Microsoft, Tech Investors Promote ‘Dreamers’ to Preserve Supply of Visa Workers

Immigrant families cheer during a caravan to rally for the Deferred Action for Childhood A
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Neil Munro

Many journalists have missed the huge financial stakes of the years-long dispute over the DACA work permits, even as they sympathetically portray the “dreamer” illegals who are seeking to stay in the United States.

The young DACA illegals are sympathetic figures, and legislators have struggled to develop a legal means to accept them without triggering a bigger wave of wage-cutting migrants.

But the migrants and the media are also tools of major corporations who wish to block President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again immigration reforms.

Trump’s reforms would reduce the inflow of migrants and so pressure companies to hire Americans at higher wages. That is a problem for business interests because higher wages mean lower profits and reduced stock prices.

So far, the corporations have been entirely successful in delaying Trump. Amid constant criticism from Democrats, CEOs, and reporters, and amid GOP hostility and passivity, Trump failed to get his reform agenda through the Senate in February 2018. Only on June 22 did he finally order a deep overhaul to the many visa worker programs which keep at least 1.3 million foreign visa workers in white-collar jobs.

The visa worker pipelines are the big prize for the tech executives and investors, including those in FWD.us. The pipelines allow the executives to sideline outspoken and innovative American professionals, and to fill their offices with compliant, cheap, and unmoving foreign workers. That hidden personnel policy raises stock prices, corrals employees, and stymies the development of rival technologies and products.

Throughout this long fight, the tech executives, the Fortune 500, and their media allies have used emotional claims from the young DACA illegals to delay and divert Trump. Their efforts were rejuvenated in June when the five judges on Supreme Court ordered Trump to go back to 2017 and restart the process of ending the work permit offer to roughly 700,000 illegals.

Now Trump must decide how to restart the DACA wind-down, amid corporate calls for him to accept the DACA giveaway just four months before the 2020 reelection.

Tweets expose the corporate role in the DACA campaign from DACA supporters during their demonstration at the Supreme Court last November.

Many of those demonstrating “dreamers” were picked, trained, and delivered to the courthouse by influencers working for Microsoft Corp., according to a series of tweets sent by the employees of the investor-funded FWD.us advocacy group.

FWD.us was created in 2013 by West Coast investors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and a series of lesser-known billionaires and millionaires.

The group was formed to accelerate the immigration flow into the United States, in cooperation with the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” and President Barack Obama. The gang’s legislation promised to spike economic growth with a gusher of new workers, consumers, and renters — who would also deliver a huge financial boost to Wall Street and the numerous investors who formed FWD.us.

That golden prize slipped away in 2014 when the primary voters in Virginia’s 7th district deposed Rep. Eric Cantor, and Donald Trump walked down the escalator in New York. Ever since then, investors at FWD.us have been on the defensive — and so they have built a bodyguard of legislators, lobbyists, and “dreamers” to protect their dream of more visa workers and more immigrants.

The director of FWD.us, Todd Schulte, rallied the “dreamers” in D.C. the evening before the court hearing:

The 400 attendees mostly consisted of DACA recipients who had been organized by employees from FWD.us. The event included cheerleading and p.r.iInstructions provided by an FWD.us employee:

The communications strategy was delivered to the volunteers by Leezia Dhalia, an FWD.us employee, a graduate of Northwestern University, and an illegal immigrant who does not want to return to Canada.

Schulte and Dhalia deployed a team of organizers, including several illegal migrants who have DACA work permits:

But Microsoft’s leaders were directly involved in the street theater — including the company’s president, Brad Smith.

Smith is a member of FWD.us, which was founded in 2013 by Bill Gates and other investors to push the “Gang of Eight Amnesty.”

Smith touted Microsoft’s role in the DACA lawsuit via Twitter, and brought some of the company’s DACA employees to the Supreme Court:

He went on TV to make Microsoft’s case:

And Smith accompanied a group of migrants to a meeting with Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat at the House.

Microsoft has been a vociferous supporter of the visa worker pipelines.

Smith has long lobbied for expansions of the H-1B pipeline. He also helped expand the Optional Practical Training work permit program. Both programs provide Microsoft with a compliant workforce of software graduates for routine, mid-skill tasks, such as updates and testing.

The Fortune 500 companies also profit from visa workers. For example, the CEOs at many insurance, healthcare, banking, and non-tech companies prefer to hire and fire blocs of legally unprotected H-1B and OPT gig workers instead of permanently employing groups of American professionals. This population of legal visa workers also helps to hide the growing population of illegal professionals who further reduce the salaries paid to American college graduates.

When the November court hearing was over, Smith held a press conference at the court plaza.

Outside the Supreme Court, Smith dodged a question from Breitbart News about the  legality of the visa worker programs favored by Microsoft:

Neil Munro / Breitbart News

Smith knew the stakes, in part, because Chief Justice John Roberts had just questioned the government’s controversial 1324a authority to award permits to the DACA migrants.

“I don’t understand sort of putting what the policy really was about, which is the work authorization and the other things, off to one side is very helpful,” Roberts told one of the lawyers in the court case. But Roberts dropped the ball in the June decision against Trump’s DACA termination.

The decision did not address the work permit issue — which “the policy really was about” — as Robert joined four Democrats to block Trump’s decision to end DACA.

“If the Supreme Court had ruled against DACA, it could have cut off [business’] ability to create visa programs” with the help of friendly appointees in Democratic and Republican administrations, said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “Reversing [the end of] DACA was essential to keep that pipeline of cheap labor open,” said Miano, who has been suing the federal government for 12 years to end two of the visa programs.

The two visa programs keep at least 500,000 foreign workers in U.S. jobs. But Miano’s lawsuits have been repeatedly bounced from one indecisive judge to another.

The visa pipelines are also a huge cash cow to the universities, who earn roughly $40 billion a year from ambitious foreigners who are using the universities to get OPT work permits, tech jobs, and perhaps a rocky and long road to citizenship.

Rationally, the universities joined with Microsoft to shield their work-permit business under cover of the DACA program:

FWD.us did not broadcast its role in the media-friendly demonstrations.

Instead, it hid its role behind a broad slogan, “Home is Here.” For example, FWD’s communications chief, Peter Boogaard wore the official “Home is here” t-shirt at the Supreme Court demonstration:

FWD.us pushed the “Home is here” slogan via expensive video testimonials:

The slogan helped Microsoft and FWD.us to integrate other pro-migration groups, including the United We Dream group (UWD), and Make the Road NY,” into the D.C. theater:

The “undocublack” network also wore the slogan:

Korean illegals joined the demonstration:

FWD.us’s team put their slogan on the main stage, and brought contingents from several states, such as Colorado:

Texas:

Utah:

The FWD.us team was backed up by expensive Hollywood influencers:

The HomeIsHere slogan is “not our slogan,” Schulte told Breitbart. However, FWD.us owns the homeishere.us domain.

Samuel L. Jackson cheered from the sidelines:

But FWD.us does not own the entire “dreamer” movement. The first major DACA group, the union-funded United We Dream group, displayed their slogan at the  Supreme Court demonstration:

UWD also fronted their slogans at their state demonstrations:

But the FWD.us slogan dominated at the court:

In June, the Supreme Court sent Trump back to Square One in the DACA fight, giving a huge victory to the technology companies and the FWD.us.

Democrats gave credit to the FWD.us group:

Via Twitter, FWD.us chief Todd Schulte downplayed his group’s role in the Supreme Court demonstration:

Oh our role was minor. This was about the President and then AG Sessions doing the work and doing so in a manner the court’s ruled unlawful. I think its fair to say that as it stands now the big question remaining is if President Trump will continue to work to fulfill Jeff Sessions legacy by trying once again to end DACA.

Trump is now debating his next step, while his supporters and opponents push and pull, just four months before the election.

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