Tuesday, May 12, 2020

THE ECONOMY DOESN'T NEED LOW-SKILLED 'CHEAP' LABOR INVADING - GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS FOR OPEN BORDERS DISAGREES!

The economy doesn't need low-skill foreign labor right now

American workers are in a terrible spot right now. The unemployment rate, 14.7%, is the worst since the Great Depression. Getting the economy back to where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic will not be easy or immediate. Small businesses likely won't have enough money to hire as many people this summer as they hoped, indicating that the unemployment rate will remain pretty high.
So what can the federal government do about it? Suspend temporary low-skill, nonimmigrant visa programs such as the H-2B, J-1 summer work travel (primarily used by foreign college students), and Q-1 programs for at least a year.
Oftentimes, businesses in popular vacation spots, such as Myrtle Beach, Cape Cod, Block Island, Bar Harbor, argue they have to hire people on these programs to avoid labor shortages. This year, there's no excuse. With the unemployment rate so high, there's nothing resembling a labor shortage this summer, especially in the industries in question.
H-2B workers tend to work in landscaping and groundskeeping, forestry, hospitality, meat and fish processing, restaurants, and construction. Common J-1 summer work travel jobs take place in hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, amusement parks, fast-food establishments, and even at pools and beaches as lifeguards. Plus, the Q-1 visa is most commonly used by Disney World to staff Epcot. The J-1 and Q-1 visas are considered cultural exchange programs, although employers use them as labor programs, making employer and employee exempt from payroll taxes. As NumbersUSA points out, employers don’t have to make any sort of effort to hire Americans before opting for J-1 and Q-1 workers. That means employers could bypass Americans in need of work and hire as many foreign workers as they please if the programs aren't suspended.
From a business standpoint, employers would be crazy to not hire foreigners with that kind of a deal on payroll taxes. It sounds like the opposite of what President Trump said during his inaugural address: “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
As for the H-2B program, it’s opposed by the AFL-CIO, which argues it depresses wages for American workers, undercutting pay for citizens by $2.59 to $3.80 per hour. It’s also important to note that companies are supposed to try to hire American workers before turning to the H-2B visa. One can question how sincere the effort is on the employers’ part, but this year, companies that say they need imported labor, for jobs Americans without high school diplomas can do, are most likely lying.
In an open letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in 2018, Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein argued that the H-2B program was harmful for workers because it typically fills jobs with unemployment rates far higher than the national average, even when the economy is strong. "The main justification cited by cheap labor-dependent businesses for increasing the H-2B cap is that there are significant labor shortages in the largest H-2B occupations,” he wrote. “In fact, the opposite is true. According to data compiled by BLS, the unemployment rate for construction is 9.7 percent, 8.9 percent in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, and 11.3 percent for farming, fishing, and forestry occupations – all much higher than the national unemployment rate, currently hovering around 4.1 percent."
That’s not to say there’s no need for anyone to come into the country on a visa. Surely, there are doctors and other healthcare workers who can help the country deal with the coronavirus, but there’s demand there. They are not taking jobs away from unemployed Americans.
Suspending these visa programs likely would not save the economy alone, but recovering from the recession will be a multistep process. At a time when many people support a temporary immigration moratorium, surely the issue of low-skill, nonimmigrant visas has to be addressed too for the same reasons.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston GlobeNewsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.

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