Finally! After nearly three decades of pleading to deaf Republican and Democratic congresses for a fair shake, American workers, especially those in the tech sector who have been relentlessly displaced by workers imported from other countries, can celebrate.
The biggest winners are U.S. tech workers who have been, because of ruthless corporate greed and a donor-dependent Congress, persistently displaced by less talented foreign-born H-1B visa employees.
President Donald Trump, breaking with his White House predecessors, all of whom displayed an addicted-like commitment to more employment-based visas, gave American workers a reason — at long last — to cheer.
Whether low- or high-skilled, Trump’s announcement that he would cut 525,000 visas from among those who would have entered and taken a U.S. job during this year’s final six months means that 45 million unemployed Americans’ futures are suddenly brighter.
Trump expanded his April 22 executive order that only inconsequentially lowered legal immigration totals, and left employment visas untouched. For the remainder of 2020, the following visas, all of which include work permission, will be restricted: H-1B, mostly for tech; H-2B for seasonal nonagricultural workers that ludicrously include lifeguards, leisure industry employees and amusement park workers — as if young American wouldn’t do those jobs.
Also included are J visas that allow au pairs to work on the cheap in tony D.C. suburbs; H-4, a never congressionally approved program from the era of President Barack Obama’s administration that gives work permission to H-1B spouses; and L visas that allow, for example, a Hong Kong-based IBM accountant to transfer to Armonk, New York — as if the New York/Connecticut region has no available bookkeepers.
By the way, accompanying L visa holders will be their spouses and unmarried children age 21 or younger. Bringing family members keeps the U.S. population exploding and assures that K-12 schools remain overcrowded, both of which reduce Americans’ quality of life.
But Trump put extended family chain migration on hold. Only green card holders’ nuclear family will get green cards, making them eligible for lifetime-valid work permits.
Trump moved to correct another preposterous immigration flaw.
The administration announced a new regulation that will prevent most of those who come to the United States illegally from getting work permits while they apply for asylum or make other pleas for special dispensation.
Currently, aliens can obtain work permits while their cases are pending, a period that often stretches out for years. This misguided policy represents an obvious incentive to enter illegally, and then be rewarded with work permission.
When they learned of Trump’s order, expansionists that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the tech lobby and some in Congress went apoplectic, and sounded foolish.
FWD.us, the immigration advocacy group that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg co-founded, pulled out the predictable hysterical claims that Trump’s newest order was “a full-frontal attack on American innovation and our nation’s ability to benefit from attracting talent from around the world” and that it will “hurt our economy,” another tired old saw.
Not surprisingly, but nevertheless disappointing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is in complete accord with Zuckerberg’s group. In a series of tweets, he criticized Trump, and predicted that his order would have “a chilling effect on our recovering economy.”
Graham’s career voting record on increasing employment-based visas is the same as those of notoriously anti-American worker sellouts like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and dozens of other congressional globalists.
No intelligent argument can be made that the United States needs employment-based visas or — for that matter — more people.
Americans agree with Trump’s immigration pause. A Zogby Analytics poll taken in swing states Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed that a strong majority, about 60 percent of registered voters, favor immigration reductions.
In all 10 states, majorities of voters concurred that “limiting admission of new immigrants and guest workers will improve the chances of laid-off American workers being rehired.”
With record high unemployment, for Congress to force unemployed Americans to compete with imported labor is an outrage.
While Trump’s order doesn’t go far enough, or last as long as it should, he’s taken an important step in the right direction to protect beleaguered, job-seeking U.S. workers.
— Joe Guzzardi is an analyst and researcher with Progressives for Immigration Reform who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.