A new piece of legislation, led by a Republican senator, would “drastically increase” the number of foreign workers coming from South Korea to take American jobs.
The bill, introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), would increase the already approximately hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers who come to the U.S. on the H-1B visa.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreigners are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U.S. through the visa, American workers are often replaced.
Currently, an average of about 3,500 South Koreans enter the U.S. every year on the H-1B visa, taking high-skilled jobs from the millions of newly-STEM graduated young Americans that enter the workforce every year.
It’s unclear yet just by how much Isakson’s legislation would increase the number of workers, but Center for Immigration Studies Fellow John Miano says the deal sounds seems to be pushed by big business lobbyists.
“What kind of congressman wakes up in the morning and says ‘Gosh we just don’t have enough guest workers from Korea,’” Miano told Breitbart Texas. “His constituents aren’t asking for this.”
“I’ve always said, Trump’s biggest problem on H-1B would be the Republicans, not the Democrats,” Miano said. “I’m sure they weren’t getting a lot of constituents emails demanding for Korean guest workers… how does something like this come out?”
The two co-sponsors of the legislation are Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). Blunt’s pushing of the legislation comes at the same time that likely Missouri midterm voters, his constituents, overwhelmingly said they wanted to see cuts in legal immigration and foreign guest worker programs like the H-1B visa, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Roughly 67 percent of respondents said they opposed the federal government bringing in droves of non-immigrant foreign guest workers on a variety of work visas in order to keep labor costs down. Saying instead, it would be better to “raise the pay to attract Americans without jobs even if prices rise.”
Another 74 percent of voters said they did not necessarily believe the cries from the big business lobby about American worker shortages, saying “Businesses should be required to try harder to recruit and train from groups with highest unemployment,” like African Americans, Hispanics and young Americans, all of which share a high unemployment rate.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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