It is a good thing that Microsoft and many other companies import Indians to take jobs that otherwise would go to American citizens, says senior Democratic leader and Indian immigrant Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
“The administration has been consistently working to take away legal pathways for immigrants to contribute their talents to our country, and this is yet another of those attacks,” complained Jayapal, who has long supported mass migration into Americans’ communities and workplaces.
She posted her comments after Vice President Vance announced curbs on the award of green cards to employees of Microsoft, Adobe, and six large Indian-run staffing companies.
“The administration has been consistently working to take away legal pathways for immigrants to contribute their talents to our country, and this is yet another of those attacks,” said pro-socialism Jayapal, whose district includes many Indian contractor workers hired by Microsoft and other tech companies.
Vance rebuked her via X: “‘Socialism’ apparently means fighting like hell to ensure megacorporations have a neverending flow of cheap labor!”
Vance is taking an increasingly critical stance on the H-1B visa program, in close cooperation with a growing network of allies. Administration officials say the visa programs keep 2.5 million foreign, mixed-skill contract workers in jobs that would otherwise be held by skilled American professionals.
But Jayapal’s support of the visa programs is important because she is a senior leader of House Democrats.
She is an Indian immigrant who used the H-1B and other visa programs to convert her student visa into citizenship. She is a former leader of the Democrats’ growing progressive caucus, and is the top Democrat on the House immigration committee. Those leadership posts give her the internal power to punish the first Democrats who declare opposition to the many programs that allow foreign workers to buy jobs held by American college graduates.
So far, no Democrats — aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders — have broken ranks to condemn the visa programs, which allow mid-level corporate executives to privately sell work permits, Americans’ jobs, and eventually citizenship to unskilled and unproductive migrants from India.
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“We need a sensible immigration policy, not one which brings in people from around the world to replace American workers,” Sanders told CNN on Thursday.
Jayapal — like many other Democrats — openly favors migrants over Americans, and suggested that the visa programs be fixed by moving more migrants into the U.S. jobs:
This is a crucial issue for me as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, the only member of Congress to have actually had an H-1B visa, and the Representative for tens of thousands of Microsoft workers …
You don’t fix a broken immigration system by taking a hammer to legal immigration. Microsoft has been a leader in advocating for comprehensive immigration reforms that modernize an antiquated immigration system and provide more — not fewer — legal pathways for immigrants from all over the world to work here and be with their families.
In contrast, a growing number of Republican legislators are showcasing — or just admitting — the myriad problems in the many fraud-plagued programs. For example, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-NC), who is the GOP co-chair of the India Caucus, wants more federal investigations of H-1B fraud.
That is a turnaround for McCormick, who has previously backed bills that would accelerate and expand the flow of Indian migrants into Americans’ jobs.
Recent polls suggest that Vance’s reforms are popular among many white-collar voters, most of whom usually pull the lever for Democrats.
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