Friday, January 18, 2019

COLLEGE GRADS LAUNCH PROTEST AGAINST H-1B OUTSOURCING - WHY DOES THE CRIMINAL AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE CLASS HATE THE AMERICAN WORKER SO FUCKING MUCH?


College Grads Launch Protest Against H-1B Middle-Class Outsourcing



Trump- Hire American
AP/Susan Walsh
11:11




An expanding group of American professionals is building support for a January 26 protest against the outsourcing of middle-class jobs via the H-1B visa program.

The Protect U.S. Workers group has scheduled the protest in Connecticut, where the state’s governor is providing a subsidy to an Indian company which uses H-1B visa-workers to outsource U.S. middle-class jobs back into low-wage India.
Nationwide, the H-1B program keeps roughly 650,000 temporary foreign workers in a wide variety of technology, medical, business, and education jobs. Roughly 70 percent of the H-1B visa-workers are recruited in India, where many people will work at low wages in the hope of getting a green card via the H-1B program. The H-1B program is one of many visa plans which lowers salaries for a vast swath of American college-grads by keeping roughly 1.5 million foreign graduates in U.S.-based jobs.
The planned protest against the H-1B visa comes as the Atlantic Council published a reportslamming the H-1B visa program because it “creates new market failures and exacerbates existing ones.”
The report says the H-1B program:
has never been fixed to meet the original [1990] promises made by Congress of safeguarding US jobs. Instead, the program has been expanded to allow even larger numbers of H-1B workers, admitting them for longer periods of time, while its flawed governing rules have remained as they were in 1990.
The report is titled “Reforming US’ High-Skilled Guestworker Program.” It was written by Ron Hira and Bharath Gopalaswamy.
Dawn Casey and other activists in the group are using radio ads to promote the Connecticut protest against the H-1B program:

In October, the group used billboards to help defeat Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder, who was pushing legislation that would expand incentives for Indians to become low-wage visa workers in the United States. Yoder’s “country caps” plan was dropped by GOP leaders in December, despite lobbying by many business groups — partly because of a sharp fall in GOP support among suburban, college-educated voters.
The group is also using Twitter to encourage turnout at the protest, amid fears among American graduates that any protest will allow recruiters to blackball them from professional jobs.


The immediate target of the protest is the deal between Connecticut’s governor and an Indian company, Infosys, which is hired by many U.S. companies to transfer well-paid work and white-collar jobs to India.
A December 5, 2018, report by a local TV station described the deal:
It was Governor Elect Ned Lamont who convinced the head of Infosys to come.
“I went down on bended knee to New York probably two or three times to his office,” said Lamont. “I told him about the amazing state of Connecticut and one day he said ‘I’ll come up and take a look.’”
But it was  Governor [Daniel] Malloy who incentivized him to stay.
“We took the heat of making the financial deal and he will get the benefit of the jobs,” Gov. Malloy joked.
Infosys could get $12 million in grant money for meeting the job benchmarks [of 1,000 or 2,000 in-state jobs]. The three floor, 65,000 square foot hub was a $20.6 million project.
Under the deal, Infosys is obliged to create local jobs. But it not clear if any of the local jobs will go to local Americans because Infosys typically hires Indians, usually via the H-1B, L-1, and Optional Practical Training work-permit programs.
Many thousands of Americans’ jobs in Connecticut have been outsourced to India via the multi-year visa programs, each of which lasts from three to seven years.
In 2017, the federal government approved 2,439 new H-1B visas for companies for work in Connecticut. The total included 163 visas for Infosys, which likely has a population of 500 H1B in the state, according to government data presented by MyVisaJobs.com.
H1BFacts.com counts 14,000 H-1Bs in the state. Many of the H-1Bs are lower skilled and are paid — on paper — less than $90,000. Many reports show that many H-1B workers are paid far less than what their companies promise when they ask for the work visa.

H1BFACTS.COM
The federal government also allows foreign students and graduates to take U.S. jobs. For example, the University of Connecticut sponsored 1,133 visa workers in 2017, according to federal data. The former students are allowed to work via the huge but little-known “Optional Practical Training” program. The University of Bridgeport sponsored 1,075 workers, and Yale sponsored 961. Overall, in 2017, there were 17,000 foreign students in the state who can work for in U.S. jobs, according to federal data.
In 2017, Infosys also won visas for at least 288 L-1 workers to take jobs in the United States.

President Trump’s tweeted support for foreign H-1B outsourcing workers is a "betrayal," say college-grad supporters who lose pay & jobs to the imported workforce of 1.5 million cheap H1B/ OPT/ L-1/ etc. visa-workers. No surprise: investors are pleased. http://bit.ly/2McA2XT 

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Hilarie Gamm is the pseudonym for a software manager who has tracked outsourcing in her home state of Connecticut. In a post for the U.S. Techworkers group, she wrote:
Hartford, the state’s near-bankrupt capital, is a ghost of its former self. Never making the news is the impact of foreign labor on white-collar Connecticut professionals. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 150,000 tech workers were non-U.S. citizens working in Connecticut in 2016 …
At The Hartford Insurance Company, for example, both technology employees and IBM contractors were required to train their replacements from Tata Consultancy, the Mumbai, India-based multinational IT service, and consulting company. Mass Mutual Insurance in Enfield replaced its tech workforce with H-1B workers from Cognizant, another multinational that provides IT services, and India offshore labor.
Further, Connecticut General Life Insurance, The Prudential in Hartford, Prudential Annuities in Shelton, Aspen Insurance, Hartford Fire Insurance Company, The Travelers Insurance and Chubb Insurance all have laid off Connecticut white-collar professionals and replaced them with workers in the Philippines and India.
Financial services companies, including UBS, Citibank, RBS, Citizen’s Bank, Voya and Bank Mobile, have all laid off white-collar professionals, according to [Trade Adjustment Assistance] filings. They have been replaced with either offshore foreign employees or by a combination of H-1B visa holders here in the U.S. and offshore foreign workers provided by Cognizant, Tata and Infosys – another Indian multinational services provider.
The New Haven Register replaced their publication’s graphic designers with remote foreign workers. Thomson Reuters, Nielsen, and Unilever have all displaced Connecticut tech workers with foreign staff. Even Norwalk’s Pepperidge Farms and Milford’s Ann Taylor outsourced their accounting departments to India.

Trump praises rising wages in his economy, yet also says tech companies should be allowed hire 'top of their class' foreign graduates in place of American grads. US companies already employ roughly 1.5M college-grad visa workers, incl roughly 650K H-1Bs http://bit.ly/2FisbX9 

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One victim of the national outsourcing trend was Donna B. She is now retired to a small town in Arizona and earns so little money that she is not required to pay off the $50,000 in student loans she owes from her software education in 1989.
Divorced and with five children, “I was 36 years old when I started” in 1989, she told Breitbart News. After her first job in Connecticut, she moved to Arizona by 1993, where she met her first Indian H-1B workers. “They did not mix with any of us and could not speak English,” she said. 
In 2002, “I had my first layoff and I could not find a job anywhere for four years,” she said. She applied for a job in Boston to repeat the same work she had done in Arizona, but “I could never get an interview, I was being stalled and nothing happened.” She eventually landed a job at Caremark but was laid off in 2010 after the company merged with CVS. “The next year they brought in Indians to do exactly what I had been doing,” she said. 
“I never found a job after that … I applied for tons of jobs, tons … I never got a response except ‘Thank you for applying.’” Many of the job interviews were conducted with Indians from the outsourcing companies, each of which has an economic incentive to fill jobs with cheap Indian H-1Bs, not Americans, she said. “I’ve gotten calls and I’ve gotten emails from Indians [when applying for jobs] … It just goes nowhere,” she said. 
“Last year I retired, so my retirement is peanuts,” she said. “I live in a tiny town called Arizona City, which doesn’t have mail service.”
The Atlantic Council’s scathing report on the H-1B program offered four fixes to the H-1B program:
The first, and most important, reform is to substantially raise the wages of H-1B workers. If the United States is going to invite in the “best and brightest” workers, they ought to be paid in the top quartile. The statute requires there to be four wage levels, but it doesn’t specify how the DOL calculates those wage levels. The Labor Department should raise the Level 1 wage to the 75th percentile, to ensure that the workers being recruited are indeed highly skilled and are not undercutting US workers. This can be done through an administrative procedure, either via policy guidance or a regulation.
Second, employers should demonstrate they have actively recruited US workers, and offered positions to qualified ones, prior to turning to the H-1B program. … A recruitment requirement would also stamp out the preferential hiring practices used by many mass H-1B employers.
Third, the program needs an effective and efficient enforcement mechanism. Current program compliance is complaint-driven, resting almost entirely on whistleblowers to reduce fraud … US workers who blow the whistle risk being blackballed from the industry, and there are no cases to date in which US workers have been successful … The government can randomly select a small percentage of employers to audit each year for program compliance. To ensure compliance by all employers, sufficient punishments should be meted out, with significant consequences such as debarment for willful violators.
In addition to these three core reforms, there should be adjustments to the allocation process. It makes no sense to allocate H-1B on a first-come, first-served basis or, even worse, by random lottery—as occurs when the program is immediately oversubscribed. Instead, as the Buy American Hire American EO suggests, visas should be allocated to the best and brightest first.
Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration and visa workers to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.




‘Betrayal’: College-Grad Voters Slam Trump’s Support for H-1B Outsourcing Program



H-1B
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
 403
11:18

President Donald Trump’s tweeted support for foreign H-1B outsourcing workers is a betrayal of his American supporters, say U.S. college graduates who are losing jobs to a huge wave of cheap visa-workers.

“After I got up from the floor. I felt so sick, it was like somebody died,” said Dawn Casey, one of the leaders at Protect U.S. Workers group which wants to curb the H-1B outsourcing program. 
The H-1B tweet is politically dangerous for Trump because it threatens Casey and other suburban voters. They are critical to the 2020 campaign because top GOP leaders admit Democrats won the November 2018 campaign largely by raising their support among suburban swing-voting college graduates.
Trump tweeted:
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
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During the 2016 campaign, Casey personally handed a Trump a letter asking for reforms to the H-1B program:
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.@realDonaldTrump @Dawnnewyorker handed you a letter which intelligently and emotionally tells the truth about outsourcing, offshoring...
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Trump subsequently promised to curb — but not eliminate — the H-1B visa program, saying in March 2016, “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”
There is no rule which requires companies to hire — or even interview — Americans before hiring cheaper H-1B workers.
Casey’s Protect U.S. Workers group protested the tweet, saying, “President Trump’s messaging is NOT America First with that recent tweet. If the President does not reverse his course on this, we are afraid he will lose his re-election.”
Casey is an experienced software expert but has been pushed out of jobs — and denied jobs — when employers replace Americans with cheaper visa-workers. In June 2018, Casey spoke at a pro-American protest outside the White House:
Her group is next planning a January 26 protest in Connecticut against outsourcing to visa workers:
PROTEST AGAINST INFOSYS REPLACING AMERICAN WORKERS SATURDAY JANUARY 26th IN HARTFORD, CT ... SHARE AND SHOW UP !!! LETS PROTECT U.S. WORKERS AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK !!!!!
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But the precise meaning of Trump’s January 11 tweet is unclear, partly because business groups are pushing several plans to expand the inflow number of H-1B and other guest-workers into college graduate jobs.
The 650,000 H-1B workers in the United States are just part of the 1.5 million visa workers in the United States.
Many famous U.S. companies, universities and hospitals hire visa workers in place of willing and able American graduates.
Many additional white-collar jobs are subcontracted to foreign-run staffing firms which keep a huge pool of Indian, Chinese and Filipino college-graduate visa workers in the U.S. labor market. When a U.S. company announces a job opening, the company’s managers and subcontractors have a huge financial incentive to steer the job — legally or not — to a visa-worker at one of the many staffing companies.
This rent-instead-of-hire process creates an invisible barrier which is blocking many U.S. graduates from getting starter jobs in the technology and accounting sectors. Without good starter jobs, many American graduates flood into other sectors, such as journalism, teaching, law or sales.
The process also slams many mid-career Americans who are paid higher salaries because of their experience — and because they need the money to raise their children.
The 1.5 million visa workers are brought into the United States via the H-1B, OPT, CPT, O-1, L-1, H4EAD, TN, E-3, and J-1 visa programs. Roughly 70 percent of the visa workers are from India.
GOP legislators strongly back the visa-worker programs because of donor pressure. In contrast, Democrats condition their support of the visa programs on the CEOs’ support of various amnesty bills and immigration programs.
The visa-worker programs are largely ignored by the media, but polls show the public strongly opposes visa programs which allow companies to sideline Americans by importing foreign workers.
Casey’s group is concerned that Trump plans to revive a 2018 plan by GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder to accelerate the inflow of Indian college graduates into the U.S. economy. The “country caps” plan was opposed by the Department of Homeland Security and was dropped by GOP leaders in November once Yoder lost his Kansas seat in a district with many college graduates. Casey’s group helped defeat Yoder’s plan, but it may return with support from Trump, said Casey, adding I thought we killed it.”
GOP Reps. are still pushing Rep. Yoder's middle-class outsourcing bill to put 600K Indian visa-workers & families on fast-track to US jobs/voting. It would help CEOs import more Indians for US college-grad jobs - w/o any benefit for US workers or even GOP. http://bit.ly/2QzuoDJ 
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Business groups also want Trump to double the award of green-cards to their foreign employees by changing agency rules so that spouses and children of workers are not counted against the annual cap of 140,000 employer-sponsored green cards. The employer-sponsored green cards are a huge part of the visa-worker industry because they allow CEOs to grant the hugely valuable deferred-bonus of citizenship to visa workers who work for many years at low pay.
Trump is under rising pressure from U.S. business groups to raise the inflow of foreign workers partly because salaries are rising. The rising salaries reduce the profits which spike investors’ stock prices. For example, the NASDAQ 100 stock index of technology companies has fallen from 7,600 in September 2018 to 6,600 in mid-January 2019. 
Trump is broadly sympathetic to companies’ claim that they need to hire top-ranking foreign workers. “I get calls from the great tech companies and they’re saying we don’t allow people at the top of their class at the best schools in the country, we don’t allow them to stay in our country,” he told reporters in January. 
In practice, the vast majority of the visa workers arrive as inexperienced and cheap graduates, and many are taught on-the-job skills by the experienced Americans who are being fired to open up jobs for the visa workers. For example, federal data shows that roughly 80 percent of H-1B workers are paid far below average American salaries. 
Trump praises rising wages in his economy, yet also says tech companies should be allowed hire 'top of their class' foreign graduates in place of American grads. US companies already employ roughly 1.5M college-grad visa workers, incl roughly 650K H-1Bs http://bit.ly/2FisbX9 
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Some reports suggest Trump’s comment is merely intended to tout the minor reforms being adopted by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services division. The agency’s various reforms simplify companies’ application process for extra workers but also try to curb fraud in the fraud-ridden program, and also try to nudge up wages for foreign workers.
The division also says it has plans to end the H4EAD program created by former President Barack Obama. In 2015, the division began granting “H4EAD” work permits to 100,000 spouses of H-1B workers, even though the federal statute does not allow H-1B spouses to get work permits. But Trump’s deputies have yet to actually cancel the program, two years after Trump’s “Hire American” inauguration speech.
Casey says she is hoping Trump’s Tweet shows the glass is half full.
Trump likely posted the Tweet to gauge voter opposition to another visa giveaway, she said. “After I took the knife out of my back, I said if he was going to do it, he would have done it already,” she said. “He’s waiting for a backlash.”
The statement from Casey’s Protect U.S. Workers group is more pessimistic:
Protect U.S. Workers was really disappointed with President Trump’s tweet, whereby he showed his support for the insidious H1B visa program, that has cost many American Workers in the tech sector, their jobs.
It seems that the President has fallen victim to the lies that the tech industry is telling him that there is a shortage of so-called ‘high-skilled’ workers. If there indeed was a shortage, then the H-1B visa program would NOT be used to bring ‘high-skilled’ workers from just one country, India, nor would the average salaries of those H-1B visa workers fall under the low end entry level pay. Neither would you continue to hear stories of mass layoffs of American workers at companies like Disney, Southern Edison, Verizon, Intel, Cisco, to name a few, where not only were Americans laid off, but they were forced to train their foreign H-1B replacements.
As a group of American workers who have been displaced from their jobs and campaigned for President Trump, and his Hire American Buy American policy, we are very disappointed with the approach he is taking by rewarding the H-1B visa abusers.
We will not support the President if he continues to side with the H-1B foreign workers and the big corporations. It seems the game the President is playing now is that of ‘illegals bad, legal good’. This is not what the American voters voted for.
Voters want BOTH legal and illegal immigration to be tackled that closes all the loopholes in our broken and outdated immigration system, and a program that protects American workers first.
President Trump’s messaging is NOT America First with that recent tweet. If the President does not reverse his course on this, we are afraid he will lose his re-election.
Several members of the group, including Casey, appeared in an episode of 60 Minutes in March 2017. The show focused on Disney’s use of the H-1B program to have Americans train the outsourcing workers to take their jobs.
The responses to Trump’s Tweet highlight the political risks of flip-flopping on H-1Bs before 2020. Many worried Americans graduates denounced or raged at Trump’s Tweet:
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Hell no! My son is going to pharmacy school and they're bringing in foreign pharmacists for less pay!!!!!!
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H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
This is the Trump I voted for: "The H1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay....I will end forever the use of H1B as a cheap labor..."
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Sorry to say but you and your son will be feeling the pain that most IT workers have been suffering for last three decades if they expand . They say there is a skill shortage and bring 100s of 1000s of foreigners to fill jobs in UShttps://doctorswithoutjobs.org/category/blog/ 
I had heard the same about nurses who have completed their training yet aren't being hired.
See Peggy Cunningham's other Tweets
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Sorry, but this is VERY WRONG, VERY IGNORANT remark. H-1bs r average skilled workers stealing jobs from hardworking Americans in largest global labor racketeering scheme since Americans slavery benefiting India Fraud companies at expense of American workers. NOT AMERICANS FIRST. pic.twitter.com/IlxTCq1c2Z
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
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In contrast, many of the likes on Trump’s Tweet were posted by visa workers who are seeking a fast track to citizenship. They are not citizens and cannot vote — but the available data show that the vast majority of Indian migrants support Democrats once they become citizens.
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Great news @realDonaldTrump This time our community is looking for a permanent solution to end 150 year long wait. No more bandages. Looking forward towards the positive changes. pic.twitter.com/gaqwXnt2XV
View image on Twitter
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H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Does anyone know honestly why @realDonaldTrump is opposed to immigration? I can’t help but think that legal immigrants bring more revenue and skill to the country. I may be wrong, looking for anyone who believes otherwise.
See Rajvardhan Oak's other Tweets
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Trump’s Tweet was touted by several pro-migration groups, including the head of an Indian-run advocacy group, the Republican Hindu Coalition.
Casey responded to the Kumar Tweet, saying “HUGE BETRAYAL TO ALL AMERICAN WORKERS!”
The group’s website says it includes many members from the Telegu-language region in India and says one of its goals is to spur business development in India:
RHC members, with a significant number from the Telugu American community in the US, have a keen interest in supporting and investing in PM Modi’s “Make in India” and CM Naidu’s vision to make Andhra Pradesh to be one of the most developed and prosperous states in India. RHC members propose to partner with CM Naidu to create a new Export City that would the San Jose of India, shipping over $50 Billion dollars a year to US, $50 Billion per year to EU and also saving $30 Billion per year in imports of electronic goods from China. The new City will be built in phases and have a population of three million people.
Another group supporting Indian migration, GCReforms, endorsed Trump’s Tweet:
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Thank You @realDonaldTrump for thinking about high-skilled immigrants(Engineers,Doctors,Scientists). Please end the uncertainty, complexity & the unfair 150yr wait that 300,000 tax paying professionals & their families face while others breeze through the process in 150days! pic.twitter.com/cJLfPImaVy
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The Tweet was praised by another group of visa-workers, dubbed Skilled Immigrants In America:
H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.
Thank you, @realDonaldTrump! Looking forward to the changes. There are around 300k H1-B holders who have been in the United States for 10+ yrs with approved petitions, & several contributions to economy & society. But, no pathway to citizenship. Only 150-years wait. pic.twitter.com/r6PUZFrrgY
View image on Twitter
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Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.

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