‘Young Turks’ Praises Breitbart for ‘Consistent’ Coverage on Cheap Labor Visa Programs

House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, U
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty
Neil Munro

The left-wing host of the “Young Turks” Internet-TV show praised Breitbart News for “consistent” coverage of the visa workers programs which allow companies to hire foreign workers for U.S.-based jobs.

The praise came amid Breitbart News’s coverage of an effort by House Speaker Paul Ryan to quietly pass a bill in December that would have allowed U.S. companies to hire roughly 5,000 Irish graduates each year. The bill offered no reciprocal benefits for U.S. graduates.

“You have to give them credit for … for being consistent,” Cenk Uygur, the Turkish-born host of The Young Turks cable TV show, said on December 17. “A very rare credit to them on that”:

Uygur said:

Are you ready for the crazy twists in the story? Our ironic ally here — and I hate to even say it — is Breitbart, of all people. OK, they say ‘Well, this is amnesty for Irish lobbies.’ That’s true! It is a weird exception and you have to actually give them credit for … being consistent on that, instead of going like all the scu … etc. etc. — you can fill in that adjective – Republican politicians who are like ‘No to all the other races, yes to Ireland! OK, top of the morning to you!’  At least Breitbart is saying no to all of them. OK, so a very rare credit to them on that.

Breitbart has extensively covered the scale and impact of the nation’s many visa worker programs and has repeatedly described the strong closed-door support by business-first GOP politicians for cheap migrant labor and visa workers.

Nationwide, roughly 1.5 million U.S. white-collar jobs are being held by foreign temporary workers. The government-approved extra supply of college graduate labor lower salaries for American graduates. This massive white-collar outsourcing industry exists because the federal H-1B, L-1, J-1, TN, OPT, and CPT visa programs allow U.S. companies to import temporary foreign workers. The government also allows companies to provide green cards to roughly 70,000 foreign employees each year.

Following Breitbart’s coverage of Ryan’s E-3 push, Ryan’s bill was blocked by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

The news site IrishCentral.com blamed Breitbart News for the defeat of the visa giveaway:

 Alone among 100 senators, [Arkansas Sen. Tom] Cotton opposed the measure which had been passed unanimously in the House.

We also had another bad actor, perhaps inevitably one of our own, journalist Neil Munro “Irish born”, educated at University College Dublin who writes for Breitbart and slammed the Irish bill in a vicious piece that ran at a critical time. He took it upon himself to try and kill the bill. A self-hating Irishman it seems. He called Cotton’s office looking to stoke the fire against the bill and play the informer – he succeeded.

…

Close as we can figure the reason Cotton voted it down was because of Munro’s article and a long feud with House Speaker Paul Ryan who guided the bill through the House and from his own party. Cotton probably couldn’t find Ireland on a map.

The leftwing site ThinkProgress.com also suggested Breitbart shares the credit, saying:

As The Irish Times reported on Friday, the legislation died after conservative U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) put a “hold” on the bill, which last week cleared the House by a voice vote. It’s not entirely clear what prompted Cotton to block the measure, but the right-wing site Breitbart had criticized it for potentially taking away jobs from young American workers.

Advocates for the Irish giveaway will try again in 2019 to pass their bill, perhaps burying it within a routine funding bill or as part of a larger migration and labor legislative package.

“A noble effort failed,” IrishCentral.com said. “We Irish are used to that and we are used to picking ourselves up and trying harder the next time. Despite Cotton, despite the weasel words of Munro, we will not give up. Given all our people gave to America we can never stop trying.”

Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.

The cheap labor policy 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 five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.

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