Coronavirus Giveaway: Democrats Help Companies Keep Foreign College Graduate Workforce

ADVANCE FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14, 2011, AT 12:01 A.M. EDT - FILE - In this Saturday
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Neil Munro

The House Democrats’ 1,400-page coronavirus recovery bill threatens the livelihood of millions of American graduates and their families by expanding work visas for many of the roughly 1.5 million foreign college graduate contract workers who hold jobs in the United States.

The summary of the draft bill says:

In recognition that several government offices have closed in response to the coronavirus that are responsible for reviewing and adjudicating work authorization requests or that impact American citizens, intending immigrants, and workers’ ability to live and work in the United States … a provision is included to automatically extend their current status or work authorization.

The unusual phrases — “intending immigrants, and workers’ ability” — covers the many foreign visa workers who are not legal immigrants but are merely contract workers holding jobs in the United States.

The Democrats’ bill is a massive giveaway to Silicon Valley, to tech donors, and to many Fortune 500 companies in the banking and insurance industries who have replaced their American graduates with blocs of imported Indian and Chinese workers.

Many investors, CEOs, and human resources managers prefer the visa workers over Americans, in part, because they can be quickly hired or fired via a network of Indian-run subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. The visa workers are also preferred because they are compliant and legally powerless — the visa workers cannot complain, organize, demand higher wages, or even argue with managers because they know they can be swiftly deported without any legal recourse. The massive supply of foreign workers also raises stock values by cutting white-collar salaries — although many of the visa workers are paid in line with Americans.

The visa worker population includes roughly 1.5 million college graduates, mostly from India, even though roughly 800,000 Americans graduate from college with skilled technical degrees each year.

Roughly 400,000 of these temporary workers can stay permanently in the United States because their employers have nominated them to eventually become legal residents.

But every year, hundreds of thousands of visa workers are forced to go home because their visas expire after a few months, a year, three years, or five years, even after also getting a one-year or a multi-year extension. Yet each year, the departing visa workers are replaced by another wave of arriving college graduate workers.

However, the Democrats’ offer of extended visas does not include any curbs on the arrival of new workers, for example, the annual arrival of 100,000 new H-1B graduate workers. So the bill’s extensions may add at least 100,000 foreign graduates to the labor market in 2020, just as millions of American graduates scramble to find new jobs.

The Department of Homeland Security told Breitbart News on March 19 that it has no plans to change the H-1B inflow in 2020.

Foreign college graduates allowed to work in the United States via a plethora of visa programs that are almost entirely ignored by the establishment press. They include the H-1B, L-1, Occupational Practical Training, Curricular Practical Training, TN, E-3, J-1, and B-1 programs, as well as a variety of science-related “post-docs” given to young scientists in university classrooms and laboratories.

The biggest program is the H-1B program. It keeps a population of roughly 900,000 H-1B workers in the United States, largely because the H-1B workers are allowed to stay six years, and many can stay long past their visa expiration once employers merely nominate them for green cards.

Similarly, more than 400,000 foreigners get work permits via the OPT and CPT programs by paying tuition fees to a wide variety or elite, average, or low-tier colleges. Most get one-year work permits, but 70,000 get three-year “STEM-OPT” work permits.

The visa programs also include the H-2B program for the blue-collar workers who are imported by landscaping and resort employers, as well as the H-2A workers who are imported by farm companies. The J-1 program includes thousands of doctors — and at least 100,000 blue-collar seasonal workers.

The visa programs co-exist with a variety of work permits of recent blue-collar migrants, such as the migrants who crossed the border in 2019 and long-resident illegal aliens who ask for an “Adjustment of Status” to citizenship. This work permit category also includes the roughly 600,000 young illegal aliens in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals created by Obama in 2012. Very few of the DACA migrants hold university credentials. Each year, the federal government awards temporary “Employment Authorization Documents” to roughly two million foreigners.

The Democrats’ legislative language is not included in the summary of the 1,400-page bill, But a prior 1,119-page draft directs officials to simply extend existing one-year and multi-year visas that expire during the next 12 months.

The language could actually increase the number of foreign workers who will compete for scarce jobs sought by Ameican graduates in the economic meltdown.

For example, the language seems to provide three-year extensions to one-third of the roughly 70,000 foreigners with “STEM-OPT” permits. That extension would likely increase the STEM-OPT workforce by 25 percent in 2021 and 2022 — even if no STEM-OPT permits are approved in 2020.

American professionals have organized to lobby against the H-1B program via the American Workers Coalition, U.S. TechWorkers, and ProUSworkers, and White Collar Workers of America. The new TechsUnite.US site was created to help U.S. graduates anonymously collaborate while shielded by encryption.

In turn, these groups are backed up by a few sites that track the scale and location of the outsourcing industry in each legislator’s district. The sites include SAITJ.org and H1BFacts.com. “The scope of this thing is really unbelievable,” said one researcher.

Other sites document the conflicts created by diverse foreign business practices in the United States. The non-political MyVisaJobs.com site also provides much information about H-1B outsourcing and green card rewards in multiple industries.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com

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