President Joe Biden is set to import nearly 65,000 H-2B foreign visa workers to take blue-collar American jobs as roughly 11.6 million Americans remain jobless.
This week, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Labor Department announced that the administration would be allowing businesses to import a few less than 65,000 H-2B foreign visa workers to take nonagricultural jobs in construction, meatpacking, and landscaping, among other industries.
This is in addition to the 66,000 H-2B foreign visa workers that the Biden administration has already allowed into the United States labor market to take blue-collar jobs.
“The Department of Homeland Security is moving with unprecedented speed to meet the needs of American businesses,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The big business lobby is praising the inflation of the U.S. labor market as a victory but also suggested in a statement that they want more legal immigration overall so companies can rely on a steady stream of cheaper foreign workers as opposed to hiring unemployed Americans.
An official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement:
While this is welcome news, the relief provided here remains insufficient to meet the seasonal workforce needs of many American companies. Congress needs to do more to provide added certainty and predictability for seasonal businesses that are struggling to fill their job openings.
Specifically, the H-2B visas will go to 20,000 nationals from Haiti and northern Central American countries as well as 45,000 foreign workers who have previously been rewarded the visas.
The move comes as about 11.6 million Americans remain jobless.
Every year, businesses are allowed to import 66,000 H-2B foreign visa workers to take blue-collar, non-agricultural American jobs. Former President Donald Trump routinely brought in additional H-2B foreign visa workers for business to hire, and Biden is doing the same.
In December 2021 and January 2022, Mayorkas announced that he would allow businesses to import 40,000 more H-2B foreign visa workers.
The H-2B visa program has been widely used by businesses to drag down the wages of American workers in landscaping, conservation work, the meatpacking industry, the construction industry, and fishing jobs, a 2019 study by the Center for Immigration Studies finds.
When comparing the wages of H-2B foreign workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar industry, about 21 out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign workers than Americans.
Annually, the U.S. gives green cards to about 1.2 million legal immigrants, while another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are added to the labor market every year, many on work permits given to them by the federal government.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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