveyed is expected to be evicted or foreclosed on in the next two months, with the District of Columbia leading the nation at 67.3 percent, a 14.4 percent increase from last month.

DC is followed by South Dakota at 59.5 percent, a nearly 20 percent increase, and North Carolina at 54 percent, while in Wisconsin, 44.1 percent expect either to be evicted or foreclosed on in the next two months.

Overall, the Census notes that some 13 million adults in the US, or over nine percent of the population, are not current on their rent or mortgage payments and have “slight” or “no confidence” that they will be able to pay next month’s bill on time, an increase of nearly two million compared to two weeks ago. Louisiana leads the nation in this category, with nearly 16 percent, followed by Delaware at 15.2 percent, an increase of 5.5 percent, while Pennsylvania and Florida have seen a more than three percent increase from the last survey, at 13.2 and 12.3 percent, respectively.

What little money workers do have has been going to provide necessities such as food. However, for millions of people even that is a struggle in the richest country on the planet, with an estimated 27.4 million adults in the last month agreeing with the statement that in their households there were “sometimes” or “often” not enough to eat over the previous seven days. This is an increase of nearly two million from the month prior. Arkansas leads the nation, with 19.4 percent, or one in five people saying they did not have enough to eat, while 16.7 percent of Hawaii residents, an increase of 4.6 percent, went hungry.

Weekly state and federal unemployment claims have topped one million in recent weeks, job growth has slowed dramatically, and more than 10 million jobs have been permanently lost since the pandemic began in earnest in March.

The failure to provide serious aid to workers and small businesses is the result not of confusion or mere incompetence. Rather, it is part of a policy dictated by the economic interests of the capitalist class to block any serious measures to contain the pandemic that would impinge on corporate profits and use mass unemployment and the threat of starvation and homelessness to force workers into coronavirus-infected factories and workplaces. The reopening of schools in the midst of the raging pandemic is part of this homicidal “herd immunity” policy.

The Trump administration has openly carried out this policy of mass death, while the Democrats have feigned opposition while in practice collaborating fully at the state and local level and in Congress. The result is over 17 million confirmed cases, more than 300,000 deaths, a daily death rate surpassing 3,000, and the overwhelming of hospitals in many parts of the country. This is combined with the greatest levels of unemployment, social distress and suffering since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In Nevada, where the state government has run out of money to provide unemployment benefits, over 45 percent of the population expects a loss in income in the next four weeks. This is followed by California at 38.9 percent and New Mexico at 38.6 percent. New York and Hawaii are not far behind at 36.5 and 36.4 percent, respectively.

The criminality of the ruling class was underscored this week by the announcement by the Federal Reserve that it would continue to pump billions of dollars a month into the financial markets and purchase dubious corporate bonds indefinitely.

As of Friday evening, the main obstacle to the passage of the miserable relief bill appeared to be Republican Senator Pat Toomey’s inclusion of language that would end several Fed lending programs, such as the misnamed $600 billion Main Street Lending Program. This provoked an apoplectic reaction from Democratic lawmakers, including senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and California Representative Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

Warner said putting an end to the programs would “set a terrible precedent, hurt the Fed’s independence, and weaken its ability to respond quickly to future crises.” Warren called the proposal “reckless” and an attempt to “sabotage President Biden.”

Wall Street is greedily anticipating another windfall from an incoming Biden administration. Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, which is heavily represented in Biden’s cabinet, hailed the selection of former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as Biden’s Treasury secretary, saying he expected to forge an “important partnership.”

“I think people understand this is a big deal,” Rieder said. “The economy can handle more accommodation and more fiscal, funded by the Treasury and supported by the Fed.”

CATO Shows Joe Biden How to Flood the Labor Market for Wall Street

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden meets workers as he tours the Fiat Chrysler plant in Detroit, Michigan on March 10, 2020. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
8:34

Joe Biden’s deputies can bypass Congress and use their bureaucratic powers to open the U.S. economy to millions of foreign graduates, blue-collar workers, and chain-migration families, says a legal guidebook posted by the Cato Institute.

“The new administration should go far beyond simply rescinding [President Donald] Trump’s changes and adopt reforms that make legal immigration easier … this compilation fills a gap in the administration’s regulatory agenda,” said an op-ed in TheHill.com by David Bier, a Cato employee.

The guidebook reflects the political shift of big business from the increasingly populist GOP towards the increasingly progressive Democratic Party. The new alliance promises to spike Wall Street with a wave of government-delivered consumers and workers, albeit with minimum wages set by the Democrats.

Bier helped write the December 18 guidebook, titled “Deregulating Legal Immigration: A Blueprint for Agency Action.”

The nation’s immigration law was loosened in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson, and the annual inflow doubled in 1990 to roughly one million by President George W. Bush. The one million is a huge number in comparison to the four million Americans who turn 18 each year. In fact, wages and salaries have grown very slowly since 1970, even as the stock market has exploded the wealth of Americans with money to invest.

But Cato’s advisers are disappointed by the annual inflow of one million immigrants and the resident population of roughly two million temporary foreign workers. So they are offering Biden’s agency officials numerous options for getting many more millions of taxpayer-aided migrants into U.S. jobs, shopping malls, and apartment rentals.

For example, the one million annual limit means that many would-be immigrants — including most chain-migration family members — are forced to wait years in line to migrate into the United States’ labor market, communities, and schools.

Cato responds by suggesting the federal agencies let them in as not-quite-immigrants:

What about the 3.5 million immigrants who are waiting abroad? [immigration lawyer Cyrus] Mehta [says] the administration should “parole” — the legal term for waiving restrictions on entry — the backlog of family and employment applicants waiting in other countries. This would allow them to reunite with family and start working for U.S. companies immediately under a well-known legal authority.

The resulting inflow of migrants would boost consumer sales, raise real estate prices, cut wages, and spike profits — all of which would be good news for investors, but not Americans.

That good for Cato’s donors and board members, who include current and former principals and partners at MQS ManagementCenterview Capital HoldingsE*Trade FinancialJP Weigand & Sons, Inc., and Susquehanna International Group, LLP.

Cato’s 99o form for 2019 lists several individual donations, including three $1 million donations, one $3.6 million donations, one $1.99 million donations, as well as donations of $700,000 and $900,000.

But a wide range of politicians, business leaders, and academics admit any infusion of new labor suppresses salaries for American white-collars and blue-collars. In 2019, median family household income jumped by 7.3 percent from March 2018 to March 2019 in President Donald Trump’s popular l0wer-immigration economy, even as salaries for college graduates fell by two percent from 2016 to 2019.

But amid the current large inflow of foreign college-graduate workers, the median or midpoint income of American college graduates fell by two percent from 2016 to 2019, according to a survey released in September by the Federal Reserve banking system.

Several of the Cato proposals sketch ways employers could import hundreds of thousands of compliant foreign graduates instead of hiring outspoken American professionals.

Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer for healthcare employers, says that the agencies “should add nurses, physicians, and other health science professionals to the list of occupations eligible for a 24‐​month employment authorization extension under Optional Practical Training (OPT).”

The OPT program is now used by roughly 400,000 foreign graduates of U.S. colleges to get work permits lasting up to three years. There are no caps or barriers for foreigners to get OPT work permits, so Siskind’s plan would cut young American doctors, nurses, and therapists from starter jobs.

In fact, said Bier, the Department of Homeland Security “should issue OPT [work permit] extensions to every international student sponsored for a green card.” Again, there would are no limits to this workaround because companies already nominate many supposedly temporary foreign contract workers so they can stay and work until they get green cards, years or decades later. This green card workforce now consists of at least one million foreign graduates, including roughly 600,000 temporary workers working for many years while waiting for green cards.

Congress did not create the OPT program. It was invented by officials working for President George W. Bush. The entire program rests on a claim that Section 1324a of federal law allows the president’s Attorney General to award work permits to whomever he or she wishes and exempt the employers of those foreigners from Social Security taxes.

Many visa workers bring their wives or husbands to the United States, and they should get work permits too, says Cato. The United States Citizens and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency “has denied jobs to all other spouses and children of temporary workers not specifically authorized by Congress. It makes little sense to have foreigners residing in the United States under programs designed to enhance economic growth but who are banned from working. For that reason, USCIS should authorize all spouses and children of foreign workers to work.”

That practice would be great for companies because they could import two or more workers with one visa.

Migrants should be allowed to import millions of their own relatives if they are relabelled as refugees, says Cato:

The president should classify all beneficiaries of approved family‐​sponsored immigrant visa petitions as those of “special humanitarian concern” and allot refugee numbers equal to the number of qualifying applicants. The State Department should establish a fee to accept refugee applications directly at consulates from beneficiaries of approved family‐​sponsored immigrant visa petitions …

If they are approved, the refugees would be “resettled” by their relative, not through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, without government funds just as they would have been had they received immigrant visas.

Companies should also be allowed to import their own workers — as refugees — if Americans demand excessive wages, according to Cato:

U.S. sponsors—organizations as well as individuals—should be allowed to submit sponsorship applications directly to the State Department. They would be required to present evidence of the refugee’s status, provide a resettlement plan showing where the refugees will live for the first year after arrival, and pay a fee to cover the costs of resettlement for the first year.

Overall, open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrivals help transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American grads, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Mike Lee’s S.386 Giveaway Bill Exposes India vs. Asia Fights

migrants
AP File Photo/Jason DeCrow
8:07

Indian-origin lobbyists are rallying India’s many 

visa workers to pressure Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to 

remove his China-related amendment from Sen. 

Mike Lee’s S.386 green card giveaway bill.

“Please act IMMEDIATELY and with utmost URGENCY. We need this email to go out in LARGE numbers & for there to be a LOT of calls,” said a Facebook message from Immigration Voice, a group which has organized a very aggressive series of street protests against GOP and Democratic legislators.

The message also included a veiled threat to restart the harassment of U.S. politicians who do not pressure Scott:

We will view this as a direct intent to permanently maintain an Indian Exclusion Act in the United States, and will act accordingly in our interactions with all of our local representatives. The time has come to end our suffering and pass our bill, not to give in to every cynical attempt to block our bill from passing.

The language inserted by Sen. Scott curbs the award of green cards to Chinese migrants who remain connected with China’s Communist Party.

However, the China bar is a relatively minor feature of the disagreement over the bill.

Lee’s Senate S.386 bill and the similar House’s HR.1044 legislation, pushed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, )D-CA), would dramatically shift the nation’s employment-based immigration system in favor of Silicon Valley’s Indian workforces. Both bills would also dramatically raise the incentive for another wave of Indian graduates to take jobs from U.S. graduates in the United States. The labor inflow would also cut wages for many other American graduates in many careers.

Already, hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates get jobs each year in the United States via the uncapped Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. The OPT program offers foreigners a long, lower-wage path to the huge prize of green cards and citizenship, so creating a massive Green Card Workforce for employers.

The China bar has become the public focus of closed-door negotiations over the legislation, in part because no GOP or Democratic legislator wants to publicly defend the economic interests of U.S. graduates, many of whom have lost wages or jobs in the last year.

The politicians’ silence — and the media complicity help hide the tech sector’s lobbying campaign for the Lee bill.

President Donald Trump has not commented on the legislation, partly because some of his aides support it. But if the legislation is included in the year-end omnibus spending legislation, the Silicon Valley giveaway will end up being the only immigration law that Congress allowed him to sign, despite steep GOP losses among college graduates during the 2020 election.

The “Employment Based” portion of the nation’s immigration system provides green cards to roughly 140,000 employees (and spouses) of American companies each year. Overall, the legal immigration system brings in one million people each year, just as four million Americans leave school to look for decent jobs, homes, and families.

The closed-door, multi-cornered standoff is centered on Lee’s S.386 and Lofgren’s HR.1044 bills.

Lofgren usually champions the interest of immigration lawyers and Silicon Valley companies. But her ability to push her HR.1044 bill into the year-end legislation is complicated by Rep. Judy Chu, (D-Ca.), who champions the interest of Chinese-Americans. Chu opposes Scott’s China provision in Lee’s bill.

Lee’s bill includes the China provision because of a deal Lee made with Scott to get the bill through the Senate on December 2.

Scott opposed the Lee bill because it would largely bar Florida employers from getting green cards for their immigrant employees, who tend to come from Spanish-speaking countries south of the border or from the Caribbean.

In his deal with Lee, Scott also got Lee to agree to reserve some green cards for migrants who are not part of the one million-strong H-1B program that is widely used by Silicon Valley employers to exclude American graduates from good jobs.

Lee’s bill also includes some modest reforms of the H-1B program that were included under a prior deal with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Those Grassley reforms are inadequate to suppress the wide-scale jobs-for-sale corruption in the visa-worker sector, say reformers.

Grassley’s weak H-1B reforms are also opposed by Lofgren, according to a Hill source.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) supported Grassley’s H-1B reforms as part of his effort to expand immigration.

Major U.S. companies, including Microsoft and Google, lobbied to include the green card giveaway in the year-end legislation. If their campaign fails, advocates will have to start the entire process over again. The delay raises the modest chance that the establishment media will explain the fight.

So far, the media has remained passive throughout 2019 and 2020.

The push to include the Lee and Lofgren giveaways in the year-end legislation has also created a split among the ethnic groups and the employers’ lawyers who help import different groups of foreign workers.

For example, the Immigration Voice group says Scott’s bar on Chinese green cards is a mere symbolism and should be ignored by Chu and other legislators:

Although Immigration Voice did not ask for this provision, it is important to note that this provision is not a “Chinese Exclusion Act.” It is instead a bar of inadmissibility for green cards for people who are unwilling to un-affiliate themselves from the Chinese Communist Party or Military at the moment they are actually seeking to become immigrants to the United States and adopt American values. That is not a ban in any rational sense of the word. By contrast, the current law is, in 100% fact, an “Indian Exclusion Act.” This is because any Indian who applies for an employment-based green card will have to wait over 150 years for a green card, meaning they are 100% likely to die before ever receiving their green card.

Asian groups say the Lee and Lofgren bill will favor India’s mid-skill workers and exclude many high-skill graduates at U.S. universities.

Despite the Indian group’s claim of an “Indian Exclusion Act, at least 14,000 Indian workers and family members get green cards each year. Some get visas in a few years, but many run-of-the-mill Indians must work while waiting more than 10 years, in part, because coastal investors have jammed roughly mid-skill 400,000 Indian employees into the line for green cards. In general, industry executives hire cheap and compliant Indians because they try to exclude innovative American professionals who will likely quit to create rival products.

In October, the Immigration Voice group slammed Scott for supposedly helping China.

The Immigration Voice demand is backed up by another group of India’s lobbies, including roughly six rival groups from India’s ethnically distinct Telangana region.

Immigration lawyer Greg Siskind, however, says Scott’s curbs on Chinese green cards is a real issue:

Siskind specializes in importing medical professionals for the healthcare sector, as the sector tries to replicate Silicon Valley’s pipeline of foreign workers.

The Lee and Lofgren legislation is also opposed by lawyers who help import sports players, Spanish-speaking migrants, and other non-Indian migrants who would be forced to wait behind the vast population of Indian tech workers and their spouses.

The Lee and Lofgren bills are opposed by many other groups, including ethnic groups and high-skill postgraduate students at major U.S. research universities. If the giveaway bill passes, the industries and ethnic groups that lose out will likely unite to pressure the GOP to approve more green cards in 2021.

 

Mike Lee: GOP Doesn’t Want Coronavirus Relief Money to Be ‘Gigantic Bucket of Slush Funds’

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Friday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) provided some insight on the ongoing coronavirus relief negotiations.

Lee said Congress expects to negotiate through the weekend and possibly into early next week to reach a deal. He added that Republicans are working to ensure the funds “don’t just become a gigantic bucket of slush funds” for the Joe Biden administration to have access to an endless amount of money.

“We are told that it will spill over in through the weekend,” Lee advised. “We are told that we need to expect to be here through the week, not just into it. We are buckling down to be here all weekend and perhaps into early next week.”

“Looks like you might be doubling the number of checks. I think that Senator Hawley and — believe it or not — Bernie Sanders are pushing to get a bigger stimulus check to people in this. Also, Senator Toomey is making sure that the faucet is shut off should Joe Biden become president, and they want to make sure that it just doesn’t become the fed just giving the … Biden administration an endless array of cash,” co-host Brian Kilmeade pointed out.

“Yes, and Senator Toomey has done fantastic work in this regard to make sure that these 13(3) funds don’t just become a gigantic bucket of slush funds to be used in whatever manner the Biden administration might want to use them for,” Lee replied. “I think he has done an outstanding job with that, and he needs to be congratulated.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent


WSJ: Joe Biden’s Deputies Alarmed by Growing Tide of Migrants… Joe says keep’em comin’! We don’t want to get into a situation whereby we’re forced to pay Americans (Legals) living wages!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-bidens-open-borders-mexican-hordes.html

WHO BENEFITS FROM JOE BIDEN AND THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS’ AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS?

Start with the Mexican drug cartels which now operate in all major American cities. Their drug proceeds are laundered by some of the biggest banksters on Wall Street, all cronies of Joe Biden!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-biden-and-la-raza-mexican-drug.html

BIDEN’S GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY AGENDA OF WIDER OPEN BORDERS and no Legal need apply!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/bidens-open-borders-for-hordes-of-cheap.html

As this won't be done all at once, Biden will do his best to try to hide the politically explosive consequences from public view. The new administration will likely fail to mask the fallout of Biden's immigration pledges, but he has the Top Men in the anti-borders brain trust working on the problem.

JOE BIDEN’S BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS OLIGARCHY.... Is old Joe finished performing his ‘populist’ gig?

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/tucker-carlson-biden-oligarchy-and.html

What matters, Joe Biden wants you to know is that this is a democracy, always has been, always will be and by electing Biden and the small secretive group of billionaires who choreograph his every move, this country has become even more democratic, small seat, democratic, of course. And that’s reassuring to hear honestly because some of us were starting to get other impressions, non-democratic ones.

Pretty much the same way retired hedge fund operator, Tom Styer gets to tell you what to think about the weather, or how 78-year-old Mike Bloomberg decides which guns you can buy, or how George Soros can choose your prosecutors or how Tim Cook of Apple runs our trade policy, or how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook can keep America’s borders open just because he feels like it, but nobody says anything because his friend, fellow billionaire, Jeff Bezos owns Washington, D.C.’s hometown newspaper, and may soon buy CNN. TUCKER CARLSON

Never Trump Bill Kristol Offers to Help Joe Biden Win Amnesty

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Gage Skidmore/Flickr
4:46

Former Republican foreign-policy hawk and Never Trump die-hard Bill Kristol told Politico that he wants to help Democrats win a Capitol Hill battle over immigration.

“Never-Trump Republicans are a small but potentially important part of the overall Biden governing coalition,” Kristol said in December 17 article.

If Biden tries to pass an immigration bill, for instance, they could help by touting provisions popular with Republicans and moderates.

“It could be ads. It could be private meetings. It could be talking to business leaders or to … members of Congress,” he said. “Never-Trumpers can help the Biden administration govern successfully.”

President-elect Joe Biden has announced he wants an amnesty for the population of at least 11 million illegal aliens. Once amnestied, the vast majority of the illegal aliens will vote for big-government Democrats — and against Kristol’s goals of an aggressive foreign policy and high military spending.

Yet Kristol and his backers have a long history of supporting mass migration, supposedly to help boost the United States’ military clout.

In November 2018, Kristol posted a cheap labor plan for his New Center think tank: “Unauthorized immigrants living the U.S. should be brought out of the shadows.”

Kristol’s report also suggested that employers be allowed to freely import workers, just as President George W. Bush sought with his 2004 “Any Willing Worker” plan that would have washed away Americans’ ability to bargain for higher wages:

Immigrants can currently obtain only permanent and temporary visas, with employers often forced to fill long-term positions with temporary workers who are really de facto permanent residents. A new provisional visa would align with current economic needs by creating visas for immigrants of all skill levels who have offers of employment. The provisional visa program would increase these employees’ freedom by not tying them to their employers, and would enable them to eventually transition to lawful permanent residence. Provisional immigrants would be sponsored for threeyear visas, but could change their employer after one year. They could apply for a second three-year visa, and afterward, could adjust to lawful permanent residence.

In February 2017, Kristol, then the editor-at-large of the now-defunct Weekly Standard magazine, deemed Americans to be disposable and declared that population replacement would be best for national power:

Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?  [I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico.

During the campaign, Biden promised an amnesty, more skilled white-collar workers for the Fortune 500, plus more refugees to fill out low-wage jobs at retail stores and meatpacking plants.

If implemented, these pro-corporate labor policies will prove extremely unpopular among voters, according to numerous polls.

In 2020, President Donald Trump increased his vote total by offering a better deal for the back row, non-elite Americans — including whites, Latinos, and blacks — partly by reducing the inflow of blue-collar migrants. Those policies helped raise household media income by seven percent in 2019.

Overall, open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrivals help transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American grads, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Jump Higher Again

ATLANTA, GA - DECEMBER 15: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden speaks during a drive-in rally for U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock at Pullman Yard on December 15, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. Biden's stop in Georgia comes less than a month before the January 5 runoff election for …
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
5:07

New weekly jobless claims jumped to 885,000 in the week that ended December 12, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

The prior week’s initial claims number was revised up to 862,000 from the initial estimate of 853,000.

Economists had forecast a decline in claims to 806,000, according to Econoday.

Jobless claims can be volatile week to week so many economists prefer to look at the four-week average. This rose to 812,500 from 778,225.

Jobless claims—which are a proxy for layoffs—remain at extremely high levels. Prior to the pandemic, the highest level of claims was 695,000 hit in October of 1982. In March of 2009, at the depths of the financial crisis recession, jobless claims peaked at 665,000.

Even when the economy is creating a lot of demand for workers, many businesses will shed employees as they adjust to market conditions. But in a high-pressure labor market, those employees quickly find jobs and many never show up on the employment rolls. What appears to be happening now is that many workers who lose their jobs cannot quickly find replacement work and are forced to apply for benefits.

Claims hit a record 6.87 million for the week of March 27, more than ten times the previous record. Through spring and early summer, each subsequent week had seen claims decline. But in late July, the labor market appeared to stall and claims hovered around one million throughout August, a level so high it was never recorded before the pandemic struck. Claims moved down again in September and hade made slow, if steady, progress until the election.

New restrictions on businesses aimed at stemming the resurgence of coronavirus are likely contributing to layoffs now. Some states and cities have imposed new curfews and discouraged people from leaving home for non-essential reasons. Businesses faced with this suppressed demand will likely be forced to cut their payrolls to reflect lower sales.

The monthly jobs report released on the first Friday of December showed that hiring had slowed in November. Some sectors hardest hit by limits on capacity and social distancing, including restaurants, pared down their payrolls. Retailers expanded their payrolls by hundreds of thousands of workers to prepare for the holiday shopping season. But because they hired fewer workers than Department of Labor economists expected, this showed up as a contraction in the seasonally adjusted figures. Some of the traditional retail jobs also appear to have migrated into shipping and warehousing as shoppers moved online.

Continuing claims, those made after the first filing for benefits, get reported with a week’s lag from initial claims. For the week ended December 5, continuing claims fell 273,000 to 5,508,000. The four-week average of continuing claims was 5,726,250, a decrease of 215,500 from the previous week.

In addition to regular state unemployment benefits, the federal government this spring launched two new programs aimed at delivering benefits to workers who ordinarily would not qualify, including gig workers and the self-employed.  During the week ending November 28, 51 states reported 9,244,556 continued weekly claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and 51 states reported 4,801,408 continued claims for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending November 28 was 20,646,779, an increase of 1,603,281 from the previous week. There were 1,782,260 weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

The highest unemployment rates in the week ending November 28 were in California (7.0), New Mexico (6.7), Alaska (6.6), Hawaii (6.5), Nevada (6.1), Illinois (5.6), Puerto Rico (5.6), Pennsylvania (5.5), Massachusetts (5.4), and the Virgin Islands (5.4).

The biggest increases in initial claims were in California (+48,341), Illinois (+33,485), Texas (+22,729), Pennsylvania (+16,955), and New York (+16,814).