Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) says President Donald Trump should expand his immigration executive order to suspend the H-1B visa and Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs that bring thousands of white-collar foreign workers to the United States every year to take high-paying American jobs.
Last week, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) sent a letter urging Trump to expand his executive order slowing green card processing for less than ten percent of all green card applicants to include a suspension of H-1B visas and other visa programs.
Now, Gooden is joining Gosar, asking the president to expand the order to halt admissions of foreign visa workers while more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment in a single month.
“President [Trump’s] executive order on immigration was a solid first step to protect the American worker,” Gooden wrote on Twitter. “As unemployment continues to rise, it’s clear that we must #ExpandTheBan to include H-1B, OPT, and others.”
President @realDonaldTrump’s executive order on immigration was a solid first step to protect the American Worker.
As unemployment continues to rise, it’s clear that we must #ExpandTheBan to include H-1B, OPT, and others.
— Lance Gooden (@Lancegooden) April 26, 2020
In a given year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment.
Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Likewise, the OPT program provides corporations like Amazon, Google, Deloitte, and Intel a 15 percent discount for every OPT foreign worker they hire over an American. In 2017, alone, Amazon placed nearly 2,400 OPT foreign workers into white-collar STEM jobs that could have otherwise gone to American graduates.
An earlier draft of the executive order, exclusively obtained by Breitbart News, showed that the administration had initially intended to suspend the H-1B visa program — as well as H-2B visas, E visas, J-1 visas, B visas, and O visas — but those provisions were removed from the final draft.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.