As Millions Of Americans Become Unemployed, Trump Admin Expands Importation Of Foreign Workers

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Mar. 30, 2020

Despite record unemployment claims exceeding 3 million in one week, President Donald Trump's administration is rapidly expanding H-1B, H-2A and H-2B foreign worker programs to take Americans' jobs and suppress wages.


From Breitbart, "Trump's DHS Starts to Import 85,000 H-1B Graduate Gig Workers":
President Donald Trump's deputies announced Friday that they had begun the process of importing 85,000 H-1B gig workers to take white-collar jobs that will be needed after October by the millions of American graduates who are now losing jobs in the coronavirus crash.

"This is just an unspeakable action," said Marie Larson, a co-founder of the American Workers Coalition, which opposes the many visa worker programs that have transferred at least one million white-collar jobs to foreign workers. "I don't believe President Trump ordered this — the swamp went ahead with this," she said.

"If the H-1B program is just for filling jobs that Americans cannot fill amid for labor shortages, then this would not be happening," said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Law Reform Institute. "But it is not a labor-shortage program — it is a cheap labor program to displace Americans," he said.

The 2020 lottery "is in your face that that is the purpose of the program."

The agency announced Friday that it had received enough corporate requests to snatch up all of the 2020 supply of H-1B visas.

This annual supply includes 20,000 visas for foreigners who pay for graduate degrees at American colleges, plus 65,000 visas for graduates who are directly imported from India, China, and other countries. Non-profits — such as hospitals and universities — are allowed to also import an unlimited number of "cap-exempt" H-1Bs for white-collar jobs.
From Breitbart, "State Department Accelerates Foreign Workers into U.S. Jobs Despite Mass Coronavirus Unemployment":
Despite mass unemployment, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf will fast-track foreign workers on H-2A and H-2B visas into the U.S. to take blue-collar agricultural and nonagricultural jobs.

A memo released by Pompeo reads:

The H-2 program is essential to the economy and food security of the United States and is a national security priority. Therefore, we intend to continue processing H-2 cases as much as possible, as permitted by post resources and local government restrictions. Secretary Pompeo, in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security, has authorized consular officers to expand the categories of H-2 visa applicants whose applications can be adjudicated without an in-person interview. Consular officers can, if they so choose, now waive the visa interview requirement for first-time and returning H-2 applicants who have no apparent ineligibility or potential ineligibility. [Emphasis added]

This expansion also increases the period in which returning workers may qualify for an interview waiver. Applicants whose previous visas expired in the last 48 months, and who did not require a waiver of ineligibility the last time they applied, do not need to be interviewed in-person if they are applying for the same visa classification as their previous visa. We anticipate the vast majority of otherwise qualified H-2 applicants will now be adjudicated without an interview. [Emphasis added]


The directive effectively allows agricultural and nonagricultural businesses to quickly import foreign workers on H-2A and H-2B visas without standard interview and application procedures — a move that echoes President George W. Bush's decision to waive visa requirements in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"The agriculture industry's dependence on poorly screened, cheap foreign labor to produce our food is indefensible," Federation for American Immigration Reform's (FAIR) RJ Hauman told Breitbart News. "Validating it through a guest worker policy change at a time of mass unemployment and a public health crisis is an enormous mistake."
Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab and Minds.













All original InformationLiberation articles CC 4.0



About - Privacy Policy