Joe Biden to Import Foreign Graduates for His College Voters’ Jobs

US President-elect Joe Biden delivers a Thanksgiving address at the Queen Theatre in Wilmi
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

President Joe Biden is expected to OK the entry of tens of thousands of foreign graduates to fill the Fortune 500 jobs needed by his college voters when he ends President Donald Trump’s June 2020 migration curbs.

On Tuesday, Biden is expected to sign executive orders that will “rescind the Trump proclamations that precluded the admission of immigrants and non-immigrants either deemed to be a financial burden on our health care system or deemed to present a risk to U.S. labor markets,” a Biden deputy said, according to a January 29 report by CBS.

Government data shows that CEOs already employ at least one million non-immigrant contract workers in white-collar jobs.

Trump blocked the arrival of temporary contract workers in June and September, saying the curbs would help American graduates get jobs:

the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Homeland Security reviewed nonimmigrant programs and found that the present admission of workers within several nonimmigrant visa categories also poses a risk of displacing and disadvantaging United States workers during the current recovery.

American workers compete against foreign nationals for jobs in every sector of our economy, including against millions of aliens who enter the United States to perform temporary work. Temporary workers are often accompanied by their spouses and children, many of whom also compete against American workers. Under ordinary circumstances, properly administered temporary worker programs can provide benefits to the economy. But under the extraordinary circumstances of the economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, certain nonimmigrant visa programs authorizing such employment pose an unusual threat to the employment of American workers.

For example, between February and April of 2020, more than 17 million United States jobs were lost in industries in which employers are seeking to fill worker positions tied to H-2B nonimmigrant visas. During this same period, more than 20 million United States workers lost their jobs in key industries where employers are currently requesting H-1B and L workers to fill positions. Also, the May unemployment rate for young Americans, who compete with certain J nonimmigrant visa applicants, has been particularly high — 29.9 percent for 16 19 year olds, and 23.2 percent for the 20-24 year old group. The entry of additional workers through the H-1B, H-2B, J, and L nonimmigrant visa programs, therefore, presents a significant threat to employment opportunities for Americans affected by the extraordinary economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

The June 22 announcement has blocked the arrival of roughly 65,000 H-1B mid-skilled, non-immigrant contract workers, plus tens of thousands of similar non-immigrant L-1 and J-1 workers, plus tens of thousands of blue-collar H-2B and J-1 blue-collar workers.

Trump’s announcement followed an earlier announcement, dubbed PP10014, which temporarily blocked the entry of legal immigrants, including people with green cards.

“For the young administration to side with large multinational employers and large, powerful, U.S. corporations over blue-collar and white-collar American workers, is a mind-boggling political miscalculation,” Trump’s former aide, Steve Miller, told Breitbart News on February 1.

“There is a heated debate in Washington about the best way to pass pandemic relief, and how large the package should be, and how large the check should be for Americans — yet we’re talking about eliminating many Americans’ jobs,” he said.

A White House rush to reopen the graduate inflow could be blocked by courts, he added:

The Department of Labor conducted a thorough independent analysis of the labor market using their career staff and determined that because of the pandemic and pandemic closures, there was an unprecedented, artificial surplus of American labor. Based on this, the department recommended  cessation of of [visa worker] visas. The President, based on this finding, recommended a cessation in awarding visas for American companies and multinationals.

…

Such an action would plainly be arbitrary and capricious, and it would violate the [Administrative Procedures Act] because it would be making a change to labor policy without any reasonable analysis or policy record to contradict the record developed by the Department of Labor. There’s standing here for any group that represents U.S. workers and professionals to file a cause of action for judicial intervention.

From 2015-2016, 950,000 U.S. graduates earned technology-intensive four-year degrees at U.S. universities. This total included 230,000 healthcare graduates, 125,000 engineering graduates, 372,000 business graduates, 20,000 science graduates, 114,000 biological science graduates, 64,000 computer or software graduates, and 37,000 math, statistics, or architecture graduates.

The New York Times reported in 2017:

Unemployment rates for STEM majors may be low, but not all of those with undergraduate degrees end up in their field of study — only 13 percent in life sciences and 17 percent in physical sciences, according to a 2013 National Science Foundation survey. Computer science is the only STEM field where more than half of graduates are employed in their field.

The massive career loss to foreign contract workers is suggested by federal income reports. “Families without a high school diploma saw a 9 percent increase in their median income, while families with a college degree saw a 2 percent decrease,” said a September 2020 report by the Federal Reserve banking system.

Business groups seem convinced that the resident non-immigrant population of foreign contract workers is very valuable, despite the growing evidence that the population damages competition and innovation. For example, a group of economists estimated in January that Trump’s curbs on corporate use of H-1B contract workers cost investors $100 billion. Their report in the Harvard Business Review said the curbs nicked the stock market value of Fortune 500 companies “by about 0.45% — representing a total loss of around $100 billion.”

Under current rules, roughly 70,000 mid-skilled or high-skilled foreign graduates — plus roughly 70,000 spouses and children — get green cards each year via the Employer-Based immigration system.

This dangled lure of 70,000 green cards per year keeps at least one million foreign graduates in a wide variety of white-collar jobs throughout the United States as they compete to get sponsored by their employers for the hugely valuable prize of green cards.

The Green Card Workforce is expanding because CEOs are allowed to hire and offer green cards to an unlimited number of foreign graduates. For example, in April 2018, roughly 305,025 foreign graduates worked as indentured employees while waiting many years to get green cards requested by employers. Three years later, in April 2020, that number had almost doubled to 592,322 graduates.

The little-recognized Green Card Workforce consists of foreign graduates with H-1B, J-1, or L-1 visas, plus perhaps 250,000 of their spouses, plus roughly 400,000 graduates who get work permits (and tax breaks) via the huge Optional Practical Training (OPT) and the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) programs. Some CEOs prefer these visa workers over Americans, in part because they cannot readily switch jobs, they will work long hours at low wages, and some do not have to be paid at all.

This legal foreign workforce also hides a growing population of foreign white-collar workers who overstay their work visas and use easily forged work permits, plus additional graduates who take short-terms jobs after entering the country with visitor visas.

In January, Biden’s team canceled a new office that was intended to investigate the growing evidence of discrimination against American graduates by the CEOs of Fortune 500 subcontractors who employ more than 100,000  foreign graduates with OPT work permits.

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