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Importing Unemployment

In another example of why many Americans believe that elites are not concerned with the average citizen, The White House, supported by academia and big business, is loosening restrictions on noncitizens holding Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)  jobs.

The controversy concerns H-1B visas, described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)  as being used “to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require the theoretical or practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge, including but not limited to: scientists, engineers, or computer programmers.”

In a press release strategically timed during the holidays to avoid much attention, DHS said that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agencies (USCIS) has proposed a rule “that would modernize and improve certain aspects of employment-based nonimmigrant and immigrant visa programs. USCIS is also proposing regulatory amendments to better enable U.S. employers to hire and retain certain foreign workers who are beneficiaries of approved employment-based immigrant visa petitions and are waiting to become lawful permanent residents (LPRs).”

According to The Hill, “The agency said the rules are primarily aimed at helping high-skilled foreign workers who have been approved for a permanent work visa but are still waiting for their green card because of the backlog.’ Simply put, many workers in the immigrant visa process are not free to consider all available employment and career development opportunities,’ DHS said in the proposed rules.”

The Hill reports that DHS believes the change is necessary to “allow certain temporary workers who are on track to become permanent residents to stay beyond the 6-year limit of the H-1B program. The changes would also allow those temporary visa holders and certain other foreign workers to more easily change jobs without fear of losing their spot in line for a green card. The DHS says the current backlog can delay permanent residency for high-skilled workers from a few months to as much as a decade. Because of country-based caps, the delays have hit foreigners from China and India the hardest, where demand is high.”

The move is supported by powerful interests. Zerohedge reports that “High-tech titans like Bill Gates, Steve Case, and Mark Zuckerberg are repeatedly quoted proclaiming a dearth of talent that imperils the nation’s future. Politicians, advocates, and articles and op-eds published by media outlets—including The New York TimesForbes, CNN, Slate, and others—invoke such foreign-born entrepreneurs as Google’s Sergey Brin or Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, as if arrival from abroad (Brin and Yang came to the US as children) explains the success of the companies they founded . . . with partners who are US natives. Journalists endorse studies that trumpet the job-creating skills of these entrepreneurs from abroad, while ignoring the weaknesses that other scholars find in the research.
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“Meanwhile, The National Science Board’s biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators, consistently finds that the US produces several times the number of STEM graduates than can get jobs in their fields. Recent reports from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and the American Chemical Society warn that overproduction of STEM PhDs is damaging America’s ability to recruit native-born talent, and advise universities to limit the number of doctorates they produce.”

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that “President Obama supports bringing more foreign STEM workers to the US, despite high unemployment among US workers…Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed. But they are not organized, and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform.”

Reaction has been harsh. Breitbart  contends that “ Industry executives and university advocates have successfully duped nearly every reporter, editor and anchor nationwide about the scale and purpose of the H-1B professional outsourcing program. The journalists–and Americans—have been kept in the dark while universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs.Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called ‘high-tech’ computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate. These white-collar guest-workers are not immigrants — they are foreign professionals hired at low wages for six years to take outsourced, white-collar jobs in the United States. Many hope to stay in the United States, but most guest-workers return home after six years.”

An analysis from Zerohedge reveals that “since December 2007, according to the Household Survey, only 790,000 native born American jobs have been added. Contrast that with the 2.1 million foreign-born Americans who have found a job over the same time period.”

Writing for the Center for Immigration Studies, Steven Camarota asks “Does it make sense to continue to admit a million new permanent immigrants each year, along with several hundred thousand guest workers, given the enormous pool of people not working or trying to find full-time work?”

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Obama places needs of immigrants above U.S. Citizens

There is growing concern that the Obama Administration places its international agenda above the needs of the nation it was elected to serve. A prime example can be seen in the realm of employment.

Americans needing unemployment insurance benefits rose recently to the highest levels in half a year, reports the U.S. Department of Labor .   “In the week ending December 26, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 287,000, an increase of 20,000 from the previous week’s unrevised level of 267,000. The 4-week moving average was 277,000, an increase of 4,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 272,500. There were no special factors impacting this week’s initial claims.”

The prospects for improvement in the jobs picture in 2016 is not promising.  Yahoo  business notes that “Many economists expect a slower pace of job market improvement in 2016.”

Additional troubling factors include the fact that many of the jobs created in recent years are low-paying, benefit-less positions replacing well-paying jobs offering full benefits.

While Americans continue to file for unemployment benefits or take employment at far lesser pay, President Obama continues to encourage immigration. For illegal immigration, Washington continues to tolerate inadequate border security and a lack of deportation actions for illegal arrivals. For legal immigrants, the provision of benefits and work permits provides increased competition for both benefits and jobs for U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency   states: “The United States welcomes thousands of foreign workers in multiple occupations or employment categories every year. These include artists, researchers, cultural exchange participants, information technology specialists, religious workers, investors, scientists, athletes, nurses, agricultural workers and others.”

The Washington Times  notes that “net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 29 seconds.”

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Despite the White House’s opening of relations with Cuba, the island continues to endure harsh repression from the Castro regime and a depressed economy. As a consequence, as reported in the Telegraph, “A year after relations with America began to thaw, people are leaving the island in droves, impatient at the speed of change…”

President Obama also advocates allowing up to 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S., despite security concerns about terrorism.

That welcome is about to be expanded. Breitbart eports that “President Barack Obama is preparing a colossal new executive action that could print-up work permits for a huge number of foreign white-collar graduates every year, above and beyond the levels set by Congress. This executive action…directly bypasses Congressional lawmakers…it will certainly raise new security concerns as it covers categories of immigration utilized by migrants from the Middle East and nearby regions. The 181-page rule focuses primarily on giving work-permits to foreign college-grads who will compete against Americans for white collar jobs, despite the large number of American graduates now stuck in lower-wage positions and struggling to pay off college debts. The rule will also make each foreign graduate much cheaper for U.S. employers to hire than many U.S.-born college grads.”

The British newspaper Daily Mail  reports that “up to 34 million blank ‘green cards’ and work permits have been  ordered.”

Much of the President’s plan is done without the consent of the legislative branch. US News  recently noted “in his efforts to work around Congress, Obama has made the aggressive use of executive power, particularly on immigration, an increasingly effective and politically accepted presidential tool.”

Writing in Roll Call,  Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa) states: “We have immigration laws in this country for two basic reasons: to preserve American jobs and to protect national security. President Barack Obama’s unlawful executive actions to grant amnesty to at least 5 million illegal immigrants violate both of those principles. Any objective review must find that the president’s policies have placed the concerns of those who have broken our laws ahead of the interests of citizens and legal residents of the United States… Employment is difficult enough to find for millions of Americans and legal residents who woke up this morning without a pay check. On top of that hardship, the president has now introduced millions of new applicants who will compete for jobs that are already scarce. It is difficult to imagine how such a policy is beneficial to American workers…Worse, the president has laid out the welcome mat for anyone around the world who seeks illegal access to the interior of the United States.”