Biden Administration Kills Two Trump Foreign Worker Reforms
An unnamed entity to "study the abuses in the Optional Practical Training program", belatedly birthed during the last two weeks of the Trump administration, has already been killed by the Biden administration, according to Breitbart.
The entity was created on January 13 and killed on January 26, when it was less than two weeks old.
The OPT program grants 8.25 percent subsidies to U.S. employers if they hire alien graduates of U.S. colleges and universities, a subsidy not available if the employer hires a citizen (or green-card) graduate. It is a huge program covering hundreds of thousands of aliens, many hoping to get longer-term visas and jobs in the (unsubsidized) H-1B program.
To add insult to injury, the subsidies to employers are taken out of the hides of ailing, elderly, and unemployed Americans, as the nonpayment of these deductions of 8.25 percent of payroll taxes reduce income for the Medicare, Social Security, and federal unemployment insurance trust funds. At least $2 billion a year is lost in this way; the three funds are on shaky enough footings without these OPT-created losses.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has, according to one news account, decided to withdraw a Trump proposal to eliminate work permits for a specific (and large) subset of aliens, mostly from India. These are spouses (more than 90 percent of them women) married to H-1B workers who are on the long track to green card status; these are H-4s. The Obama administration, without congressional approval, made it possible for them to receive work authorizations.
One thing you can say about the H-4 program, however, is this: There are no subsidies to workers or employers.
Did I find out about these two steps backward from government press releases, or the mainstream media? Hardly.
Breitbart News is the right-wing news source started by the recently pardoned Steve Bannon, and the H-4 news was reported by the Times of India.
Biden Administration Should Enact a National Population Policy
The fifth of several occasional postings from a life-long Democrat
While the previous articles in this series have dealt with highly specific suggestions regarding parts of our immigration system, today we get into a more fundamental discussion: The nation needs an overall population policy, something we have never had.
Creating a population policy would involve recognizing such basic questions as these:
- We have 20 million or so unemployed people; do we need to import more workers?
- Can our aging infrastructure, such as our hospitals, accommodate more people?
- Wouldn't our vaccine crisis be less severe if there were fewer of us?
- Is our current tax system generating enough revenue to take care of our population-induced problems and to keep us solvent?
- More specifically, do we need more low-skilled arrivals, the kinds of workers we get through illegal immigration and, as legal migrants, through the family preferences?
To ask these questions is to answer them.
A national population policy would recognize that immigration policy is but part of a much larger picture, and one that should not be shaped by narrow (and often emotional) considerations, such as viewing ours as a "nation of immigrants" or pleas based on power plays by ethnic, commercial, or partisan interests.
Population growth has become based more on immigration than anything else, and population growth is not linked to better lives for those living in the U.S. now.
Immigration policy should be a sub-set of population policy.
North, now a resident of Arlington, Va., was his party's candidate for Congress in New Jersey's Fifth District more than 60 years ago and was, later, assistant to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and worked on immigration policy in the LBJ White House.
Is Biden Reconsidering Mass Amnesty Legislation?
The Kremlinology of the missing fact sheet and the clue in the Wall Street Journal
Shortly after the inauguration on January 20, the new White House website published a fact sheet captioned "President Biden Sends Immigration Bill to Congress as Part of His Commitment to Modernize our Immigration System". It called for an amnesty, increases in legal immigration, and an expansion of employment authorization, but no enforcement reforms. Subsequent developments raise the question of whether Biden wants immigration legislation, or just an issue. Perhaps he has changed his mind.
Why do I say that?
If you click on the link above, it will not take you to the White House website, but to a Google cache of that page as it appeared at 12:07 PM EST, or seven minutes after the new administration took effect. I cannot find it on the White House website (although "Immigration" appears on the site's "Immediate Priorities" page, only in a much more truncated manner).
The disappearance of a major policy document could occur for any number of reasons, but one of them is that it was pulled down, deliberately.
As for the part about Biden sending Congress an immigration bill, subsequent reporting suggests that may not be exact, either. On January 26, Politico, in an article captioned "Biden open to breaking his immigration bill into pieces", made the following statement:
Biden's proposal, introduced hours after he was sworn in, includes a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, expanded refugee resettlement and more technology deployed to the border. Though he is leaving Congress to hash out the mechanics of passing his immigration plan, he's also moving ahead with a slate of executive actions on Friday. [Emphasis added.]
For those not familiar with the publication, Politico is kind of a "tip sheet" for Washington insiders. It features leaks (approved and otherwise) from those on the inside in the White House and on Capitol Hill, along with other news from the federal government.
"Mechanics" in the highlighted portion can mean any number of things, from the methods that leadership plans on using to bring the bill to fruition to the actual language of the bill itself.
I note, though, that I have not actually seen any bill language implementing the plans in the missing fact sheet. Nor can I find the "U.S. Citizenship Act" (the purported name of the legislation) on the congressional website, or any other significant immigration legislation there for that matter.
I may be missing something, but this suggests either that bill language was sent by the White House and is still being reviewed by majority Democrats, or that a series of proposals were sent by the White House to be massaged into congressional language. Or maybe Democrats from the White House to Congress are regrouping.
Which brings me to a January 26 column by opinion writer William A. Galston in the Wall Street Journal, captioned "Does Biden Want a Bill or an Issue? He'll accomplish more if he makes a realistic to-do list rather than an ambitious wish list".
As I have previously alluded to, Galston, a staunch liberal, often acts as a sounding board for what insider Democrats are thinking, or he seems to, at least.
Here's what he had to say on Biden's immigration legislation:
Comprehensive immigration reform threatens to become the cap-and-trade of the Biden administration. Although the president's proposal has broad appeal within his party, Republican support is less certain. With the abolition of the filibuster apparently off the table, a comprehensive proposal lacks a viable path to passage.
Mr. Biden could pursue a strategy that has been ignored for many years by presidents of both parties: Test the waters with congressional leaders of both parties and then work with bipartisan groups in the House and Senate to determine the limits of the possible. On immigration, this approach could yield quick agreement on a bill to protect from deportation young adult "Dreamers" brought to the country as children, guarantee their legal status, and define a path to citizenship.
"Cap-and-trade" in the first paragraph refers to an Obama legislative initiative on climate regulation that consumed a lot of political capital and went nowhere in 2010, before Democrats lost control of the House in the off-year election. It is not an analogy to successful legislation.
Candidate Biden had a rather specific immigration agenda during the 2020 campaign, but it was largely ignored in the press and seemingly by voters, for whom "immigration" per se was not as big an issue as the economy, healthcare, and Covid-19. Biden's plan was there for all to see, but few people (aside from me and a few others) commented on it much.
Respectfully, Biden was not elected based on a pledge to shut down immigration enforcement or to enact an amnesty for almost every alien illegally present in the United States. He was elected because he was not Donald Trump (the tagline of his campaign was "Battle for the Soul of the Nation", seemingly admitting as much).
But Biden would not be the first candidate to mistake election for mandate. In this case, however, it has led to his first setback, as a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against DHS's plan to halt almost all removals from the United States for 100 days (which I analyzed on January 27) in contravention of a 90-day removal mandate in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Biden has long had a reputation as a "dealmaker", so a "You'll get nothing, and like it" attitude (as my colleague Mark Krikorian recently put it) toward those who recognize the need for enforcement reforms when it comes to immigration legislation is contrary to his reputation, if not his actual nature. Which makes the now-missing White House fact sheet all the more intriguing.
Perhaps its apparent trip down the memory hole, and the absence of actual immigration legislation that enshrines the proposals set forth in that fact sheet, reflects a pause in the president's consideration of the issue.
Banging on Republicans in Congress who would block amnesty legislation (to whom Galston references above) as "do-nothings" could create a wedge issue for Democratic candidates in the 2022 off-year elections for the House and Senate. Maybe not, though, because again, while immigration underpins many of the issues most important to voters, there has not been a big groundswell for such an amnesty.
Keep in mind that immigration enforcement, though, was a key issue to Donald Trump's administration (although one on which he did not campaign significantly in the last election, either), and that Trump ended up receiving 74,222,593 votes — more than any candidate in history other than Biden — even though he lost.
Sometimes, a disappointed voter becomes a discouraged one. Occasionally, however, they become even more committed. And victory can often breed complacency. No one really knows what the next election will bring.
Given all this, perhaps the White House realized that it acted hastily in releasing its now-missing fact sheet, and that a serious immigration proposal, more limited in scope and with needed reforms (such as statutory language authorizing immigration detainers and limitations on sanctuary jurisdictions, to name two) that could draw in congressional Republicans is under consideration.
Or perhaps not. Figuring out what is happening behind closed doors in Washington is often akin to "Kremlinology", best defined as "the formalized study of hard facts in a closed society, observing appointments, organization, decrees, and formal speeches". There are similar signposts in D.C. You just have to know where to look, and try to get the analysis right.
CLARK: Joe Biden’s Immigration Plan Will Impact Communities Far from Border
When we think of illegal immigration and its impact on America, opinions are sharply divided. The images invoked are “kids in cages,” large caravans, border rescues, and wild border chases between law enforcement and illegal immigrant smugglers.
The U.S. southern border is just a waypoint for migrants along a much larger journey. One that usually ends far from the deserts of Arizona, the brush country in Texas, or the beaches and mountains near San Diego.
According to the Pew Research Center, most of the undocumented immigrants within the United States live in just 20 major metropolitan areas. Ranking number one is the New York metro area which is home to 1.1 million illegal immigrants. Ranking number two is the Los Angeles metro area — home to an estimated 925,000 illegal aliens.
There is no reason to believe that future illegal immigration patterns will trend away from these select metropolitan areas considering many, including New York and Los Angeles, are sanctuary cities. What is interesting is the outward migration from these areas.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, New York’s wealthiest residents left the city in record numbers. U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicate over 126 thousand residents left New York state between July 2019 and July 2020. Many of them seeking states with no state income tax such as Texas or Florida.
The same data shows over 135,000 residents left California. Prominent tech giants Oracle and Hewlett Packard announced the relocation of operations from California to Texas. Tesla CEO Elon Musk followed suit.
So far, President Joe Biden promised an immigration plan that will include a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the shadows. His recent executive orders ending the “remain in Mexico” program, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, and his executive order reducing interior enforcement of immigration laws have all but decimated the strong anti-illegal immigration measures of the Trump administration. In essence, the welcome mat has been laid out.
So far, the new president has not defined any real position on increasing border security or that it is of any relevance to him. The Immigration Reform and Control Act contained provisions to increase the size of the U.S. Border Patrol by 50 percent each year during the two years after its passage. As a deterrent to future illegal immigration, significant employer sanctions measures were put in place. This clause was largely to garner bi-partisan support in Congress.
In stark contrast, The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which President Biden has presented to Congress, lacks any substantial enforcement strategy to curtail future illegal immigration once the amnesty portion is concluded.
Far from increasing efforts to deter future illegal immigration, a fact sheet on Biden’s immigration plan provided to reporters by the White House focuses more on providing pathways to relief from our current immigration laws than identifying ways to properly enforce them.
According to the fact sheet:
The bill codifies and funds the President’s $4 billion four-year inter-agency plan to address the underlying causes of migration in the region, including by increasing assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.
Rather than any increase in personnel needed to ready the Border Patrol to deal with the almost certain influx the bill will promote, the plan lays out enhancements to internal investigation capabilities and oversight.
The fact sheet continues:
The bill provides funding for training and continuing education to promote agent and officer safety and professionalism. It also creates a Border Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee, provides more special agents at the DHS Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate criminal and administrative misconduct, and requires the issuance of department-wide policies governing the use of force.
Much of what little the bill’s fact sheet does say about border security is related to narcotics smuggling at ports of entry and little if any definitive way towards enforcement between the ports of entry. As experience has taught us along the border, if the Border Patrol Agents are processing and caring for thousands of illegal immigrants, very few are patrolling the border. The references to smart technologies are moot if the Border Patrol cannot deploy an adequate response that smart technology will require.
What Biden’s plan does not do is change in any way the existing immigration laws that place people in the shadows in the first place. When all is said and done, it will still be a criminal offense to enter the United States illegally.
Much like the last attempt to provide relief to the illegal immigrant population in 2013 proposed by the “gang of eight,” Bidens plan will surely face significant opposition from certain members of Congress. It is far from a bi-partisan bill at this point.
The mere fact an amnesty plan has been proposed and the lax tenor of other executive actions related to immigration will have implications miles from the border. In states like New York and California, where tax revenues plummeted due to the exodus of wealthy residents, a new wave of illegal immigrants will pose significant financial impacts as they continue to battle COVID-19 and its effect on employment opportunities.
As many businesses look to automation to reduce labor costs and other businesses are suffering COVID-19-related closures, President Biden added tens of thousands of workers to the unemployment line by canceling permits to the Keystone Pipeline.
Biden’s intention to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour poses another risk to the viability of many small businesses.
Many factors influence illegal immigration to the United States. Changes in our economy or the economies abroad, security concerns, and existing employment opportunities in the home country will play a role in future migration to the United States. Although some may disagree, any hope of amnesty in the future will likely cause a future influx as well. For those who currently reside in those major metropolitan areas that historically attract most illegal immigrants, the financial impacts may be felt for years to come.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas Sector.
NYTimes to Elites: Blame Americans First for Causing Illegal Migration
Foreign migrants take American jobs illegally because the federal government will not let them take the jobs legally, according to a new article in the New York Times.
“The Reagan-era amnesty in 1986 caused only a temporary drop in the number of undocumented immigrants because it was not accompanied by a robust system for legally bringing in low-skilled workers,” said the January 27 news article by reporter Miriam Jordan.
The editor-approved headline was “The Reality Behind Biden’s Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants,” referring to illegal migrants.
The New York Times‘ perspective on illegal migration matches George W. Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” strategy, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies:
It is the business perspective that the level of immigration should be set by market conditions, that there are no limits. The desires of business and of the immigrants are the two things that determine how many immigrants come here, not the American people’s elected representatives.
The same claim was loudly made in 1990 when Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and President George H. Bush doubled the inflow of legal immigrants and visa workers in the 1990 immigration expansion act.
Nonetheless, 5.5 million illegal migrants moved into the United States from 1900 to 2000, doubling the illegal population to seven million, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security.
That illegal inflow happened even though Congress also created the blue-collar H-2A and H-2B visa worker programs in 1986 and allowed the J-1 program to quadruple during the 1990s.
The Bush/Kennedy 1990 act also allowed CEOs to push two generations of U.S. professionals out of skilled careers because it allowed the Fortune 500 CEOs to import a huge number of H-1B visa contract workers. That legal inflow still helps investors suppress competition by minimizing the number of innovative Americans and consolidating their control of the sector.
The New York Times report also downplays the civic and economic value of automating and mechanizing lower-skilled jobs, claiming that “Demographers say a shortage of blue-collar workers highlights the need for immigrants, in ever larger numbers, to perform low-skilled jobs.”
There is growing evidence that labor migration reduces pressure on investors to redirect their profits back into the productivity-boosting training, innovation, automation, and robotics that can keep lower-skilled Americans and America rich, stable, and more equal, amid growing worldwide competition.
“If the [pro-migration advocates] got their way, we would end up with the United Arab Emirates in North America,” where a wealthy elite dominates a population of imported, powerless, and replaceable workers, Krikorian said. He added:
The [advocates] just say, “Well, a rising tide raises all boats, and more immigrants mean there’s also more demand [for American workers] in the economy and so everybody wins.” There is no cost, there are no trade-offs, there are no losers, just a happy-clappy way of looking at the issue.
I think they believe [their own claims] because they don’t want to think beyond that. And [they think] people who put forth a different position are bad people and so [the different position] can’t be right because they’re bad people.
Jordan’s view is commonplace throughout the establishment — and in the White House following the election of President Joe Biden.
“President [Joe Biden] outlined his plan to reduce migration,” said a January 23 White House statement:
by … increasing [migrant] resettlement capacity and lawful alternative immigration pathways [in the United States], improving processing at the [U.S.] border to adjudicate [migrants’] requests for asylum, and reversing the previous administration’s draconian immigration policies.
“One of the things that I think is critical to remember,” said Roberta Jacobson, Biden’s newly hired coordinator for the southern border, in a June 2020 conversation with other migration advocates, is that:
The United States closed off almost every other avenue for migration from Central America, and indeed, from Mexico to the United States, which in some respects, not completely, forced people to seek asylum, right? There aren’t temporary worker programs other than agricultural and low skilled H-2A [programs], and those have struggled, frankly, to keep up with both demand and processing. And so people have sort of resorted to requesting asylum, both for legitimate reasons, but also because they don’t know of any other way to get to the United States.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the hiring of temporary contract workers into the jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, priority-driven, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory.
Americans oppose the entry of caravan migrants by 2:1 — but liberals & wealthy support the inflow.
(Do wealthy Americans find it easier to hire grateful migrants for labor than to hire Americans w/ expectations of civic respect? Has this been studied?)https://t.co/kbFGlTmNWD
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 23, 2021
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that 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 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, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of innovative American graduates, undermine Americans’ labor rights, and redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities and claims.
Jordan’s George W. Bush-like statement at the New York Times is echoed by editors at the investor-dominated Wall Street Journal.
Under a January 26 headline, “On Immigration, Compromise Beats Amnesty,” columnist Jason Riley called for investors to compromise with progressive groups:
… the amnesty debate is largely a side issue. Simply legalizing the status of these migrants—most of whom have been in the country for more than a decade—won’t solve the larger problem, which is the imbalance between the number of [worker] visas available and the number of foreigners who want them. After World War II, the federal government’s Bracero program extended work visas to Mexican migrants to address a U.S. labor shortage, and the rate of illegal immigration plummeted … The biggest failure of the 1986 amnesty under Ronald Reagan was that it did little to expand ways to come lawfully. Mr. Biden should avoid making the same mistake.
“The only answer to this [migrant pressure] quandary is to open more legal pathways,” WSJ columnist Mary Anatasia Gray wrote January 24.
The New York Times offers uncritical support for labor migration, but also it reports the spreading poverty in immigrant-dominated suburbs and cities.
On January 29, for example, the New York Times posted a detailed report showing the coronavirus’s spread through the migrant-heavy Los Angeles region:
County officials recently estimated that one in three of Los Angeles County’s roughly 10 million people have been infected with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. But even amid an uncontrolled outbreak, some Angelenos have faced higher risk than others. County data shows that Pacoima, a predominantly Latino neighborhood that has one of the highest case rates in the nation, has roughly five times the rate of Covid-19 cases as much richer and whiter Santa Monica.
…
The essential workers who risk getting sick on the job are more likely to be Latino and more likely to live in overcrowded houses and apartments without space to isolate, experts have saidthroughout the pandemic.
Their jobs — including those in warehouses, food processing plants, restaurant kitchens and factories — are likely to be lower paid, and workers are less likely to be able to take time off when they’re sick.
The large-scale use of migrant labor also leaves American workers more vulnerable to pressure from foremen and hiring managers. The Wall Street Journal reported January 5:
In a 2019 report by Barclays Research that examined data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the bank’s analysts said that opioid use in the U.S. has made workers in the industry less productive and has increased costs to the industry. While the precise number of overdose deaths in the North American construction industry is hard to determine, the workers are roughly six times more likely than workers in other manufacturing, industrial and service industries to become addicted to opioids, according to the report.
…
Mr. Anderson, a 28-year-old elevator mechanic who works in New York City, became addicted to Percocet and OxyContin when he started his first construction job framing houses at 19 years of age. He found that he could get more work done when he was high and unable to feel the strain of the job.
“I was doing my thing, doing my work, and life didn’t become a mess,” he said. “It was no harm, no foul.” Eventually, however, he found he couldn’t even get to work without the drugs and spent almost all his money on the pills. When those became too expensive or difficult to find, he switched to heroin.
Jordan’s New York Times article included a quote from a California academic who has seen his state transformed by commingled waves of cheap legal and illegal labor since 1990:
“The principle is simple: If you carry out a broad legalization [of illegal migrants], it doesn’t freeze undocumented migration flows as long as labor demand persists,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
“That’s why you need to increase the number of legal-entry opportunities, to accommodate future migrants,” Cornelius emailed Breitbart News.
However, Cornelis declined to answer any questions about the impact of a migrant-flooded labor market on the distribution of wealth and poverty throughout California and the United States.
Many investors gain from importing a population of poor, taxpayer-aided consumers.
Biden's deputies cancel DHS office for seeing signs of anti-American discrimination by CEOs who hire 350K+ imported 'OPT' contract workers.
The main victims are US graduates, incl. Biden voters.
BTW, estb. media rushed to protect OPT cheats in 2019. #H1bhttps://t.co/6O4BKaPkM1— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 27, 202
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