Again?: GOP Sen. Mike Lee Keeps Pushing College Job Giveaway to Indians

In this photograph taken on December 13, 2016, an employee of Indian IT security solutions
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty
Neil Munro

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee is expected to try again on Thursday to pass his S.386 bill, which helps India’s graduates grab hundreds of thousands of college level jobs from American graduates.

All GOP Senators are expected to stay silent while Lee pushes his bill that rewards roughly 300,000 of India’s contract workers in the United States with a fast track to citizenship. Silicon Valley investors back his bill, which also allows companies to annually pay 60,000 of India’s contract workers — plus 60,000 family members — with government-provided green cards after they take jobs from American graduates.

Existing “country caps” set an annual limit of 20,000 on the number of cards that can be provided by employers to Indian visa workers.

Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin is expected to save American graduates from Lee’s bill by denying Lee’s request for a “Unanimous Consent” approval. This is Lee’s fifth attempt to pass his jobs giveaway bill.

But Durbin is blocking Lee’s bill because he wants to pass an even bigger giveaway that would reward roughly 240,000 Indian workers and family members each year with green cards, providing they take jobs from American graduates.

Durbin’s giveaway bill, dubbed the RELIEF Act, is based on the 1960s claim that America is a “nation of immigrants,” not a normal nation of citizens and their children.

On Wednesday, Durbin tried to pass his RELIEF Act by the Unanimous Consent process. But his request was blocked by GOP Sen. John Thune, South Dakota. “The legislation to which the Senator from Illinois has referred, Senator Lee’s bill, he’s not able to be here to object and so on his behalf, I object,” said Thune, who did not criticize the Lee or Durbin bills.

The GOP may rely on Democrats to block Lee’s bill. But some immigration lawyers say Democrats should let Lee’s bill pass because it is so unfair that legislators would unite to fix the damage by passing a bill offering a bigger inflow of company workers.

Durbin touted his bill Wednesday afternoon:

Immigration Voice is the lobby group for India’s contract workers in the United States. The members are not Americans and so cannot vote. But they have organized to push Lee’s bill:

Backed by the Indian government, roughly 800,000 of India’s contract workers hold a wide variety of healthcare, management, technology, and accounting jobs, which are needed by U.S. graduates. Many of the Indians occupy well paid Silicon Valey jobs, but many work in software sweatshops in the hope of getting into the H-1B program and winning a green card.

This army of migrants was created to staff the “U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy,” which spikes the stock values of American companies moving jobs to cheaper Indians, who were located both in the United States and in India.

The scale of this U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy is huge.

But it is difficult to track because India’s workforce in the United States also moves many jobs back into India. For example, the New York Times reported how Toys “R” Us company used just eight Indian visa workers to outsource much of its 67-person computer department to India:

For four weeks this spring, a young woman from India on a temporary visa sat elbow to elbow with an American accountant in a snug cubicle at the headquarters of Toys “R” Us here. The woman, an employee of a giant outsourcing company in India hired by Toys “R” Us, studied and recorded the accountant’s every keystroke, taking screen shots of her computer and detailed notes on how she issued payments for toys sold in the company’s megastores.

“She just pulled up a chair in front of my computer,” said the accountant, 49, who had worked for the company for more than 15 years. “She shadowed me everywhere, even to the ladies’ room.”

By late June, eight workers from the outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, had produced intricate manuals for the jobs of 67 people, mainly in accounting. They then returned to India to train TCS workers to take over and perform those jobs there. The Toys “R” Us employees in New Jersey, many of whom had been at the company more than a decade, were laid off.

U.S. graduates face structural disadvantages when competing against this bloc of contract workers.

They have difficulty winning jobs in sectors overseen by Indian managers because of anti-American discrimination by Indians who favor Indians.

Also, many Indians will accept far lower wages in the hope of being given the hugely valuable prize of citizenship after they get into the H-1B program.

So far, neither Congress nor the administration has made a significant effort to level the playing field for American graduates, for example, by demanding the enforcement of routine workplace laws, such as laws against national discrimination.

The playing field will be further tilted towards the Indians by Lee’s bill.

But his bill is opposed by would-be immigrants from China, Europe, South America, and many other countries because they would be blocked once the employers are allowed to reward their Indian workforce with green cards.

Americans who oppose the bill have rallied behind several grassroots groups, including U.S. Tech Workers:

Immigration Numbers:

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or a university. This total includes about 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or health care, engineering or science, software, or statistics.

But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants. It also adds replacement workers to a resident population of more than 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers and about 500,000 blue-collar H-2B, H-2A, and J-1 visa workers. The government also prints more than one million work permits for new foreigners, and it rarely punishes companies for employing illegal migrants.

This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth and stock values for investors. The stimulus happens because the extra labor ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.

The federal policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor shifts wealth from young employees toward older investors. It also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, reduces marriage rates, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.

The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and it sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with drug addictions.

The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, undermines suburbia, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.

But President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” policy is boosting wages by capping immigration within a growing economy.

The Census Bureau said September 10 that men who work full-time and year-round got an average earnings boost of 3.4 percent in 2018, pushing their median salaries up to $55,291. Women gained 3.3 percent in wages, bringing their median salaries to $45,097 for full-time, year-round work.

 

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