NAFTA JOE BIDEN - I'VE SPENT MY ENTIRE POLITICAL CAREER WORKING TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND CORPORATE PROFITS HIGH - OPEN BORDERS IS DOING IT

 

Joe Biden’s Deputies Help Foreign ‘Students’ Get Careers Needed by U.S. Graduates

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

NEIL MUNRO

4 Mar 20212

11:30

President Joe Biden’s deputies are quietly helping a large group of recent foreign graduates get U.S. white-collar jobs needed by American graduates.

The news was announced on February 26 via a statement largely incomprehensible to American graduates: “USCIS today announced flexibilities for certain foreign students affected by delayed receipt notices for Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization,” said the announcement from the United State Citizenship and Immigration Service Agency.

The changes were applauded by the foreign “students” who are eager for Americans’ jobs: “This is a welcome relief,” said a tweet from “Arjun K.”

And the foreign graduates are demanding more benefits, even though most are less skilled than American graduates. “We do appreciate the progress we made together last week,” tweeted Jade Wang. “But it hasn’t solved all problems, and there is a long way to go. Please take some measurements to speed up the approval or release the work permission temporarily.”

The processing delays under President Donald Trump helped protect Americans’ right to their own national labor market. MinnPost.com reported in July 2019:

“We’ve had students have job offers rescinded once the employer has waited as long as they could. It’s devastating to the student,” said Jacy Fry, director of the Kearney Center for International Student Services at Mankato State.

The job-giveaway is made via the little-known Optional Practical Training (OPT) program and matching Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program. In 2019, the two fraud-ridden programs provided work permits to roughly 400,000 mid-skilled and inexperienced foreign graduates for a wide variety of white-collar starter jobs — so helping to push 100,000s of American graduates out of technology, science, health care, and business jobs that could help them launch careers and earn a good living. 

Foreigners get the OPT work permits and the jobs by first enrolling in American universities — regardless of how many Americans send taxes or tuition to the same universities to earn the degrees they need for careers.

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, 2021

Media interviews spotlight the foreign graduates’ sense of entitlement to Americans’ jobs and the labor market. CNBC reported February 19:

Shantanu, 33, received his Ph.D. in structural biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in December. His OPT application arrived on Nov. 17 and he didn’t receive a filing receipt until Feb. 11. He’s still waiting for work authorization and is unable to start his postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“We invest a lot of time coming to the U.S., working in the U.S. and contributing to the U.S.,” said Shantanu, who asked to be identified only by his first name. “And after a while, when we are treated like this, it makes us wonder why we chose the U.S. in the first place.”

The programs deliver many nurses, therapists, doctors, and other healthcare workers into Americans’ jobs. CNBC reported: “Ji Hyun came to the United States from South Korea to pursue her dream of becoming an intensive care unit nurse … ‘We’re not here to steal jobs. We are here to help the economy and find our dream. It’s not to harm you or anything,’ she said. ‘We’re just trying to be here and live with everybody and have a normal life like everybody else.'”

Many American science grads do not get their desired careers after paying U.S. universities for tuition and degrees. But Taiwanese worker Wei Chen complained to CNBC: “My other peers are already doing research, experiments, publishing their results. During this time, the only thing I can do is wait.” Chen has been in the United States for five years.

The comments show that the foreigners are using their student visas to smuggle themselves into U.S. careers, said Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers. “They didn’t choose the U.S. to come to study and return home — they chose the U.S. to live and work,” he said.

The OPT and CPT programs get little publicity. Many immigration reporters do not have the editorial approval to show immigration’s impact on Americans — even on the reporters’ college-graduate friends, families, and peers.

The OPT program is strongly supported by business groups, but also by the universities, in part, because the universities get roughly $40 billion a year in tuition fees from foreign graduates who want to work in American careers.

Some OPT workers are hired from college into good jobs at elite firms, such as Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft, often via ethnic hiring networks. Once hired at elite firms, the selected graduates are typically nominated for a place in the H-1B visa program, allowing them to eventually get the huge prize of green cards.

For example, Intel has hired 6,591 foreign graduates since 2003, and Amazon has hired 12,173 foreign graduates with OPT work permits since 2003. Since 2003, Amazon has also hired 9,302 pre-graduate CPT workers, while Intel has hired 6,453 CPT workers, so helping to completely change the demographics of the company’s workforce.

Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. The newspaper provides very little coverage of the Bezos work permit programs.

The inflow of India's visa-workers creates a huge 'bonded labor' workforce that empowers Fortune 500 CEOs & shrivels professionalism, say US/India tech-professionals.
"We’ve lost our competitive, innovative advantage because of it," says US manager. #H1Bhttps://t.co/EgkcLsf4Xm

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) May 21, 2020

But most OPTs get low-profile, mid-skill, low-wage gig worker jobs at the many low-status outsourcing subcontractors that were created to help the Fortune 500 companies hire foreign graduates in place of Americans.

Few of the OPT and CPT gig workers complain about their lower-wage jobs because CEOs can fire them at will — or instead nominate them for the H-1B program and sponsor them for the prize of green cards.

Jay Palmer closely monitors this layered hiring system in his role as a human rights advocate for migrants, visa workers, and trafficked workers.

U.S. college graduates owe so much in student loans that have to work for at least $45,000 or $50,000, but the OPT worker “will come out and work for $30,000 because of the poverty levels back in their home country,” he told Breitbart News, adding:

They’ll work for 30 percent to 40 percent less than Americans can work and drive American salaries down and drive the [U.S.] college students out of work.

The [OPTs] will live very cheaply, sometimes five and seven and eight to a house. They will send their money back to their country, for example, India, Slovenia, Croatia, or China or Vietnam, Venezuela, or other countries. So it is not helping the economy because they’re not spending money here .. tax receipts decline, municipalities lose out.

And the [employers] are paying them on 1099s. The majority of them on 1099s never file their taxes. This is a huge scheme that I know that the State Department and Department of Labor is looking at. The Fortune 500 companies have their master services agreements with third-party contractors and are saying that they’re not liable for this.

If a company hires an American college graduate, the company has to pay employment tax, unemployment tax, Social Security taxes, pay their health care, all of the normal benefits. But if they hire an OPT worker, they’re hiring them through a third-party contractor, paying them on 1099s, without benefits or taxes. So their rate of return [per employee] is about 80 percent higher. They save up to 28 percent just by not paying benefits.

And the [subcontractor hourly] rates are lower. If the rate [paid by the Fortune 500 company to the subcontractor] is $50 an hour [per graduate], the workers probably end up maybe getting $20 an hour, and the subcontractors pocket the difference. That scheme is known as the layer system.

The layer system is also used to hide the Fortune 500’s hiring of white-collar illegal aliens, such as former OPT workers who overstayed their visas, he added.

Many of the OPT workers are so exploited that they can sue for unpaid pay and for green cards, said Palmer. “This falls under the [2008] Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the forced labor section. It is a very short section, about a half a page … so under the law it’s human trafficking.”

Palmer works with the Weiser Law Firm in Pennsylvania.

Overall, the layer system of U.S. companies and contractors employs roughly one million foreign graduates in a wide variety of career-starting jobs needed by Americans. This huge “Green Card Workforce” helps push Americans aside, reduces average salaries, suppresses the workplace clout of American professionals, and prevents the emergence of American-run companies that could threaten elite control over the tech sector.

It also prevents American graduates from getting starter jobs in the careers they trained for at American universities. A 2014 study by the Center for Immigration Studies reported:

• Only one-third of native-born Americans with an undergraduate STEM degree holding a job actually work in a STEM occupation.

• There are more than five million native-born Americans with STEM undergraduate degrees working in non-STEM occupations: 1.5 million with engineering degrees, half a million with technology degrees, 400,000 with math degrees, and 2.6 million with science degrees.

“The nation graduates more than two times as many STEM students each year as find jobs in STEM fields,” Hal Salzman, a public policy professor at Rutgers University, wrote in 2013.

President Joe Biden’s pending amnesty would dramatically expand the inflow of foreign graduates into American jobs. The bill would allow Fortune 500 companies to offer green cards to an unlimited number of foreign recruits in exchange for just ten years of indentured work in lower-wage jobs. The bill is also backed by university groups, including the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, 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 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.

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.

56% of male Democratic partisans favor corporate importation of skilled foreign workers — but only 35% of Democratic women are OK with the organized replacement of US graduates.
All likely voters oppose the replacement by 2:1https://t.co/Cx3savuf0d

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 22, 2021

Carney: How Can We Have Labor Shortages in an Era of Mass Unemployment?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

JOHN CARNEY

3 Mar 20215

4:25

It’s a pandemic conundrum.

Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are collecting unemployment. Fed officials say the real unemployment rate, after taking account of people working reduced hours and people miscounted as working, is close to 10 percent.

Yet businesses across the U.S. tell Fed officials they cannot find enough workers.

In the Fed’s Beige Book, a collection of anecdotes from business leaders compiled by each of the Fed’s twelve regional banks, reports of labor shortages arise over and over again.

“Employment was flat, with rising labor demand offset by labor supply constraints,” the Minneapolis Fed reported.

“A contact in St. Louis reported residential construction projects are severely backlogged due to labor and material shortages,” the St. Louis Fed wrote.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said that labor demand in the freight sector is especially strong and many firms say they would like to hire more drivers but are prevented by a shortage. Several firms in Cleveland said deliveries to customers were delayed.

Driver shortages were also reported by the Richmond Fed, the Atlanta Fed, and the Kansas City Fed.

The Kansas City Feds says the majority of contacts reported labor shortages.

“Employers in the construction, manufacturing, auto mechanics, and healthcare sectors continued to be constrained by shortages in qualified labor,” the San Francisco Fed notes.

“Labor supply shortages were noted by contacts as most acute among low-skill occupations and skilled trade positions,” the Atlanta Fed’s summary covering all 12 districts says.

So what’s going on?

Part of the problem is that employers are competing with enhanced unemployment benefits. Ordinarily, state-run unemployment insurance pays around half of what a worker got in wages and the exact amount paid is linked to what the workers wages were. But at the start of the pandemic, the federal government started chipping in hundreds of extra-dollars without regard to pre-layoff wage levels. This started out as $600 but was cut in half over the summer. But even at the lower level, a significant number of workers are getting more from benefits than they did while they working.

Another issue is the skills mismatch caused by the way the pandemic roiled the economy. The leisure and hospitality sector has been devastated. At last count, the sector employed nearly 3.9 million fewer workers than it did prepandemic. Hotel managers, bartenders, and actors who paid the rent by waiting tables cannot instantly convert into healthcare workers, home builders, or truck drivers.

In a typical downturn, people in declining industries shedding workers eventually do retrain and move into growing occupations. But the pandemic has shut down businesses that were not in decline and many workers are likely waiting to go back to the kind of jobs they had before. After all, many of the workers wanted to be in those occupations, not the ones that are trying to hire now.

Then there’s the fact that at least some of the increased demand seen in some sectors is likely temporary and may reverse as the economy reopens. In Wednesday’s Beige Book, for example, the Boston Fed says it was told by a supplier of goods to veterinary services that business has boomed because people have been adopting more pets in the pandemic. But they are worried that the heightened demand will go away when the economy reopens. In that case, it wouldn’t make sense for a hotel manager to get trained as a vet when the future demand is going to be for hotel managers.

A third factor is childcare. Many schools remain closed or partially closed. Someone has to stay home to watch the kids. That makes them unavailable for employment.

Finally, some of this is probably a bit of businesses blowing hot air. Claims of labor shortages have persisted in good times and bad for at least the last 15 years—and for much of that time wages were not rising by much. Some employers appear to experience the need to pay higher wages to attract workers as evidence of a labor shortage. Having to compete for workers with other businesses strikes some owners as unfair.

So we find ourselves like the Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s parched ancient mariner, surrounded by undrinkable sea water. Workers, workers, everywhere without anyone to hire.

Study: Biden Amnesty Would Import California-Size Foreign Population

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

2 Mar 2021666

4:19

President Joe Biden’s amnesty plan, which also expands legal immigration levels, would import a foreign population close to the size of California, new analysis reveals.

Last month, House and Senate Democrats introduced the Biden plan — known as H.R. 1177 & S. 348 — which would give amnesty to the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States while doubling annual legal immigration to the country, flooding the labor market with more foreign competition for the nation’s more than 17 million jobless Americans.

Analysis conducted by NumbersUSA, which advocates on behalf of American workers for less foreign competition in the labor market, finds that by 2031, Biden’s amnesty will have imported a foreign-born population nearly the size of California.

By 2031, the analysis states, nearly 12 million illegal aliens will have taken advantage of the amnesty provisions of the legislation that would allow them to permanently remain in the U.S. and eventually obtain American citizenship.

In addition to those amnestied, the current annual inflow of 1.2 million green card holders would be doubled to more than 2.4 million. In a 10-year period, altogether, the legislation will have brought more than 37.3 million foreign nationals to the U.S. — just two million less than the population of California.

Put differently, the Biden plan would bring a foreign-born population to the U.S. in ten years that would be more than five times the current population of Massachusetts, where 6.9 million residents live.

The overwhelming bulk of immigration within those ten years would derive from the Biden plan’s exempting spouses and minor children from family-based green card caps. By 2031, in this single category, nearly 9.4 million foreign nationals would be admitted to the U.S.

The other bulk of immigration would come from the roughly eight million illegal aliens, those who are not in specific subgroup categories, who would be able to secure green cards by 2027 and then apply for American citizenship after three years.

Such a massive wave of immigration would be a boon for corporate interests, including Wall Street, multinational corporations, real estate investors, and giant tech conglomerates who would not only benefit from an expanded labor market with cheaper labor but also from more consumers to whom they can sell goods and necessities.

Research by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota reveals that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of an American workers’ occupation, Americans’ weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent as more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

Already, current immigration levels put downward pressure on U.S. wages while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth away from America’s working and middle class and towards employers and new arrivals, research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.

Similarly, peer reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in U.S. data.” Albert’s research also finds that immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market.

The Biden plan is also wildly out of step with the opinions of most likely U.S. voters.

The latest survey from Rasmussen Reports, for instance, finds that 73 percent of voters want less legal immigration, more than six-in-ten oppose chain migration, about 64 percent oppose businesses importing foreign workers rather than recruiting Americans, and 63 percent support slowing down or fully cutting U.S. population growth driven by immigration.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

Josh Hawley: Biden ‘More Focused’ on Amnesty than Working Class Job Losses

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

22 Feb 20211,022

5:13

Sen. Josh Hawley says President Joe Biden is “more focused” on providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens than grappling with potential economic doom for America’s working class.

Last week, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced Biden’s amnesty legislation into the Senate. The plan seeks to legalize, and eventually provide American citizenship to, about 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States today.

Also, the plan is likely to double legal immigration levels — where already more than 1.2 million green cards are awarded to legal immigrants annually — even as more than 17 million Americans are jobless but wanting full-time employment.

Specifically, a McKinsey Global Institute analysis detailed by the Washington Post reveals that the overwhelming longterm economic burden, as a result of the Chinese coronavirus crisis, will be put on working and lower-middle class Americans.

The Post reports:

In a report coming out later this week that was previewed to The Washington Post, the McKinsey Global Institute says that 20 percent of business travel won’t come back and about 20 percent of workers could end up working from home indefinitely. These shifts mean fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and downtown shops, in addition to ongoing automation of office support roles and some factory jobs. [Emphasis added]

…

“We think that there is a very real scenario in which a lot of the large employment, low-wage jobs in retail and in food service just go away in the coming years,” said Susan Lund, head of the McKinsey Global Institute. “It means that we’re going to need a lot more short-term training and credentialing programs.” [Emphasis added]

…

Indeed, the number of workers in need of retraining could be in the millions, according to McKinsey and David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-wrote a report warning that automation is accelerating in the pandemic. He predicts far fewer jobs in retail, rest, car dealerships and meatpacking facilities. [Emphasis added]

Hawley, in a statement online, called Biden out for pursuing an amnesty and increased foreign competition against Americans while millions remain jobless and millions more are underemployed and potentially looking at future unemployment.

“Can’t figure out why Joe Biden is more focused on supporting illegal immigration than working Americans,” Hawley wrote on Twitter.

Can’t figure out why Joe Biden is more focused on supporting illegal immigration than working Americans

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 22, 2021

In Hawley’s home state of Missouri, unemployment is especially hitting the working and middle class. For example, Americans in construction, extraction, building and grounds cleaning, food service, production, and transportation have the highest rates of unemployment as of last month.

In contrast, those in fields like engineering, architecture, and criminal justice — all of which are vastly less likely to have to compete for jobs against foreign workers — have some of the lowest unemployment rates.

Biden’s amnesty plan is being cheered by big business, tech conglomerates, and corporate special interests who boost their profit-margins by cutting labor costs, which often begins with hiring cheaper foreign workers over Americans.

“We look forward working w/ the administration & Congress to advance these proposed solutions,” Amazon executives wrote in a statement about the amnesty.

A flooded U.S. labor market has been well documented for its wage-crushing side effects, so much so that economist George Borjas has called mass immigration to the country the “largest anti-poverty program” at the expense of America’s working and lower-middle class.

Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.”

Albert’s research also finds that immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market. Similarly, research from June 2020 on U.S. wages and the labor market shows that a continuous flow of mass immigration exerts “stronger labor market competition” on newly arrived immigrants than even native-born Americans, thus contributing to the wage gap.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), likewise, has repeatedly noted that mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages. In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for the American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”

Every year, about 1.2 million legal immigrants are given green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are annually awarded temporary visas to full U.S. jobs that would otherwise go to Americans.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.