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Posted: Oct 19, 2019 12:01 AM
America's
September unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, the lowest level since 1969, according
to the most recent Department of Labor report.
The tight
labor market is forcing companies to hire disadvantaged Americans. For
example, New
Seasons Market, a
West Coast grocery chain, is actively recruiting people with disabilities and
prior criminal records. Similarly, Custom
Equipment, a
Wisconsin manufacturing firm, recently hired several prison inmates through a
work-release program and intends to employ them full-time upon their release.
For the
first time in decades, these disadvantaged Americans are finally winning
significant pay increases. Over the past year, the lowest-paid 25 percent of
workers enjoyed faster wage growth than their higher-paid peers.
Unfortunately,
this positive trend could be short-lived. Corporate special interests are
whining about a labor shortage -- and are spending millions to lobby for higher
levels of immigration, which would supply companies with cheap, pliable
workers.
Hardworking
Americans need their leaders in Washington to see through this influence
campaign and stand up for their interests. Scaling back immigration would
further tighten the labor market, boosting wages and helping the most
disadvantaged Americans find jobs.
The U.S.
economy is the strongest it has been in years. Employers added 136,000 new jobs
in September, marking 108 months of consecutive
job growth.
But
there's still more progress to be made. Approximately 6
million Americans
are currently looking for jobs but remain unemployed. Another 4
million desire
full-time positions but are underemployed as part-time workers. Millions
more, feeling
discouraged about their bleak prospects, have abandoned the job search altogether.
Indeed, among 18 through 65-year-olds, 55
million people
aren't working.
Many of
these folks have limited or outdated skills. Others have criminal records or
disabilities. So they might require a bit more training than traditional job
applicants.
Rather
than put in this extra effort, some big businesses want to eliminate their
recruiting challenges by importing cheap foreign workers. These firms have
instructed their lobbyists to push for more immigration, which would introduce
more slack into the labor market.
The CEO
of the Chamber of Commerce recently claimed that America needs a massive
increase in immigration because we're "out of people." Chamber
officials said their lobbying efforts would center on sizeable increases to
rates of legal immigration.
The
National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile, recently released a proposal which would effectively double
the number of H-1B tech worker visas, import more seasonal low-skilled laborers
on H-2A and H-2B visas, and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
And the
agriculture industry is lobbying for a path to legalization for
illegal laborers and is seeking to expand "temporary" guest-worker
programs to include stable, year-round positions on dairy farms and meatpacking
plants -- jobs that Americans will happily fill for the right wage. The
Association of Builders and Contractors, Koch Industries, and dozens more companies
have called for similar measures.
There are
already 45
million immigrants
in the United States -- 28 million of which are employed -- and counting. More
than 650,000
people crossed
into the United States illegally in the past eight months alone, already
exceeding last fiscal year's totals. And the U.S. government grants an
additional 1 million lifetime work permits to immigrants every year.
Those
figures will skyrocket even higher if business groups get their way. Such an
expansion would hurt hardworking Americans.
The majority
of foreigners who cross the border illegally or arrive on guest worker visas
lack substantial education. Naturally, they seek out less-skilled jobs in
construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and service -- and directly compete
with the most economically vulnerable Americans. The labor surplus created by
immigration depresses the wages of native-born high school dropouts up to $1,500 each year.
Several
proposals under consideration in Washington could alleviate American workers'
woes.
A
recent bill from Senator Chuck Grassley
(R-IA) would mandate all businesses use a free, online system called E-Verify,
which determines an individual's work eligibility in mere seconds.
The
system would make it extremely difficult for employers to hire illegal
immigrants, roughly 40
percent of whom
have been paid subminimum wages at some point. Without a pool of easily abused
illegal laborers, businesses would raise pay for Americans.
Several
senators also recently introduced the Raise
Act, a bill that
would reduce future levels of legal immigration.
It's time
for our leaders in Washington to scale back both legal and illegal immigration.
By doing so, they can further tighten the labor market and force businesses to
bring less-advantaged Americans back into the workforce.
November: Foreign Workers See Nearly 5X Job Growth of Americans
Getty/AP Images
Foreign workers saw nearly five times as much job growth as native-born
American workers did last month, Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals.
WEST HOLLYWOOD WELCOME MAT FOR ILLEGALS...
Not a single employer of illegals ever prosecuted in this
LA RAZA SANCTUARY CITY where they print voting ballots in Spanish so illegals
can vote for more!
November: Foreign Workers See Nearly 5X Job Growth of Americans
13 Dec 2018421
2:22
Foreign workers saw nearly five times as much job growth as native-born
American workers did last month, Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals.
In November 2018, foreign-born
worker employment increased 5.1 percent compared to the same time last year.
Meanwhile, native-born Americans saw an employment increase of only about 1.2
percent year-to-year, almost five times less job growth as their foreign worker
competitors.
The foreign-born workforce — those
who are employed and looking for work — also had significantly higher gains
than native-born Americans. Last month, the number of foreign-born workers in
the labor force increased almost five percent. At the same time, native-born
Americans in the labor force increased only 0.66 percent.
The labor force participation rate
among foreign-born workers increased 1.2 percent, while the labor force
participation rate for native-born Americans increased only 0.2 percent from
year-to-year.
Though foreign-born workers have had significant gains in
the last three months of
President Trump’s economy, native-born Americans’ unemployment dropped by an
impressive 12.5 percent while their foreign competitors’ unemployment decreased
by 5.9 percent.
The fast-growing employment of
foreign-born workers over American citizens is exacerbated by the country’s
wage-crushing national immigration policy whereby about 1.5 million legal and
illegal immigrants are added to the U.S. population every year.
While legal immigrants continued
being admitted to the U.S. to take blue-collar working-class jobs and many
white-collar, high-paying jobs, there remain about six million Americans who
are unemployed, 12 percent of whom are teenagers and nearly six percent of whom
are black Americans.
There remain about 1.3 million workers
who have been jobless for more than two years, 4.8 million workers who are
working part time but who want full time jobs, and 1.7 million workers who want
a job, including more than 450,000 workers who are discouraged by their job
prospects.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Lobbyist for India’s Outsourcing Industry May Take Over DHS
6:24
A former lobbyist for India’s huge job-outsourcing industry is a top candidate to take over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Chad Wolf worked as a lobbyist for NASSCOM in 2016 but may be picked by President Donald Trump to replace departing chief Kevin McAleenan, sources told Breitbart News.
For a reported price of $60,000, Wolf served as a lobbyist for NASSCOM in late 2016 when he was working for Wexler & Walker, a subsidiary of Hill & Knowlton Strategies advocacy group.
NASSCOM is now lobbying Congress to lift the “country caps” that curb their use of the H-1B work visa to put Indian graduates into Americans’ office jobs.
Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee is pushing the outsourcing bill, and it would allow U.S. and Indians firms to reward 60,000 Indian workers a year with citizenship — if they agree to take Americans’ jobs at low wages. The bill would also encourage many additional Indians to take sweatshop jobs in the United States via the little-known OPT, CPT, B1, and TN work visas so they can compete for entry into the H-1B green-card program.
U.S. investors, Indian outsourcing companies, and the Indian government have put at least 600,000 Indians into U.S. college jobs — and also have sent at least one million more jobs to India — via this little-recognized “U.S.-Indian Outsourcing Economy”:
India's ambassador explains why Indian gov't & biz are pushing HR.1044 & S.386 green-card/country-caps bill. Bonus: He thanks Dem/GOP Representatives for helping India's economic strategy with vote to outsource more US graduates' jobs to Indian H-1B/OPTs. bit.ly/32RaerZ
This expanding industry is having a huge impact on the salaries and job prospects of middle-aged American professionals, just as factory-job outsourcing had a huge impact on Americans in the Midwest.
In 2017, Wolf was picked to serve as chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He got the job because he also worked at DHS for President George W. Bush, who promoted an “any willing worker” policy. The policy would have allowed U.S. employers to hire cheap workers from around the world. As Nielsen lost clout before being fired, Wolf shifted to a policy job at DHS.
Trump has several options for replacing McAleenan. The alternative candidates include Ken Cuccinelli, who now runs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Mark Morgan, who is the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Trump may also hire an outsider to help run DHS, which must build almost 500 miles of border wall before November 2020, even as it also manages the border, regulates the visa program, oversees the Secret Service, conducts diplomacy with Central American nation and also develop cyberdefenses against hackers paid by foreign governments.
NASSCOM was created in 1988 to help U.S. investors use India’s growing pool of low-wage, English-speaking graduates as H-1B workers. The group’s 28-member council includes representatives from Microsoft, Accenture, Intel, Amazon, Cisco, IBM India, Genpact India, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.
NASSCOM is important to India’s government because it brings tens of billions of dollars to India’s developing economy. In 2015, for example, India’s prime minister spoke at a NASSCOM celebration:
The group’s website says that “NASSCOM is dedicated to expanding India’s role in the global IT order by creating a conducive business environment, simplifying policies and procedures, promoting intellectual capital and strengthening the talent pool.”
NASSCOM’s U.S. and Indian companies earn stock market rewards by arbitraging the huge pay differential between U.S. and India by moving Indian graduates into U.S. jobs and U.S. jobs to Indian graduates in India. This U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy has proved so successful that salaries for U.S. graduates have grown slowly since the 1990s and are now growing slower than blue-collar salaries.
This process is described in a new discrimination lawsuit against one of the Indian-owned outsourcing firms, Larsen & Toubro Infotech.
The firm won a technology support contract from Iconix Brand Group in New York. The support was managed by one American employee of Larsen & Toubro, according to the lawsuit filed by the D.C. firm Kotchen & Low. The single American ran a New York team, which consisted of roughly eight Indians who likely arrived with H-1B visas, the lawsuit says. But the single American also ran a team of 20 Indians in India, and he reported to two Indian managers in India. So the visa programs allowed the Indian company to take roughly 30 good jobs from U.S. white-collar workers with just eight visas, according to the lawsuit.
The use of cheaper Indian labor created payroll savings for Iconix and profits for Larsen. In turn, those profits boosted the company’s stock values for U.S. investors, including the Vanguard Total International Stock Index.
Many major U.S. firms have outsourced work to India. For example, Walmart is also boosting its stock value by outsourcing 569 finance and accounting jobs in North Carolina to cheaper H-1B workers from India. If the company saves $10,000 per employee, Walmart will save $5.7 million per year. On Wall Street, Walmart’s price to earnings rate is 25 to 1, so the $5.7 million in payroll savings will boost its stockholders’ value by $142 million.
Walmart picked an American company, Genpact, to supply the foreign workers. The company is a spin-off of General Electric, and it prospers by providing Indian H-1B workers to many companies in the United States. For example, the company asked for 271 H-1Bs in 2018, 410 H-1Bs in 2017, and 307 H-1Bs in 2016. In 2018, Genpact also got 160 L-1 visas, which allow Indian employees to work in the United States at Indian-level wages.
Genpact’s $3.3 billion in revenue is enough to generate $7.5 billion in stock value for its investors, which include Bain Capital, BlackRock, and Charles Schwab Investment Management.
Walmart is hoping to expand into India, so it needs strong support from the Indian government as it competes with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon for shares of India’s huge retail market.
Sen. Mike Lee’s pro-NASSCOM legislation is stalled amid opposition from Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin.
No GOP senator has denounced Lee’s bill, and the Trump administration has not said if the president supports or opposes the legislation:
Watch GOP Sen. Mike Lee publicly urge Indian contract-workers to lobby US Senators for a bill offering fast-track citizenship to Indian grads if they take jobs (at low wages) from US grads. No GOP Sen. has rebuked him & no anti-GOP journos 'pounce.' Weird. bit.ly/2MRZyT4
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