The Biden administration is eliminating an office that was recently created to protect many millions of American graduates — including Biden’s young voters — from government-fueled corporate discrimination in hiring, pay, and workplace rights.
The worker-rights office was announced January 13 by President Donald Trump’s deputies and canceled January 26 by Biden’s deputies.
The short-lived office was intended to document and expose the corporate discrimination against Americans that is fueled by the huge Occupational Practical Training (OPT) program.
In 2019, the OPT program provided work permits to 400,000 foreign graduates so they can take the jobs and opportunities needed by graduates — including Biden’s voters — under rules that make foreign workers much cheaper to hire and easier to manage than American graduates are. OPT workers are foreign, temporary, contract workers — not immigrants.
The Biden cancellation is bad news for the many college students and graduates who pulled the lever for Biden in November 2020, said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which fights the replacement of American graduates. “Biden was selected by the corporatocracy [which sees] no role for American graduates,” he said. American graduates “are not needed” by employers who can import many compliant, cheap, and disposable foreign workers, he said.
Correspondingly, the cancellation was celebrated by the immigration lawyers who help Fortune 500 CEOs import foreigners to take the jobs needed by young Americans, including many debt-burdened black and Latino graduates.
On the same day, the administration canceled another graduate protection plan leftover from the Trump administration.
The plan — which was blocked by corporate insiders in Trump’s White House — was to halt the award of work permits to the spouses of the almost one million H-1B foreign contract workers who have jobs in the United States. This H4EAD program was created by President Barack Obama — not by Congress — and it added another 250,000 foreign contract workers who compete for jobs against American graduates.
The cancellation was celebrated by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. He is a Twitter spokesman for the investor-backed American Immigration Council, which is a spinoff of the American Immigration Lawyers Association:
Biden’s officials have also canceled a recent move by the Department of Labor to limit the outsourcing of U.S. jobs via the huge H-1B program. They are also expected to undermine other Trump regulations that help protect American graduates from the H-1B program.
The administration’s actions match the demands of its corporate donors and cheerleaders, such as the major universities that help deliver the OPT work permit to fee-paying foreign graduates.
Biden’s team is also backed by many corporate employers of OPT and H-1B workers, including Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon, Deloitte, Microsoft, and their trade groups. For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group praised the preservation of the H4EAD program, which has helped keep married H-1B contract workers from leaving the United States:
We commend the Biden-Harris Administration for taking immediate action to turn the page from the Trump-Pence Administration’s disastrous immigration policies, and to do right by more than 100,000 hardworking immigrants who are contributing to the United States every single day in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
The FWD.us group also praised the Biden team for dropping a draft “unlawful presence” rule that would require the foreign student to go home after they get credentials from U.S. colleges. Without the rule, many foreign graduates overstay their visas and work as white-collar illegal aliens in the jobs needed by American graduates.
The Trump administration announced the OPT office on January 13.
The agency “is currently unable to evaluate the impact OPT has had on U.S. workers and foreign students who have obtained work authorization through the programs,” said the January 13 message from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program within the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
“To remedy this, SEVP is announcing the development of a new unit — the OPT Employment Compliance Unit — that will be dedicated full-time to compliance matters involving wage, hours, and compensation … the first report will be published on ICE.gov by July 31, 2021,” said the statement. It continued:
For example, if the unit were to detect evidence that an employer is using OPT in a discriminatory manner (e.g., as a means to hire only foreign nationals, or only individuals of certain nationalities to the exclusion of others), or in a manner that negatively impacts wages, this unit may notify DOL and the U.S. Department of Justice of such evidence, where HSI is unable to address such matters, so that the evidence can be investigated further.
…
The loss of employment many U.S. workers have faced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as employers lay off significant portions of their workforce (while still, in some cases, seeking to hire more foreign workers), makes this work particularly timely.
On January 26, Biden’s deputies announced they would cancel the transparency program:
After conducting an additional review of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s optional practical training (OPT) compliance effort, the program determined that it is already performing much of the work outlined in the Broadcast Message. As such, the creation of the new unit is not necessary at this time.
Before Trump’s arrival, the federal government released minimal information about the huge OPT program. In 2018, Trump’s deputies released some limited information, allowing Breitbart News and the FBI to expose widespread fraud.
But the federal government provides little information about the jobs and wages lost to the OPT program. The federal website provides some basic data about annual numbers, the major OPT employers, that the universities which profit from the OPT program. But the agency provides little data about the operation of the program, the wages paid to OPT, workers, the many small companies that use OPTs to fill Fortune 500 outsourcing contracts, or about reported hiring discrimination against Americans.
However, many foreign and American workers tell Breitbart News that the OPT program — and its sister program, the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program — provides the workforce for the lowest level of the Fortune 500’s labor pyramid.
The OPT and CPT workers — plus many white-collar illegal aliens and overstays — work long hours at meager pay because they hope to get promoted into full-time jobs and then into the H-1B program. They want to get into the H-1B program because it allows them to eventually get green cards.
The one million-plus foreign workers in this Green Card Workforce displace many American graduates from vital gateway jobs in science, software, accountancy, or health care. The flood of labor in this hidden pyramid also cuts salaries for college graduates — and boosts stock prices for investors and older Americans — including the parents and teachers of the American graduates.
For example, a group of economists estimated in January that Trump’s recent curbs on corporate use of H-1B contract workers nicked the stock market value of Fortune 500 companies “by about 0.45% — representing a total loss of around $100 billion.”
Other evidence suggests that the Fortune 500’s reliance on many foreign contract workers is sidelining qualified Americans, damaging corporate innovation, helping China, and also diverting investment, jobs, and wealth from central states to the coastal states.
But this hidden labor market is rarely covered in corporate media, such a Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, or in the pro-migration New York Times.
However, Lynn and his member of American professionals are trying to raise awareness of how the OPT program pushes young Americans out of good careers.
“The OPT work permit masquerades workers as ‘students,’ so employers are under no obligation to pay them fair market wages,” Lynn noted, adding:
The Biden Administration is under the false delusion that these international students are the best and brightest in the world, so deserve to stay here permanently. Research by the [left-wing] Economic Policy Institute shows that the majority of these students are not the best and brightest, and are entering low-ranked US universities with low entrance requirements [to get work permit]. Universities profit because international students pay full freight tuition, while American students are graduating with immense student loan debt and having to now compete with OPT work-permit holders.
The ICE data shows that the OPT program delivers many foreign workers into Fortune 500 jobs, where managers have a lot of freedom to hire within their own ethnic networks. For example, since 2003, Amazon has hired 12,173 people via the program, while Deloitte has hired 5,799 foreign graduates, and Apple has hired 2,667 people.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, nonracist, class-based, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
Migration allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, and impose tight control pay cuts on American professionals.
Migration also helps corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine Americans’ labor rights, and redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities and claims.
President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 White House bid benefited from an extensive record-breaking amount of “dark money,” according to a new report.
Bloomberg News noted earlier this week that outside political groups—not officially associated with Biden’s campaign, but working to support his chances at victory—spent and raised more than $145 million from anonymous donors.
“That amount of dark money dwarfs the $28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former President Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reported. “And it tops the previous record of $113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.”
The money, while significant, was only a fraction of the $1.5 billion spent on Biden’s behalf this last cycle. The president, himself, raised more than $1 billion through his own campaign committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A further $578 million was raised by Super PACs and other political groups. This figure includes the $145 million in “dark money” that was raised by political non-profits that are not required by law to disclose their donors.
Generally, such non-profits either raise the money and spend it themselves or transfer it to larger Super PACs working on a candidate’s behalf. Although Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with the campaigns of specific candidates, there is no limit to how much they can raise on that candidate’s behalf, provided they disclose every donor. Political non-profits, however, often act as a shield since they too can raise unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose their donors.
During the 2020 election cycle, such practices heavily benefited Democrats. The Center for Responsive Politics notes that more than $326 million in “dark money” was spent to aid Democrats this last cycle. Meanwhile, only $148 million was used to support Republican groups.
Democrats, including Biden, accepted the help from “dark money” groups, even as they argued in favor of tighter regulations on campaign spending. Biden, in particular, unveiled a proposal last year that specifically called for an “end [to] dark money groups.”
While Biden was championing that idea, though, “dark money” groups were mobilizing to see him elected president. As Breitbart News reported in October 2020, a super PAC backed by Silicon Valley donors and boosted by “dark money” spent substantially to run attack ads against Trump in the final weeks of the White House contest.
President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used his government job in 2011 to green-light a citizenship-for-sale swamp scheme that included top Democrats, Chinese investors, and $141 million.
The scandal looms large in the confirmation battle for Biden’s nominee, Alejandro Mayorkas, in part because it revives old questions about what role, if any, then-Vice President Biden’s staff may have played in that project to deliver green cards to Chinese investors.
Career officials under Mayorkas at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency tried to stop the 2011 giveaway of EB-5 green cards. A U.S. startup, GreenTech Automotive, and a visas-for-money outfit called Gulf Coast Management pushed the deal.
The McAuliffe-Nelson meeting took place in Joe Biden’s office suite, a source told Breitbart News in 2013:
Breitbart News has learned from a source that the meeting at the White House was held in the offices of Vice President Joe Biden in the Old Executive Office Building. Breitbart News has requested a list of the members of the Vice President’s staff who participated in this October 13, 2010 meeting with Terry McAuliffe, but the Vice President’s office has not responded as of the time this story was published. The circumstances surrounding the October 2010 meeting with members of Vice President Biden’s staff emphasize the very high level of political connections that characterized McAuliffe’s tenure as chairman of GreenTech Automotive.
Breitbart News added that “Rick Wade, who was hired as Senior Vice President and Head of China Operations at GreenTech Automotive in 2011, was at the time of the October 2010 meeting a top aide to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. Locke was a member of Vice President Biden’s Task Force on the Middle Class in 2009 and 2010.”
Rick Wade is currently a Senior Vice President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is cheerleading some of Biden’s immigration policies. Wade’s bio there makes no mention of his executive role at GreenTech Automotive, which ended in 2013.
The Washington Free Beacon reported, “The White House and [Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry] McAuliffe [D-VA] campaign are attempting to downplay a meeting between Terry McAuliffe and a White House official [Greg Nelson] in [October] 2010 about GreenTech.”
Greg Nelson, the White House official who hosted the meeting, sketched his job in a White House post:
Greg was Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement focused on public-private partnerships and setting up the White House’s private sector outreach, including as Deputy Director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He focused the first two years of the Administration on energy, innovation, and technology policy.
In August 2010, USCIS rejected the deal. That rejection decision was reversed, in large part, due to Mayorkas.
USCIS eventually approved the deal in September 2011, clearing the way for more than 100 Chinese nationals to receive initial approval for green cards — the first step in a path to U.S. citizenship — in return for investments that ultimately totaled $141 million in the now-bankrupt GreenTech Automotive,
Chinese national Charles Wang founded the company. He made sure to include McAuliffe as company chairman from 2010 to the end of 2012. McAuliffe is no minor figure — he was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
A subsequent report by the DHS’s Inspector General released in 2015 concluded that Mayorkas acted inappropriately to secure that reversal by subordinate DHS officials in September 2011.
The career USCIS officials pressured by Mayorkas to reverse course had concluded the GreenTech Automotive EB-5 funding scheme failed to address two key elements required by law: (1) the risk of the investment (2) the level of managerial control exercised by the investors. They also derided the business plan as “pie in the sky.”
The concerns of career USCIS officials proved well-founded. The $141 million in loans from the more than 100 Chinese nationals who received approval for green cards evaporated in a flurry of litigation, the bankruptcy of GreenTech Automotive, a defaulted loan to the State of Mississippi, and the temporary creation of just a handful of jobs for Americans in Mississippi, all of which are now long gone.
Democrats appear to be rushing Mayorkas’ confirmation process before Republicans can get the issue into the media. Press reports indicate that the Senate Homeland Security Committee may vote on his nomination as early as Tuesday morning.
Breitbart News first reported on the details of the GreenTech Automotive saga in August 2013:
[Shortly] after Terry McAuliffe became chairman of GreenTech Automotive in March 2010, a decision by the California regional director of the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) found that the manner the firm was raising money from investors [through a Regional EB-5 Center GreenTech Automotive controlled called Gulf Coast Management] was “impermissible,” which crippled the company’s ability to solicit funds from foreign investors.
Fundraising had been going well until that time. Under the terms of a 2009 Private Placement Memorandum, GreenTech Automotive obtained $2.5 million from five Chinese national EB-5 investors before McAuliffe became chairman, and an additional $5 million from ten more Chinese national EB-5 investors in McAuliffe’s first four months. With $7.5 million in cash, and prospects of an additional $5 million in loan financing from the state of Mississippi, the financial future for GreenTech Automotive seemed secure.
But when the California regional director of the USCIS determined [in August 2010] that the terms of the 2009 PPM “constituted an impermissible redemption agreement” as defined in the 1990 law that established the EB-5 foreign national investor and immigration program, the USCIS stopped approving the I-526 petitions submitted by foreign nationals who invested in GreenTech’s 2009 PPM, and the pool of Chinese investment that had been flowing into GreenTech’s coffers dried up.
On December 15, 2010, McAuliffe sent a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to reverse the August 2010 decision by career USCIS officials to deny the Gulf Coast request to “change nature of investment” and to add Virginia and Tennessee to its area of operations, which originally encompassed Mississippi and Louisiana, according to the 2015 DHS IG’s report.
On February 3, 2011, McAuliffe and Mayorkas met in person, as Breitbart News reported:
According to the New York Times, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano “popped in” to a 2011 meeting between Terry McAuliffe, at the time chairman of GreenTech Automotive, and Alejandro Mayorkas, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch, as the two men were discussing issues related to the issuance of temporary residential visas for foreign national EB-5 investors in McAuliffe’s company.
Five months later, on July 11, 2011, the Administrative Appeals Offices (AAO)–the office in USCIS responsible for appeals “prepared to issue denial Gulf Coast Appeal for three reasons: (1) providing the directors with common stock was an “impermissible redemption,” (2) investors did not have a sufficient managerial role (3) proposal did not entail a single contiguous region,” according to the 2015 DHS IG’s report.
That same day, Mayorkas said he wanted to review the decision.
On July 21, 2011, “Mayorkas chairs internal meeting, indicating he disagrees with AAO draft decision and offers to write the opinion himself,” according to the DHS IG’s report.
Three weeks later, on August 16, 2011, “Mayorkas speaks with senior official, indicating he wants to speak with AAO adjudicator.”
The following week, on August 22, 2011, “Mayorkas speaks with AAO chief, wants final decision revised quickly.”
On September 2, 2011, “AAO issues final decision denying Gulf Coast amendment because it is not geographically contiguous, but rules favorably on management control and investment risk.”
The ruling on management control and investment risk opened the EB-5 from China funding floodgates for GreenTech Automotive to get Chinese investor money through Gulf Coast Management and related entities. Over the next 12 months, from September 1, 2011, to September 1, 2012 — as Breitbart News reported, “Over the next year, according to the New York Times, an additional $25 million from 50 Chinese nationals flowed into the coffers of investment funds whose sole use of proceeds was to provide cash to GreenTech Automotive. By the end of 2013, that funding had grown to $141 million.
Richmond.com reported on the details of GreenTech Automotive’s bankruptcy filing in 2018:
The company shut down its plant in Mississippi last year, and the company has faced a series of lawsuits filed by investors in the company, who have called GreenTech a “scam perpetrated by savvy and politically connected operatives and businessmen” to exploit Chinese investors hoping to come to America.
The bankruptcy filing cites a $7.5 million judgment won by 12 investors and says several similar suits are pending.
According to its bankruptcy filing, GreenTech raised $141.5 million from investors between 2009 and 2013 as part of the EB-5 visa program that offered immigrant investors permanent residency
Mayorkas was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security in a straight party-line vote in 2014 — even though he was under investigation at the time for three EB-5 decisions by the DHS Inspector General (IG).
In 2015, following Mayorkas’ confirmation as Deputy Secretary, the DHS IG released his report that concluded Mayorkas “acted improperly.”:
In a report released Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General looked at three instances in which Alejandro Mayorkas, then-Director of USCIS but currently the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was alleged to have exerted undue influence on the processing and adjudication of Employment-Based Fifth Preference (EB-5) program benefits.
“The juxtaposition of Mr. Mayorkas’ communication with external stakeholders on specific matters outside the normal procedures, coupled with favorable action that deviated from the regulatory scheme designed to ensure fairness and evenhandedness in adjudicating benefits, created an appearance of favoritism and special access,” the IG’s report reads.
The report looked at various instances of alleged favoritism. It named Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Las Vegas Regional Center as well as an electric car company on which now-governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe was a board member and Anthony Rodham — the brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — was involved.
According to the report in each of the matters it considered, were it not for “Mr. Mayorkas’ intervention, the matter would have been decided differently.”
The IG explained that it began the investigation into Mayorkas’ interventions following a whistle-blower allegation in September 2012. The IG noted that in the course of its investigation an unusually high number of witnesses at different levels of authority, “more than 15.”
“Their allegations were unequivocal: Mr. Mayorkas gave special access and treatment to certain individuals and parties. They told us he created special processes and revised existing policies in the EB-5 program to accommodate specific parties. According to the employees, but for Mr. Mayorkas’ actions, the career staff would have decided these matters differently. Employees felt uncomfortable and pressured to comply with managers’ instructions that appeared to have come from Mr. Mayorkas or those working directly for him,” the report reads.
Overall, the employees charged that Mayorkas’ favoritism was offered to the politically connected.
“Many employees concluded, not unreasonably, that the pressure exerted on them was because the individuals involved were politically connected,” the report reads.
You can read the full report here.
The DHS Secretary at the time, Jeh Johnson, responded to the 2015 DHS IG’s report by stating “I continue to have full confidence in Ali Mayorkas. He is doing an outstanding job as Deputy Secretary. . . I believe there are lessons to be learned from the Inspector General’s report — by Ali, and all of us who are leaders in public service.”
Last week at Senate confirmation hearings, Mayorkas defended his actions while director of USCIS.
Mayorkas, while deputy secretary at DHS, was reported by multiple USCIS staffers for intervening in three specific EB-5 visa cases where foreign investors had been denied visas. In 2015, Obama’s DHS IG John Roth documented the inappropriate actions.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) asked Mayorkas about the IG report, to which the former DHS deputy secretary said it was his responsibility to “fix problems” and that he had intervened in “hundreds of cases” while leading USCIS.
“These weren’t the only three cases I was involved in,” Mayorkas said. “There were dozens and dozens.”
According to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), though, Mayorkas previously told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that he had never intervened in visa cases while at USCIS.
“I became involved in a lot of cases …. and I did my job,” Mayorkas told Johnson. “I learned of problems and I fixed them.”
Mayorkas said he learned that he must “better guard against the perception” of favoritism in visa programs where he intervenes in cases on behalf of applicants.
The group White Collar Workers of America, which advocates on behalf of American workers against U.S. job outsourcing, slammed Mayorkas for claiming to have merely fixed problems when asked about the IG report.
Subsequent to his resignation as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security in 2016, Mayorkas became a partner at the high powered Washington legal firm of Wilmer Hale:
Alejandro Mayorkas is a counselor and litigator for companies facing their most significant and sensitive matters. He has held executive leadership positions at the highest levels of the US government, and he has tried more than 35 cases to a jury. Recognized as one of the “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal, and one of the most influential Latino leaders in the nation by Latino Leaders, Mr. Mayorkas has been one of the country’s most prominent litigators and impactful government leaders in a private sector and public service career spanning more than 30 years.
Mr. Mayorkas has represented corporations in their times of crisis, often involving parallel civil, criminal, and congressional proceedings and subjects ranging from securities enforcement, consumer protection, and environmental regulation to public corruption, cybersecurity, the False Claims Act, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Building on his experience leading the US Department of Homeland Security’s response to Ebola and Zika, Mr. Mayorkas currently leads WilmerHale’s COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] Coronavirus Task Force. . .
Mr. Mayorkas joined WilmerHale in November 2016 and resumed his representation of clients in their most significant and high-stakes litigation, internal investigations, and parallel proceedings. With his diverse experience in both the public and private sectors, Mr. Mayorkas helps companies address crises that span from the courtroom to the halls of Congress and in the public eye.
According to financial disclosure documents filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics as part of the review process for his nomination to be head of DHS, Mayorkas was paid $3.3 million last year by WilmerHale. His clients included Uber, the Blackstone Group, Cisco, and Denver Great Hall LLC.
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