Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) is pairing up with the Indian outsourcing lobby for President Trump’s State of the Union (SOTU) address to push legislation that allows India and China to monopolize the country’s legal immigration system.
For Trump’s SOTU, Cramer is bringing Debjyoti Dwivedy, the senior vice president of Immigration Voice, an organization dedicated to eliminating the U.S. country-caps in the legal immigration system that would fast-track outsourcing of white-collar American jobs to mostly Indian and Chinese nationals imported to the country by business.
Dwivedy arrived in the United States on a student visa and got citizenship by joining the military, according to a statement from Immigration Voice. Dwivedy works at a technology firm in Minnesota, according to LinkedIn.
The country caps were originally implemented to prevent any one country from monopolizing the legal immigration system. Eliminating the country caps would immediately fast-track up to 300,000 green cards, and eventually American citizenship, to primarily Indian nationals in the U.S. on the H-1B visa so long as they agree to take high-paying white-collar jobs from Americans.
In the process, not only would other foreign workers be crowded out from receiving employment-based green cards, but the elimination of the country caps would fast-track the outsourcing of high-paying American jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. graduates.
Cramer, who has more than 600 foreign visa workers in his state of North Dakota, called the country caps “arbitrary” and urged Trump to support the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrant Workers Act, the legislation that would fast-track outsourcing of American jobs.
ND is blessed to be home to many immigrant software developers, physicians, surgeons, engineers and other professionals. The long wait for these valued neighbors and servants to get green cards is a disservice to them, their families, and the potential of the American economy.
— Sen. Kevin Cramer (@SenKevinCramer) February 5, 2019
It is my hope we can finally pass a version of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Workers Act this Congress. #SOTU
— Sen. Kevin Cramer (@SenKevinCramer) February 5, 2019
Thank you @SenKevinCramer for your leadership on getting rid of discriminatory per-country caps on Employment Based Green Cards that hurt employees, employers and the US economy. https://t.co/zTwClATyUh
— Immigration Voice (@immivoice) February 5, 2019
The plan could be included in an immigration package currently being negotiated by a conference committee in the Senate and House, which includes:
Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Texas Rep. Kay Granger, Tennesee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Georgia Rep. Tom Graves, and Mississippi Rep. Steven Palazzo, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, New York Rep. Nita Lowey, California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, North Carolina Rep. David Price, California Rep. Barbara Lee, Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, and California Rep. Pete Aguilar.
Immigration Voice has been meeting with lawmakers over the last few months to rally support for the elimination of country caps, successfully getting Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin to co-sponsor similar legislation in the Senate.
Such a change in the legal immigration system would shift wage pressure away from U.S. blue-collar workers and onto American white-collar workers, who would likely experience more displacement due to the vast number of Indian workers that would be imported to the country every year to take high-paying professional jobs.
The plan is a boon to Silicon Valley billionaires, big business elites, and outsourcing firms, as they would be able to readily import more lower-paid Indian and Chinese foreign workers to take American jobs that would have otherwise gone to American citizens.
Experts have said that should the country caps be eliminated, India would be able to monopolize the country’s legal immigration system for the next ten years. After that decade of an Indian-first legal immigration system, the legal immigration flow from India to the U.S. would likely stabilize to make up around 75 percent of all employment-based legal immigration.
Likewise, U.S. employers would be incentivized to more readily outsource American jobs through the H-1B visa and the L-1 visa programs.
The nation’s workforce now includes roughly 1.5 million foreign college graduate contract workers who are imported via the H-1B, L-1, OPT, O-1, J-1, and other visa programs. These outsourcing workers are not immigrants, but rather contract workers hired for one to six years, at lower wages, to take jobs that would otherwise go to American graduates.
This massive level of middle class outsourcing has suppressed the wage growth needed by many American graduates to repay their college debts, get married, buy homes, and raise children. For example, the salaries for 21 million “professional and business services” employees rose by just roughly one percent after inflation from the second quarter of 2017 to the second quarter of 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their after-inflation pay was flat from 2o15 to 2016.
Overall, four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as there are roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce.
NOTE: Breitbart News has corrected a sentence regarding the arrival of Debjyoti Dwivedy to reflect that he arrived on a student visa as opposed to a work visa.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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