Thursday, August 13, 2020

CAPITAL ONE - A REMINDER THAT BANKSTERS ARE SIMPLY ORGANIZED CRIME

 

Stop Seizing Paychecks, Senators Write to Capital One and Other Debt Collectors

Wage garnishments ordered before the pandemic started have continued for many workers during the recession. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown have demanded an end to the practice.

 

by Paul Kiel

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Jan. 29. Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote in letters that the nation’s largest debt collectors should suspend seizing wages “immediately.” (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

The nation’s largest debt collectors should suspend seizing wages “immediately,” two prominent senators demanded in letters sent Wednesday.

The letters came in response to a ProPublica story this month that focused on how the most prolific filers of debt collection lawsuits, Capital One and large debt buying companies, continue to garnish paychecks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While most courts shut down to new hearings in March, wage seizure orders obtained before then were allowed to continue in most places. That left some essential workers and others desperately searching for relief amid the economic downturn.

“Filing collection lawsuits and garnishing the wages of consumers already struggling to pay for basic necessities will only exacerbate the economic and public health crisis,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote.

Brown and Warren sit on the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees financial services companies. Brown is the ranking member.

Capital One largely stopped filing new suits after mid-March, but other large collectors did not stop filing new suits. Warren and Brown also wrote to Encore Capital Group and Portfolio Recovery Associates, two of the largest debt buyers in the country. Both of them continued to file suits into April and May, according to ProPublica’s review of online court databases.

In the letters, the senators also request an accounting from the companies of how many suits and wage garnishments they’ve filed this year. Because collection suits are filed in state and local courts, it’s impossible to arrive at a full accounting of such suits (although ProPublica has tried to shed light on the practice by rounding up data from various states). This makes an aggressive form of collection that affects millions of people each year largely invisible to the public. Answers from the companies may help to reveal the scope of the biggest plaintiffs’ activity.

In a statement in response to the letter, a Capital One spokesperson said: “Since the pandemic first began, we have been committed to working with all of our customers who are experiencing financial hardship as a result of COVID-19. In addition to deferring payments, offering tailored payment plans and waiving fees, we have stopped the filing of all new bank garnishments and lawsuits and have taken action to prevent the garnishment of any stimulus funds. We recognize that these are exceptional times and our policy is to work with any customer who needs help and is impacted by COVID-19.”

A spokesperson for Portfolio Recovery declined to comment, saying the company was reviewing the letter and preparing its response.

Sheryl Wright, an executive from Encore Capital's subsidiary Midland Credit Management, said, "In keeping with the long-standing hardship policy in our Consumer Bill of Rights, we suspend collections when a consumer tells us they’ve been directly impacted by COVID-19, and we stopped bank garnishments for all consumers in mid-March. For any bank garnishment that was initiated prior to the stoppage, if the consumer informs us that we inadvertently levied exempt funds, including CARES Act relief payments, we immediately initiate a refund."

 

Capital One and Other Debt Collectors Are Still Coming for Millions of Americans

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Americans got protection from evictions, foreclosures and student debt. But debt collectors have continued to siphon off their share of paychecks from those who still have jobs.

by Paul Kiel and Jeff Ernsthausen

Capital One recovered hundreds of millions of dollars of debt beyond any other card issuer last year and has continued collecting despite a global pandemic. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Since 2018, Capital One has been a looming presence in Julio Lugo’s life, ever since the company sued him, as it did 29,000 other New Yorkers that year, over an unpaid credit card. But when the coronavirus hit the city this March, it wasn’t on his mind.

At Mount Sinai in Manhattan, where he works, he’d been drafted into the hospital’s frenzied effort against the virus. He normally gathered patient information at the front desk of a radiology clinic in orderly shifts, 9 to 5. Now he was working 16-hour days, often overnight. At one moment he might be enlisted to help a team of doctors or nurses put on their full-body protective equipment and then he would rush to disinfect another team. He lost track of the days, only orienting himself by the need to juggle care with his ex-wife of their two young children who were now out of school.

But despite a global pandemic, Capital One didn’t forget about him. The company began in late March to seize a portion of his wages to collect on that debt — one that he says wasn’t even his.

Federal, state and local officials have all taken some steps to protect Americans from the ravages of the economic crash due to COVID-19. Congress halted a substantial portion of evictions, foreclosures and collection on student loans. And when it sent $300 billion in stimulus checks out to families, many states took steps to make sure that debt collectors didn’t grab the money. But one of the most aggressive and common forms of debt collection has generally been allowed to continue: seizure of wages for old consumer debts.

 

The main protection Americans have gotten from debt collectors has been inadvertent, a byproduct of state courts being closed to most hearings, including those pushed by debt collectors. But this didn’t help people like Lugo who were the target of actions that began before the closures. Wage garnishments can run indefinitely once begun. As a result, essential workers and others who were lucky enough to keep their jobs have still been at risk of forfeiting a portion of their paychecks.

No one tracks wage garnishments either federally or at the state level, and that’s a key reason they get little public attention. But ProPublica has found that it hits workers earning $40,000 or less the hardest and is particularly common in predominantly black communities. Because garnishments are set at a percentage of income (25% in most states) regardless of whether someone can afford it or not, they often provoke a financial emergency and cause the debtor to let other bills go unpaid.

While new collection activity has dropped off, some major debt collectors have been laying the groundwork for a return to normal by filing suits by the thousands, according to a ProPublica review of online court records from county and state court websites. For example, in Maryland, two major debt collectors alone filed over 2,000 suits in April.

When the courts fully reopen, as they already have in some states, these companies will be first in line to win new court judgments. Those debtors who still have jobs will be forced to either make payments or risk their wages being seized. With 48% of American households having experienced a loss of employment income in the past few months, many will have no wages to take. But debt collectors can be patient and wait until they do.

Even more worrying to consumer advocates is what lies ahead. Households often rely on credit cards during moments of financial stress. In recent months, more have been paying rent with their cards. Eventually the bill will come due, which could lead to a wave of collection suits as the nation attempts to recover.

“There’s going to be a whole swath of people who never thought they’d be in a position to default,” said Pamela Foohey, a law professor at Indiana University who argues in a recent paper with two colleagues that Congress should impose a debt collection moratorium to allow for recovery. “It’s not productive to be garnishing people’s wages when they need to pay for food and get back on track financially,” she said.

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Having Trouble With Your Rent, Mortgage or Debts? We Want to Hear From You.

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Over the past couple decades, Capital One, Lugo’s pursuer, helped lead the way in transforming the nation’s local courts into collection machines. As recently as the 1990s, these courts conformed to the picture most people have in their heads, primarily working as a venue where a judge resolved disputes between two sides represented by a lawyer. Now the most common type of case is debt collection, a recent Pew Charitable Trusts report found. Lining up against debtors who are almost never represented by an attorney, debt collection companies win millions of court judgments each year, which then allow them to seize debtors’ wages for years into the future. An old unpaid bill will fall off a credit report after seven years, but a court judgment can haunt someone forever.

While different types of plaintiffs may flood the courts in different areas (from payday lenders to nonprofit hospitals), those collecting on credit card debt have driven this trend over time, according to ProPublica’s review of court data from several states.

The change has been obvious in courts everywhere, from New York to Las Vegas (where the local court decided to give such cases their own category, “Civil – Credit Card Collection”) to rural Iowa.

“It does bother me that courts have become sort of a tool for credit card companies. We’ve just become part of their business machinery,” said Judge Chris Foy, who presides over the district court in the small town of Waverly, Iowa.

The most common plaintiffs don’t tend to be household names that advertise with bold TV campaigns: Most are debt buyers, companies that buy up bad debts in bulk. The exception is Capital One.

Aggressive debt collection is key to Capital One’s profitability. Last year, the same year the company reported $5.5 billion in net income, it recovered $1.4 billion from its card accounts that had been previously charged-off, or recognized as losses. It was a haul hundreds of millions of dollars beyond any other card issuer, even much larger ones like JPMorgan Chase.

In a statement, a Capital One spokeswoman said the bank files more suits than other banks because it makes riskier loans. According to public filings, as of the end of this year one-third of Capital One’s cardholders had a credit score under 660, generally considered the threshold that identifies those most likely to have trouble paying debts back. The bank’s current card offers for such customers carry an annual interest rate of 27%.

“Most regional, community and especially large banks retreated from the subprime segment to focus on more affluent customers, resulting in a growing population of people with less access to the banking system,” the spokeswoman said. “Capital One remains a full spectrum lender.”

“Debt collection for us is about helping customers resolve their delinquent debt and reducing losses, not making money,” she said, and the bank always attempts to work with borrowers before suing. As for Lugo’s case, the company said it couldn’t comment because it was currently in litigation.

The best estimate of the national scope of garnishments comes from ADP, the nation’s largest payroll services provider. At the request of ProPublica, ADP first undertook a study of payroll records six years ago. It followed up with a second survey in 2017. Both times, it found that 2.9% of workers had their wages garnished for consumer debts in the previous year. That works out to about 4 million nationally. Notably, both surveys were done during a period of economic expansion. In the Great Recession, between 2007 and 2009, the number of suits skyrocketed, according to ProPublica’s review of filings from several states.

Court judgments also allow collectors to seize money from bank accounts, often emptying them. But taking a portion of a paycheck is far more common, according to a ProPublica review of court data in Missouri and Georgia.

When the coronavirus outbreak hit, New York, like many other states, took several steps to protect vulnerable people, such as halting evictions or new garnishment orders. But the state let existing wage garnishments continue. Consumer advocates and the New York City Bar called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to fill that gap and suspend all garnishments. So far, he has not, despite moves by some other states, such as Nevada, to do so. In New York, plaintiffs can take up to a tenth of a debtor’s pay.

Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. hospitals are in the spotlight for being on the frontline of fighting the pandemic. But in the shadows, debt collection operations continue, often by the same institutions treating coronavirus patients, all while unemployment and uncertainty soar.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the New York State Courts, told ProPublica that garnishments were allowed to continue because “existing orders were considered essential matters.”

Those burdened with a garnishment amid the pandemic could request an emergency court hearing to have it suspended, according to guidance given to the city’s marshals, who administer garnishments. Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the marshals, said they “do everything they can to accommodate” people with hardships.

Susan Shin, legal director of the New Economy Project, a legal aid organization in New York City, said her group has been getting calls since March from New Yorkers asking for help with ongoing wage seizures. Capital One was often the plaintiff. People were afraid of risking their health to go out and seek help from the courts. “Why put someone in that position?” she said. Relatively few people who need help find their way to legal aid.

ProPublica spoke with three New Yorkers who struggled to address seizures of their pay after the pandemic hit. Although all three managed to eventually halt the garnishments with the help of a legal aid attorney, the cases show how such suits can hang over people’s lives for decades. Two of them asked ProPublica not to use their last names out of fear it would displease their employers.

Capital One, asked about the cases, said, “Our policy is to work with any customer who needs help and is impacted by COVID-19.”

Capital One sued Robert in 2007 for about $1,900. He is HIV positive and fell behind because of health issues, he said, and has been in and out of work over the years. For almost a decade, he said, he didn’t hear from Capital One. But last fall, soon after Robert began a new job, he received notice telling him to arrange payment on the debt or he would be at risk of garnishment.

He eventually struck a settlement to pay Capital One a total of $300 on a payment plan of $20 a month. But shortly after he made his first payment, he was shocked to find that his wages had been garnished anyway. The seizures continued for weeks, well into March of this year. Both Capital One and the marshal’s office told ProPublica that Robert’s employer had been sent notice not to execute the garnishment, but that it had done so anyway in error and that the checks had been promptly mailed back to the employer.

Capital One sued Grace, a social worker in Queens, in 2013 after she lost her job and fell behind on her payments. Like Robert, she said she hadn’t heard from Capital One for years. In February, she received a letter from the marshal warning her that her pay would be garnished if she did not make other arrangements to pay off her debt of $2,800.

When the virus hit and the courts largely shut down, she assumed it was a problem that could wait. “I was just trying to get by,” she said. After the garnishment started, she searched online for help and found her way to Shin, the legal aid lawyer. The money has since been returned, but Grace knows the seizures could start again when the courts reopen.

Given Lugo’s hectic days and nights working at the hospital, it wasn’t until mid-April, when 500 New Yorkers were still dying every day from the virus, that he discovered $168 missing from his latest paycheck. Although he was sued in 2018, he didn’t find out about the suit until his wages began to be garnished last year, he said. One reason is that the debt is not his, he said.

In a legal filing, with the help of a legal aid attorney, he argued that his now-deceased father likely stole his identity to take out the card. A process server falsely claimed to have served his mother with notice of the suit, he said.

The filing stopped the garnishments last year, but in early March, he missed a court hearing because it conflicted with a parent-teacher conference at his child’s school, he said. He thought the hearing would be rescheduled, but unbeknownst to him, it triggered a new garnishment.

“Being that the courts were closed, I couldn’t understand how they could just start taking out money again without letting me know,” he said.

Eventually, again with help from a legal aid attorney, he was able to stop the garnishment and get a new court date, currently set for August.

After the virus hit in March, Capital One largely suspended filing any new debt collection lawsuits. But other big debt collectors did not, including Encore Capital, the nation’s largest debt buyer. ProPublica reviewed online court filings in eight states where courts had largely stopped hearing new cases and found that Encore still filed over 1,600 lawsuits in April.

Encore reported collecting $1.3 billion in old debt in the U.S. last year and was looking forward to another good year when March came.

Encore CEO Ashish Masih told analysts last month that the company is still optimistic. Widespread unemployment and the courts closing hurt the company’s near term prospects, but Masih said this would only cause a “delay, not a permanent loss” in what the company hoped to collect in 2020. Eventually, he said, “the court processes will start working,” and “we hope to recoup about 90% of collections over time.”

In response to questions from ProPublica, Encore said that according to its company policy, “We’ve suspended collections for any consumer who lets us know they’ve been directly impacted by COVID-19.”

Across the country, courts are taking steps to resuming full function. In Arkansas, where the virus did not initially hit hard, but has been spreading faster lately, the state supreme court announced in early May that all courts could reopen to hearing any type of case starting May 18. How exactly to do this is up to local courts, and solutions range from video hearings to in-person hearings with a limited number of people in the courtroom and temperature checks before entering.

Wage garnishments in the state never stopped, said Susan Purtle, an attorney with Legal Aid of Arkansas, which serves almost half the state. That’s partly due to the large number of meat processing plants there, she said. “Those clients have continued to work,” she said, and so had wages to take.

But recently, she said, calls about new suits have been coming in. Typically, she’s seeing court hearings scheduled for July or August. Once they begin again, collectors will resume winning judgments that can be used to collect on the debtors who still have jobs. For the ones who don’t, the companies will wait until they do.

Ellis Simani contributed reporting.

THE PARASITE ECONOMY - BEVERLY HILLS LOAN SHARKS dan@beverlyloan.com

 

BLOG CONSUMER WARNING:

THE CASE OF LOAN SHARKER DAN RIFKIN OPERATING AS BEVERLY HILLS LOAN COMPANY

dan@beverlyloan.com

Beverly Loan Company

9440 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 301

Beverly Hills, CA 90210

(310) 275-2555 ext. 25

Dan@beverlyloan.com

www.beverlyloan.com

 

 

THE PARASITE ECONOMY

Do you still remember when American business did not operate on the basis of hook, crook, and steal, but had to provide an honest service or product for an honest price?

BUT NOW IT’S ALL RIGGED!

Rigged to steal money from people.

It’s really a simple paradigm they all use, and it follows that of the banksters who have stollen trillions of dollars from the American economy. The five biggest banksters alone suck out of us more than $5 billion per year on account ‘overdraft’ charges which they’ve rigged to make massively profitable. There is no real cost to rejecting a check NFS. Yet the banks suck off $35-$45 dollars each for this cash cow.

 

Banks, and virtually all businesses use deceptive means to lure consumers into their web. They offer all kinds of perks to come their way, most, if not all, are fraudulent, grossly exaggerated, or simply withdrawn once you connected your bank account with the parasite operation.

 

The American middle class didn’t die of natural causes. We were plundered and looted by the special interests who suck the blood out of this nation, buy the filthy politicians to enable and abet their crime waves. 

DAN RIFKIN IS THE CONSUMMATE LOAN SHARKER CON MAN.  He operates on a very simply and entirely parasitic paradigm to suck the blood out of consumers.

First, he offers you next to nothing for your valuable objects, such as your Cartier watches.

He charges blood sucking interest rates and other fees that are obscene in their greed. This is one greed fucker who has probably done nothing in his entire life other than parasite off people.

Once you have repaid the amount borrowed and then some, Rifkin hooks and crooks to steal your property.

Business is booming for the BEVERLY HILLS LOAN sharkers. So good they built a special elevator up the side of the building for their victims.

SOARING JOBLESS - KAMALA HARRIS WANTS MORE INDIANS TO TAKE TECH JOBS AND JOE BIDEN'S AMNESTY SO THEIR ILLEGALS CAN BRING UP THE REST OF MEXICO

 

US jobless claims fall below 1 million but remain high

In this July 9, 2020, file photo, a large video display reads "Now hiring for our new hotel coming soon!," at the new Emerald Queen Casino, which is open, and owned by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, in Tacoma, Wash. The United States added 1.8 million jobs in July, a …

The number of laid-off workers applying for unemployment aid fell below 1 million last week for the first time since the pandemic intensified five months ago, yet still remains at a high level

US jobless claims fall below 1 million but remain high
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABERAP Economics WriterThe Associated PressWASHINGTON

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment dropped below 1 million last week for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the U.S. five months ago, but layoffs are still running extraordinarily high.

The figures show that the crisis continues to throw people out of work just as the expiration of an extra $600 a week in federal jobless benefits has deepened the hardship for many — and posed another threat to the U.S. economy.

Applications for jobless benefits declined to 963,000, the second straight drop, from 1.2 million the previous week, the government said Thursday. That signals layoffs are slowing, though the weekly figure still far exceeds the pre-outbreak record of just under 700,000, set in 1982.

The virus is blamed for more than 166,000 deaths and 5.2 million confirmed infections in the U.S. — easily the highest totals in the world. The average number of new cases per day is on the rise in eight states, and deaths per day are climbing in 26, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Worldwide, the scourge has claimed more than 750,000 lives and caused over 20 million known infections.

The virus, the shutdowns meant to fight it and the reluctance or inability of many people to shop, travel or eat out continue to undermine the economy and force companies to cut staff. Over the past few months, 23 states have paused or reversed their business re-openings because of a resurgence of the virus.

Overall, fewer people are collecting unemployment, a sign that some employers are hiring. The total declined last week to 15.5 million, from 16.1 million the previous week.

“Another larger-than-expected decline in jobless claims suggests that the jobs recovery is regaining some momentum, but … much labor market progress remains to be done,” said Lydia Boussour, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

Hiring is believed to have slowed since the spring, when states reopened and millions of workers at bars, restaurants and stores were rehired. The job gain in August will probably fall short of the 1.8 million added in July, analysts say.

For months, on top of their state benefit, unemployed Americans also collected the $600 a week in federal jobless aid. But that expired at the end of July, and negotiations in Congress to extend it, probably at a lower level, have collapsed in rancor.

Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that would provide $300 a week to replace the expired $600. But experts say it could take weeks for the states to reprogram their computers and process and dispense the payments.

A crush of benefit applications earlier in the outbreak resulted in huge backlogs that left millions of the unemployed waiting. Washington state went so far as to call in the National Guard to help process applications.

Some economists say they believe the end of the $600 has contributed to the drop in unemployment claims of late. Some of the unemployed may feel less incentive to apply.

The supplemental federal aid had enabled many jobless Americans to afford rent, food and utilities, and its expiration threatens to weaken consumer spending.

Michelle Meyer, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said the loss of the additional aid will reduce Americans’ incomes by $18 billion a week.

“That’s a big hit to purchasing power,” she said.

In addition to people who applied last week for state benefits, nearly 489,000 others sought jobless aid under a new federal program that has made self-employed and gig workers eligible for the first time. That figure isn’t adjusted for seasonal trends, so it is reported separately.

Counting those receiving aid under the new program would bring to 28.2 million — roughly 18% of the U.S. workforce — the number of Americans now receiving some form of unemployment benefits.

With confirmed virus cases still high, it’s not clear when business owners will be able to reopen or will have enough customers to rehire.

Grace Della is one of them. She opened her food tour business in Miami a decade ago with $300 from her mother. On weekends, she led the tours herself and eventually built up a business with 13 guides, averaging 10 tours a day through culinary hot spots in South Beach and Little Havana.

With scant customer demand, it has been more than four months since Miami Culinary Tours has taken out guests. Della, 46, said she hopes to reopen later this month but isn’t sure she can, given the state’s high level of confirmed infections.

Della said she tries to stay positive but confesses to moments of crippling fear. At one point, hyperventilating with anxiety, she contacted firefighters.

“There’s no money coming in,” Della said. “We’re all scared.”

___

AP writer Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.

Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

2020 ElectionImmigrationPoliticsH-1B VisasJ-1L-1Mike PompeoOutsourcingU.S-India Outsourcing Economyvisa workers

  

State Dept. ‘Guts’ Donald Trump’s Curbs on Fortune 500’s Visa Workers



The state department is allowing Fortune 500 companies to freely import H-1B visa workers for jobs needed by American voters, despite President Donald Trump’s June 22 Executive Order barring nearly all visa workers.

“They have totally eviscerated the requirements” of Trump’s E.O., said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “There is no doubt about it — whoever created this is thumbing their noses at President Trump,” he said, adding, “you can bet that the guys who did this are voting for [Joe] Biden.”

‘This is an insult to the President of the United States, it is an insult to working men and women of the United States,” said Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.

There are less than 90 days to go in the election. How can he persuade Americans he’s keeping any of this 2016 promises if he allows the State Department to nullify and gut the E.O. he signed to protect Americans from [outsourcing by Fortune 500 companies]? More than that — I think it is beginning to make Trump look stupid in front of the voters. He needs to call in Pompeo and talk to him about his job prospects because [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo does not seem to give a hoot about Americans’ job prospects.

The exemptions are “expansive,” admitted Greg Siskind, a lawyer who is working to widen the pipelines of foreign doctors into U.S. hospital chains. “They are backing off … that could be good news for thousands of you guys,” he told his clients.

On August 3, Trump met with Lynn and several employees of the Tennesee Valley Authority to announce he would block the outsourcing of their jobs to H-1B workers imported by three staffing companies. Trump said:

It doesn’t work that way. As we speak, we’re 

finalizing H1-B regulations so that no 

American worker is replaced ever again.  H1-Bs

should be used for top, highly paid talent to 

create American jobs, not as inexpensive labor 

program to destroy American jobs.

On June 22, Trump signed another Executive Order to close down the pipeline of white-collar H-1B, J-1, and L-1 workers, as well as the pipeline of H-2B manual laborers. The E.O. is expected to temporarily bar the arrival of perhaps 80,000 H-1Bs, plus thousands of J-1s and L-1s, while hundreds of thousands of new graduates and fired professionals look for jobs. Trump also directed his agency deputies to write new regulations that would reduce the Fortune 500’s widespread use of visa workers as cheap labor replacements for American voters.

Trump’s intervention to save U.S. white collar jobs is very popular among millions of American voters whose futures are threatened by the Fortune 500’s preference for docile and cheap visa workers. The CEO’s workforce policy keeps at least 1.3 million foreign graduates in U.S. jobs, even amid the dramatic economic crash caused by China’s coronavirus.

The official unemployment rate for U.S. tech grads has jumped to 4.4 percent, according to an industry association. But the calculation does not count the many U.S. tech grads who were forced into lesser careers by the many visa workers in the U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy.

But the State Department’s June 12 bulletin provides a long list of many easy exemptions for Fortune 500 companies and their Indian staffing subcontractor. The document says Trump’s directions:

 … include exceptions, including an exception for individuals whose travel would be in the national interest, as determined by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or their respective designees.  The list below is a non-exclusive list of the types of travel that may be considered to be in the national interest, based on determinations made by the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, exercising the authority delegated to him by the Secretary of State.

Pompeo is the Secretary of State. Carl Risch is the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs.

The list of exemptions is very wide:

Travel by technical specialists, senior level managers, and other workers whose travel is necessary to facilitate the immediate and continued economic recovery of the United States … The petitioning employer has a continued need for the services or labor to be performed by the H-1B nonimmigrant in the United States.

Miano is an expert on visa worker laws and studied the long list of exemptions:

The first one on the list is what they needed to do to get the visas in the first place … Number 2, any of them can do that, no problem … Number 3 is totally meaningless — anyone can do that … ‘Financial Hardship’ for an employer is so loosey goosy that anyone can meet that … ‘Critical Infrastructure’ is basically anything.

Lynn was less formal;

This is effing b….. Who the f… came up with these exceptions? … You can drive a Mack truck through this …. The exemptions basically cover anyone on an H-IB or a J-1 or an L-1 …. Boom! They’re in … with all the exemptions, there is no EO — they’ve eliminated the EO through the exemptions.”

One of the most notable exemptions are for visa workers who have jobs at government agencies, usually via Indian-run staffing companies:

… individuals, identified by the Department of Defense or another U.S. government agency, performing research, providing IT support/services, or engaging other similar projects essential to a U.S. government agency.

The document also provides exemptions to foreign workers who have taken jobs from Americans in “critical infrastructure,” such as the TVA jobs blocked by Trump:

The applicant’s proposed job duties or position within the petitioning company indicate the individual will provide significant and unique contributions to an employer meeting a critical infrastructure need.  Critical infrastructure sectors are chemical, communications, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, transportation, and water systems.

“The people who are doing this are ignoring the president,” said Miano. “I can only guess at their motivations, but we can say it is Deep State acting independently.”

“In a close election, with time running out, with [2016] expectations not met … Trump needs things to go smoothly from now till November, and this list clearly he has people in the  State Department sabotaging him,” said Miano.

“When word of this gets out to the public that every E.O. he writes is not worth the paper it is written on,” said Lynn.  “Because through exceptions, they become get nullified by the Deep State, he loses the voters’ trust and confidence.”

He added: “What good is a State Department that becomes the tool of corporations that want to displace Americans, when tens of millions of Americans are under extreme financial duress?”

The State Department did not respond to emails from Breitbart News requesting comment.

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.
Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

PELOSI SAYS 'EVERYTHING I DO IS ABOUT THE CHILDREN, I MEAN, OUR ANCHOR BABIES AND ILLEGALS

 “The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD   / FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE  


Pelosi on Coronavirus Relief: ‘Everything I Do Is About the Children’ — ‘I Have Advice for Them Whether They Want It or Not’

Volume 90%

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday discussed the stalled economic relief talks in Congress.

Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump has stood in the Democrats’ way as they want to have vote-by-mail and safely reopen schools in the fall. She added that everything she does “is about the children,” and she has “advice” for children, “whether they want it or not.”

“If we’re going to educate our children, we have to have the facts in terms of what is needed, and they’re rejecting the expert recommendations of the American Association of Superintendents of Schools,” Pelosi emphasized, later adding, “It’s about the children.”

“Let me just say this … you know everything I do is about the children,” she continued. “You know, having five children of my own, nine grandchildren, I worry about everybody’s children in America, of course. I have advice for them whether they want it or not. And one of the things that is so terrible is in this epidemic because we’re saying we have to assault the virus, we have to defeat the virus, contain the virus, stop the spread, and that means we have to have testing, tracing, treatment, masks, spacing, all the rest of it. And we especially have to look into the minority community, which is suffering an undue disproportionate impact of this virus. Think of this: a Hispanic child is eight times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus than other children. Eight times. An African-American child is five times more likely to be hospitalized from the virus than other children. I mean, this is a challenge to our conscience. But, again, they refuse to face the gravity of the situation and listen to scientists and tell us what we need to do. And with their school money that they have, they want to spend the overwhelming bulk of it, in only schools that open up.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent



A DACA amnesty would put more citizen children of illegal aliens — known as “anchor babies” — on federal welfare, as Breitbart News reported, while American taxpayers would be left potentially with a $26 billion bill.

 

Additionally, about one-in-five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one-in-seven would go on Medicaid. JOHN BINDER

 

THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!

 

This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bilingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.

He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.

Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after Paying their bills and his.

The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/californias-privileged-class-mexican.html

 

 

Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people! 

 

JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL

Here’s how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/joe-american-legal-vs-la-raza-jose.html

 

THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY!

 

Staggering expensive "cheap" Mexican labor did not build this once great nation! Look what it has done to Mexico. It's all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the true cost of the invasion, their welfare, and crime tidal wave costs to the backs of the American people!

 

AMERICA: YOU’RE BETTER OFF BEING AN ILLEGAL!!!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/in-america-it-is-better-to-be-illegal.html

 

This annual income for an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.

study by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25 percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER

 

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE 

 

As Breitbart News has reported, U.S. households headed by foreign-born residents use nearly twice the welfare of households headed by native-born Americans.

Simultaneously, illegal immigration next year is on track to soar to the highest level in a decade, with a potential 600,000 border crossers expected.

 

“More than 750 million people want to migrate to another country permanently, according to Gallup research published Monday, as 150 world leaders sign up to the controversial UN global compact which critics say makes migration a human right.”  VIRGINIA HALE


For example, a DACA amnesty would cost American taxpayers about $26 billion, more than the border wall, and that does not include the money taxpayers would have to fork up to subsidize the legal immigrant relatives of DACA illegal aliens. 

 

Exclusive–Steve Camarota: Every Illegal Alien Costs Americans $70K Over Their Lifetime

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/11/exclusive-steve-camarota-every-illegal-alien-costs-americans-70k-over-their-lifetime/

 

JOHN BINDER

 Every illegal alien, over the course of their lifetime, costs American taxpayers about $70,000, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steve Camarota says.

During an interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Camarota said his research has revealed the enormous financial burden that illegal immigration has on America’s working and middle class taxpayers in terms of public services, depressed wages, and welfare.

“In a person’s lifetime, I’ve estimated that an illegal border crosser might cost taxpayers … maybe over $70,000 a year as a net cost,” Camarota said. “And that excludes the cost of their U.S.-born children, which gets pretty big when you add that in.”

LISTEN: 

“Once [an illegal alien] has a child, they can receive cash welfare on behalf of their U.S.-born children,” Camarota explained. “Once they have a child, they can live in public housing. Once they have a child, they can receive food stamps on behalf of that child. That’s how that works.”

Camarota said the education levels of illegal aliens, border crossers, and legal immigrants are largely to blame for the high level of welfare usage by the f0reign-born population in the U.S., noting that new arrivals tend to compete for jobs against America’s poor and working class communities.

In past waves of mass immigration, Camarota said, the U.S. did not have an expansive welfare system. Today’s ever-growing welfare system, coupled with mass illegal and legal immigration levels, is “extremely problematic,” according to Camarota, for American taxpayers.

The RAISE Act — reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), David Perdue (R-GA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) — would cut legal immigration levels in half and convert the immigration system to favor well-educated foreign nationals, thus relieving American workers and taxpayers of the nearly five-decade-long wave of booming immigration. Currently, mass legal immigration redistributes the wealth of working and middle class Americans to the country’s top earners.

“Virtually none of that existed in 1900 during the last great wave of immigration, when we also took in a number of poor people. We didn’t have a well-developed welfare state,” Camarota continued:

We’re not going to stop [the welfare state] tomorrow. So in that context, bringing in less educated people who are poor is extremely problematic for public coffers, for taxpayers in a way that it wasn’t in 1900 because the roads weren’t even paved between the cities in 1900. It’s just a totally different world. And that’s the point of the RAISE Act is to sort of bring in line immigration policy with the reality say of a large government … and a welfare state. [Emphasis added]

The immigrants are not all coming to get welfare and they don’t immediately sign up, but over time, an enormous fraction sign their children up. It’s likely the case that of the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, more than half are signed up for Medicaid — which is our most expensive program. [Emphasis added]

As Breitbart News has reported, U.S. households headed by foreign-born residents use nearly twice the welfare of households headed by native-born Americans.

 

Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

 

Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html

 

By Monica Showalter

Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?

Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.

Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.

The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.

According to a report in the Washington Times:

The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.

Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.

Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.

“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”

The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.

Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.

The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.

The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.

The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.

Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years

 

BY MASOOMA HAQ

In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.

The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.

Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.

The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.

Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.

Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”

“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.

In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.

In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”

Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.

California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.

California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.

According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.

BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.

 

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.