WASHINGTON, D.C. – The big business lobby, which profits from hiring foreign labor over American workers, is pushing for an expansion of the H-2B foreign guest worker visa. Americans would be laid off from those seasonal jobs in the process.
A push by the H-2B Workforce Coalition, an organization made up of the open borders lobby and big business associations, demands a 2015-like expansion of the H-2B visa where returning foreign workers would be exempt from the annual cap of 66,000, quadrupling the number of foreign workers entering the U.S. and taking jobs from American workers.
When the same action was done in 2015, with bipartisan support from establishment-type Republicans and Democrats, big business concerns applied for some 264,000 H-2B foreign guest workers, according to POLITICO. At the time, House Speaker Paul Ryan supported the expansion, claiming outrage over the move was “hyperbole.”
The H-2B visa brings foreign nationals to the U.S. for low-skilled nonagricultural jobs. The visa impacts working-class and poor Americans most, as labor jobs in the hotel industry, water parks, retail stores and restaurants can all outsource jobs to foreign workers under the program. More than half a million jobs in the U.S. have been taken by H-2B visa workers in the last five years.
Center for Immigration Studies Fellow David Seminara wrote in 2010 how the H-2B visa had become a tool for the big business lobby to save money by hiring cheap, foreign labor over Americans.
“Use of the H-2B program has morphed from its original intent to help employers that need seasonal and/or temporary workers,” Seminara wrote. “The majority of the program’s current users are neither small nor seasonal employers, but rather mid- to large-sized companies and recruiters that petition for H-2Bs to work for ten months out of the year, year after year.”
Big business and the open borders lobby are not alone, though, in their demand for more foreign labor, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) are leading the call to replace more American workers with cheaper, foreign workers.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS), Tillis, Warner and some 32 GOP and Democratic Senators called on more foreign workers to enter the U.S. in the upcoming Fiscal Year.
Those Senators include:
Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Chris Coons (D-DE), John Barrasso (R-WY), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Tom Carper (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Angus King (I-ME), Tim Scott (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Richard Burr (R-NC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), James Lankford (R-OK), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Bob Casey (D-PA).
Additionally, Tillis and Sen. Angus King (I-ME) are pushing legislation to permanently exempt returning H-2B foreign workers from the 66,000 visa cap, which would be at the expense of hundreds of thousands of laid off American workers over time.
Tillis is also responsible for pushing an amnesty bill that would give legal residency to the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., as Breitbart Texas reported.
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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