At least 10 Republican members of Congress are pushing a plan to grant 100,000 extra work-permits to foreign college grads, despite the reality of high debts and stalled salaries for American graduates.
“We write to urge you to maintain the current regulation granting work authorization to certain H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B nonimmigrant workers,” says the letter to the Department of Homeland Security which was signed by 110 Democrats and by 10 GOP legislators led by Utah. Rep. Mia Love.
The letter is intended to preserve the 100,000 work permits which were given to the spouses of foreign H-1B workers by officials working for former President Barack Obama. The 2015 policy provides the permits to the spouses of many H-1B workers who have been approved to get green cards, but who are waiting in a multi-decade backlog.
The spouses have H-4 visas, and the work permits are called Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), so the dispute is called the H-4 EAD dispute.
The spouses arrived in the United States long before 2015, knowing they were not allowed to work under their husband’s agreement to accept the H-1B visa.
In April 2018, DHS officials announced they would close down the H-4 EAD program as they implemented President Donald Trump’s pro-American policy of “Buy American, Hire American.” According to the announcement, the reform aims “to protect the economic interests of United States workers.”
The DHS must end the 2015 policy because it was an illegal giveaway to business allies in the information-technology sector, say outside critics, including John Miano, a lawyer for the Immigration Law Reform Institute. Most of the roughly 600,000 H-1B foreign workers in the United States work in the information technology sector.
Business groups, including Amazon and Microsoft, have hired lobbyists and lawyers to preserve the extra supply of foreign white-collar workers, which help nudge down the salaries paid to American graduates.
“Virtually every company has either H-1[B]s whose spouses work today under this H-4 authority, ” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer said May 29. “We have 98 employees who are here on an H-4 — they will lose their jobs if this administration revokes that authority.”
Amazon supports @RepMiaLove @RepJayapal and more than 100 bipartisan members of Congress in their effort to maintain H-4 work authorizations. https://t.co/CM42PtRYJJ
— Amazon Policy (@amazon_policy) May 17, 2018
Such an important bipartisan effort. Keep these #H4EAD’s intact – such a shift will greatly impact the ability of so many people (primarily women!) to work & pursue their dreams!https://t.co/lIfnu8ziEx
— Alida Garcia (@leedsgarcia) May 17, 2018
At @Recode Code Conference this year, Microsoft President @BradSmi highlighted a permanent legislative solution for Dreamers, work authorization for #H4 spouses of H-1B recipients, and training transition periods for foreign graduates of US schools as key policy priorities https://t.co/BPbWWICaj3
— Andrew Moriarty 🗽 (@a_moriarty) May 31, 2018
The letter was signed by 10 GOP legislators, including Love, Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Carlos Curbelo, and John Rutherford, plus New York’s Rep. Peter King, Colorado’s Rep. Mike Coffman, New Jersey’s Rep. Chris Smith, Georgia’s Rep. Rob Woodhall, Kansas’ Rep. Kevin Yoder, Nebraska’s Rep. Don Bacon, and Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers.
Stivers is the chairman of the GOP’s 2018 campaign team at the National Republican Congressional Committee. Yoder is the chief sponsor of H.R. 392 which would put hundreds of thousands of Indian H-1B workers — plus their families — on a fast-track to citizenship. Love is a close ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan. Four of the signers are being backed by the Ryan-backed Congressionalnal Leadership Fund Super Pac — Coffman, Curbelo, Yoder, and Bacon.
Love, Stivers and several other GOP legislators did not respond to questions from Breitbart.
The GOP legislators are backing the business-first work-permit plan even though it favors business and foreign workers over American voters, it imposes a financial penalty on GOP voters, and it pushes more GOP-leaning college-graduates to vote for Democrats.
The letter by Love and the GOP legislators justified the 100,000-visa demand by claiming it benefits business and foreign women but does not mention voters or citizens.
“The permits help US employers recruit and retain highly qualified employees … [have] made our economy stronger … [and] rescinding the rule will hurt the competitiveness of U.S. employers and the U.S. economy,” the letter said.
The letter claims the permits are:
providing relief and economic support to thousands of [foreign] spouses — mostly women – who have resided in the United States for years … their inability to work widens an already existing gender inequality gap. For some, the inability to work, pursue one’s goals, or contribute to one’s family can lead to a loss of self-worth and depression, which greatly impacts the H-1B holders as well as their family members.
Personal face-to-face advocacy of legislators by the H-4 spouses has been the most successful way to advocate for the work-permits, say the advocates.
The letter also portrays Trump’s reform as a sexist regression, saying:
It is an American value that everyone — regardless of gender — serves to be able to use and enhance their skills, be financially self-sufficient, thrive mental and physically, and pursue their dreams … spouses in domestic violence situations face huge challenges leaving abusive situations due to their inability to be financially self-sufficient.
The letter did not note that the extra visas also reduce the pressure on Americans companies to hire Americans at middle-class wages. Amid the economic boom, white-collar wages remain almost flat, according to Korn Ferry, a recruitment agency. The agency reported May 14 that:
while the job market is at the hottest it’s been this century, salaries for newly minted college graduates are virtually flat [in 2018] from 2017.
In the study, researchers analyzed salaries of 310,000 entry-level positions from nearly 1,000 organizations across the United States. Based on the analysis, 2018 college grads in the United States will make on average $50,390 annually. That is 2.8 percent more than the 2017 average ($49,000).
“With the 2018 U.S. inflation rate hovering just over 2 percent, real wages for this year’s grads are virtually flat,” said Korn Ferry Senior Client Partner Maryam Morse. “
Nationwide, the various federal guest-worker programs keep a population of roughly 1.5 million foreign white-collar workers in U.S. jobs. They are provided to American employers via the H-1B, H-4, OPT, L-1, TN, J-1, E-1, EAD, and other work-permit programs.
Nationwide, 44 million Americans owe roughly $1,500 billion in college debt. Roughly 11 percent are delinquent, the average repayment is $351 a month, and the median payment is $203 a month, making it more difficult for young people to get married, buy a house and raise a family.
Campaign chief Stivers signed the letter even though the extra inflow of foreign workers also nudges American college-grad voters to support Democratic candidates, according to an April 2018 study, titled “The Political Impact of Immigration.” It reported:
Our strongest and most significant finding is that an increase in high-skilled immigrants as a share of the local population is associated with a strong and significant decrease in the vote share for the Republican Party …
The first is Gwinnet County in Georgia, which saw its share of immigrants increase by 26 percentage points over 20 years. Immigration was mainly high-skilled (two-thirds of immigrants were high-skilled). In addition, the native population in 1980 was rather skilled. The county is part of a commuting zone that ranks at the 26th percentile of the unskilled-to-skilled distribution of natives in 1980.16 According to the coefficients in Table 7, column 1, the implied decrease in the Republican vote share is 10.2 percentage points …
The results show that no state and no congressional district switched from a Democrat majority to a Republican majority as a consequence of immigration. At the same time, in House elections, 11 congressional districts and 5 states in presidential elections switched to a Democrat majority
Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.
But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or the return of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Trump’s efforts to limit legal and illegal immigration is driving up wages and salaries for Americans in various locations and careers around the country. The beneficiaries include African-American bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey, Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high schoolers, resort workers in Hilton Head, construction workers, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers at small businesses, and even Warren Buffett’s railroad workers.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people, it floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
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