Potential New Majority Leader McCarthy Is 'Go-To' Person for High-Tech Visas

Potential New Majority Leader McCarthy Is 'Go-To' Person for High-Tech Visas

The man in line to be the next House Majority Leader is viewed as the “go-to” person in Silicon Valley for increasing the number of high-tech visas that threaten to lower the wages of American workers.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is strongly favored to defeat Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) to replace Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). Cantor suffered a stunning defeat to Dave Brat in last week’s primary, and the race for his successor is on.

McCarthy was one of 19 House Republicans to sign on to the leadership’s “Immigration principles” that Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) denounced as amnesty. And as Breitbart News reported Monday, McCarthy and Labrador are comparable in their support for amnesty; “both candidates are largely coming from the same place Cantor was.”

Silicon Valley executives and insiders told The Hill that McCarthy has “been a frequent guest at major tech companies’ headquarters and has had their back on nearly every issue in recent years.”

Veronica O’Connell, who represents the Consumer Electronics Association, told the outlet that McCarthy is the “go-to person” on high-tech visas. 

The Information Technology Industry Council trade group, which represents groups like AOL, Facebook, and Microsoft, “named McCarthy its legislator of the year in 2012.”

Andy Halataei, the senior vice president of government relations for the group, said McCarthy has “been there for us” on nearly every issue. 

According to The Hill, “McCarthy has been a regular traveler to Silicon Valley to meet with company executives,” and his “former aides and associates now work in the K Street shops of major tech firms like Facebook.”

Numerous scholars and studies have found that the nation has a surplus–not a shortage–of high-tech American workers, but the high-tech industry, led by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, has poured in millions of dollars trying to secure more guest-worker visas. The Senate’s amnesty bill, for instance, would double–potentially triple–the number of high-tech guest-worker visas and lower the wages of American workers. In the House, bills like Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-VA) SKILLS Act would double the number of such visas. 

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