The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is helping U.S. graduates by ending the lottery for H-1B foreign workers that has allowed Fortune 500 CEOs to import mid-skilled, poorly-paid foreign graduates for the starter jobs needed by U.S. graduates.
The new process will allocate the annual supply of 85,000 H-1B visas to corporations that offer the highest pay. The ranking system will end the economic incentive to hire mid-skilled H-1B foreign workers instead of younger American graduates. Currently, companies, universities, and hospitals keep roughly 1 million H-1B non-immigrant contract workers in jobs which sidelined, unemployed, or underpaid American professionals need.
“What this new policy will do is encourage companies to only ask for H-1Bs to fill higher salary jobs,” not to fill the starter and mid-career jobs needed by Americans, said Kevin Lynn, the director of U.S. Tech Workers. “Under her current [lottery] system, we encourage companies to recruit the lower-wage workers,” so denying jobs to new U.S. graduates, he said.
The policy may help employers in lower-cost states, help sidelined American medical graduates get jobs , reduce universities’ ability to get foreign students into U.S. jobs , and also exclude all of the lower-skill, lower-wage foreign workers who got H-1Bs in prior years, according to Greg Siskind, a prominent immigration lawyer who opposes the new rule.
However, the beneficial reform may be trashed before it reshapes the huge H-1B graduate outsourcing program because it faces fierce opposition from Democrat-allied immigration lawyers, as well as many of President-elect Joe Biden’s allies in the Fortune 500, on Wall Street, and in the university sector .
The reform does not cover the 2021 award of 85,000 new visas because it was processed so late in President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The H-1B temporary visa program has been exploited and abused by employers primarily seeking to fill entry-level positions and reduce overall business costs,” said Joseph Edlow, the policy director at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency. He continued:
The current H-1B random selection process makes it difficult for businesses to plan their hiring, fails to leverage the program to compete for the best and brightest international workforce, and has predominately resulted in the annual influx of foreign labor placed in low-wage positions at the expense of U.S. workers.
A USCIS statement added:
The final rule will be effective 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register. DHS previously published a notice of proposed rulemaking on Nov. 2, 2020, and carefully considered the public comments received before deciding to publish the proposed regulations as a final rule.
The rule was applauded by Daniel Costa, at the left-wing Economic Policy Institute.
“This rule comes from an admin we all hate,” he tweeted , but “the substance takes a lottery that randomly allocates H-1B visas & instead prioritizes them for the highest-paid workers, which incentivizes better pay for migrants. Someone will have to explain to me why that’s bad.” Notably, Costa did not discuss the possible benefits for American graduates.
The H-1B visa, however, is just one part of a huge pyramid of imported labor that is used by U.S. investors to spike stock values and to corral their control over the technology sector .
The imported labor force exists because Congress allows companies to provide green cards to roughly 70,000 foreign workers each year. As a result, at least 1 million foreign graduates are competing in U.S. workplaces for those green cards or are waiting for promised green cards.
This foreign labor force, which is dubbed the “Green Card Workforce,” is often preferred by executives because the dangled green cards ensure that the foreign workers will work long hours for lower wages . In addition, the workers have no legal protections in the workplace and have no professional authority to disagree with CEOs, who can also gain personally when Wall Street welcomes each outsourcing decision.
Companies also crimp and slow technological domestic competition by hiring visa workers instead of American graduates. In the early 2000s, the federal government broke up an illegal “no-poaching ” cartel by tech companies who were trying to prevent their American workers from changing jobs and so sharing their expertise with rival companies. This strategy is legal if the workforce consists of H-1B workers who cannot change jobs without their managers’ permission.
Many U.S. and Indian employees tell Breitbart News that American graduates are excluded from competing from many Fortune 500 jobs so that the jobs can be traded by hiring managers to foreign workers who want to win green cards.
In 2011, for example, a California-based health insurance company fired 40 Americans to hire a larger and more expensive workforce of H-1B workers, according to testimony from a company employee in a subsequent lawsuit . In 2020, Facebook was sued by the federal government for hiring policies that discriminate against American graduates .
The labor pyramid includes H-1Bs hired by the companies and by their subcontracting companies. The categories of workers also include J-1s, TNs, OPTs, B-1/B-2s, and foreign graduates who overstay their visas. Most work for Fortune 500 companies, but they are also prominent in tech firms, universities, and increasingly in the healthcare sector.
This huge imported workforce ensures that executives rarely have to compete for American graduates by offering higher wages, even when profits are growing. A 2020 report by the Federal Reserve said median salaries for U.S. graduates fell by two percent from 2016 to 2019 as blue-collar salaries rose amid President Donald Trump’s border policies.
There is some evidence that the increasing use of visa workers is reducing U.S. technological capability , even as Chinese companies take the lead from investor-driven U.S. companies .
This growing use of this Green Card Workforce is ignored and misunderstood by the largely powerless white-collar reporters in the corporate media. Many media companies — such as the Washington Post via the lens of progressive immigration politics , even though the H-1B workers are foreign contract workers who replace white-collar Americans and who do not become immigrants until they receive a green card.
U.S. Economy Lost 140,000 Jobs in December, Unemployment Unchanged at 6.7% JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) 4:45
The U.S. economy shed 140,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate held steady at 6.7 percent, according to data released Friday.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had forecast an addition of 50,000 jobs and a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 6.8 percent.
“The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic,” the Labor Department said.
Uncertainty about control of the Senate—and, to a lesser extent, the outcome of President Donald Trump’s attempts to continue to contest the presidential election—may also have weighed on the labor market in December. Studies have shown that policy uncertainty can discourage business spending, particularly in less competitive markets. It’s likely that the shutdowns and pandemic have made many areas of the economy less competitive over the past year.
Private sector jobs fell by 95,000 in December. The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.5 percent and the total number of unemployed held steady at 10.7 million, about twice the number of unemployed persons before the pandemic.
Manufacturing added 38,000, far more than expected. Throughout the pandemic, the manufacturing sector has shown a high level of resiliency, a vindication of President Trump’s policy focus on strengthening this part of the economy. Still, the sector now employs over a half-million fewer workers than it did prior to the pandemic.
Construction added 51,000 in December, boosted by the boom in housing that has accompanied the lockdowns and rise in shootings and killings in many U.S. cities. Employment in specialty residential contractors and residential construction is one of the few sectors of the economy that employ more workers than before the pandemic.
The biggest jobs losses came in leisure and hospitality, where employment declined by 498,000, with three-quarters of the decrease in bars and restaurants. Employment in the amusements, gambling, and recreation industry fell by 92,000 and dropped in the accommodation industry by 24,000. Since February, employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 3.9 million, or 23.2 percent.
Employment in private education decreased by 63,000 in December. Employment in the industry is down by 450,000 since February.
Government employment fell by 45,000 in December thanks to a decline in local and state government employment. Federal government employment grew by 6,000. Outside of education, local government employment fell by 32,000. State government education lost 20,000 jobs. Since February, total government employment overall is down by 1.3 million.
The economy has added around 12.2 million jobs in the past eight months, a record-breaking pace after the unprecedented collapse in employment as lockdowns took hold in March and April. The increase in the ranks of employed workers shows that companies ramped up hiring as the economy reopened and consumers came back to stores, restaurants, and other businesses that had been shuttered this spring. Despite the gains, total employment in December was lower than its February level, highlighting just how deep the pandemic cut into what had been the strongest jobs markets in decades.
Hiring slowed in November and layoffs picked back up as infections, hospitalizations, and deaths surged. Many state and local governments around the country announced new restrictions on business, travel, dining, and other activities that have once again suppressed demand and discouraged growth in employment. Some businesses that held on through the first wave of shutdowns have not been able to stay in business in the second wave and much of the government aid made available earlier last year was no longer offered in December.
And even throughout the reopening layoffs have been extremely elevated, indicating that the pandemic’s effects are still ravaging the economy. A separate report on Thursday showed that 787,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits in the prior week and 790,000 in the week before that. Jobless claims can be volatile week to week so many economists prefer to look at the four-week average. This rose to 818,750, a decrease of 18,750 from the previous week’s upwardly revised level.
H-1B Foreign Workers Begin Lobbying Joe Biden to End Trump’s Reforms Drew Angerer/Getty Images 3:18
Foreign workers in the United States on the H-1B visa are thrilled about President-elect Joe Biden’s coming into office, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as they hope President Donald Trump’s reforms to the program will be thrown out.
Last year, Trump implemented a series of reforms to the H-1B visa program — which often replaces American workers with imported foreign workers in white-collar U.S. jobs — that requires the visas to be allotted based on employers offering the highest salaries and mandates federal agencies review if the program is outsourcing U.S. jobs.
Attorneys representing H-1B foreign visa workers told Quartz that their clients are excited for a Biden presidency as they hope he will throw out the reforms:
H-1B applicants are hopeful that an administration led by Biden and Kamala Harris will take a gentler and less haphazard approach.
“All of our clients are now breathing a tremendous sigh of relief as it can only get better moving forward knowing that Biden-Harris are pro-immigration,” said New York-based immigration lawyer Neil A Weinrib.
…
“Under the current administration, H-1B denials and requests for evidence (RFEs) skyrocketed, making it difficult for employers to hire foreign workers,” said Richard Burke, CEO at immigration firm Envoy Global. “H-1B hopefuls and employers alike are looking for a decrease in RFEs under a president-elect Biden administration.”
In November, huge majorities of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California said they fully expect Biden to end Trump’s reforms and increase the number of foreign workers that multinational corporations like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft can import at the expense of qualified Americans.
About 74 percent said they believe Biden will end Trump’s executive orders protecting U.S. jobs for American workers while 64 percent said Biden will increase white-collar U.S. job outsourcing. Another 66 percent said Biden will “loosen restrictions” on immigration to make it easier for corporations to outsource to foreign workers.
Quickly after the 2020 presidential election, the business lobby began asking Biden to end Trump’s reforms to the H-1B visa program in the hopes they can maximize profits by outsourcing labor.
There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of foreign H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms arrive from India.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Time to defeat Big Tech's 'jamming' of conservative communications
Over the evening and morning of 8 and 9 January 2021, these were some of the article headlines on TheGatewayPundit's home page:
...Twitter Bans President Donald Trump — PERMANENTLY
...Trump Campaign Banned From EMAILING Supporters After Being Suspended By Mail Service Provider
...YouTube Terminates Steve Bannon's War Room Podcast — One of Top Podcasts in US — Thousands were Watching at the Time!
...Google Removes Parler from App Store Amid Reports That Trump is Joining the Platform
...Big Tech Launches Massive Coordinated Cyber Attack on 74,000,000 Trump Voters — GOP SILENT
...Parler Goes Down After Trump Joins Social Media Platform — Apple Threatens to Remove Parler Unless it Enacts Draconian Censorship Policies
Similar past actions by Big Tech media-providers have been challenged as a violation of the free speech rights of conservative Americans who use these services. This argument takes defenders of free speech down a legal obstacle course of pitfalls as they try to defend a conservative's right to use media services provided by private corporations. To no avail, on October 28, 2020 Congress even held hearings with the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Google to discuss legal actions that may be brought against these companies if they continue to restrict speech. As Congress fiddles, the country continues its descent.
There is a military art known as Electronic Warfare (E.W.), which in simple terms is the ability to use an electromagnetic spectrum capability (communication, infrared and radar systems) to conduct military operations while simultaneously preventing an enemy from using those same capabilities to maneuver his forces. Military intelligence personnel of the various service branches are typically the ones employing E.W. systems in support of operations worldwide. To understand the basic tenets of E.W. takes many months of classroom and field training in highly classified settings. However, one E.W. tactic is easily understood: jamming.
In simple terms, an example of jamming is using an electronic system to broadcast a signal much stronger than the signals put out by an enemy's voice radio systems. Then all enemy radios receive your overpowering signal (such as a screeching tone over the radio), and enemy commanders can't use those radios to communicate with their forces and maneuver them on the battlefield. End result: You are using the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate while denying the enemy that ability.
With this concept in mind, re-read the headlines noted at the beginning of this article. These acts by the Big Tech media providers to deny conservatives a voice are a classic case of jamming — a military E.W. tactic. Instead of going down the free speech obstacle course defending why conservatives have a right to use Twitter, Facebook, and other media services, the better question to ask your congressional representatives is why Big Tech media incorporated in the U.S. are being permitted to conduct electronic warfare operations against U.S. citizens. What is the difference between Big Tech conducting these E.W. operations against American citizens and, say, China, Russia, or Iran hacking U.S. cell phone or email systems to shut down and deny these services for your use? Both are hostile acts and in some cases would be called acts of war. Both are wrong.
Over the coming days and weeks, if such Big Tech actions are permitted to continue, all you will hear in the media is the screeching of leftist talking points as conservative viewpoints continue to be jammed.
Given that our congressional representatives have failed to protect American citizens from such acts, we must do what old soldiers do when they hear the sound of jamming on platoon and squad radios. They don't argue their rights to use the electromagnetic spectrum. They twist the channel knob and use alternate radio frequencies, or they use other ways to communicate and thereby win the current battle.
Fighting the free speech question is a strategic battle that will take a long time (if ever) to accomplish. Win the current battle first by closing Facebook, Twitter, and Google accounts now and use alternatives in Parler, Rumble, and other services that don't suppress conservative voices. That is a tactical strategy that conservatives can take to negate the effect of enemy jamming. Change the frequency and move on to communicate with fellow conservatives. To quote that time-honored statement made by soldiers before a battle, "I will see you on the high ground" — or, in this case, anywhere but Facebook, Twitter, and Google applications.
J. Michael is the pen name of an old soldier with decades of experience in Electronic Warfare operations.
No comments:
Post a Comment