Biting The Hand That Feeds You

This article is not going to be about the need for new Republican leadership in Congress. It is going to be about what the current leadership has done to undermine the American middle class worker.

On Monday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the semiconductor bill passed by Congress that is supposed to help America manufacture the computer chips for cars and other electronic devices.

The article notes:

Republicans are all unanimous in their opposition to the reconciliation “Build Back Better” bill, but Mitch McConnell and 16 other Senate Republicans voted for the mini BBB bill, dumping billions of dollars into companies that have created a brain gain for China’s trade theft to drain our supply chains. Not only did McConnell agree to the bill despite the refusal of Democrats to entertain amendments ensuring that the jobs stay in America, but now these same companies are turning around and demanding more foreign workers to hire.

“In the near-term, the U.S. educational system does not produce enough Americans with the required qualifications to meet the demand of companies, not just in the semiconductor industry, but across the technical sector,” the HR officers of nine semiconductor companies wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. The nine companies were: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Ampere Computing; ASML US; Broadcom Inc.; Americas Global Foundries; Infineon Technologies; Americas Corp.; Intel Corporation; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Maybe we should fix our educational system instead of hiring foreign workers. However, blaming our educational system is a red herring. The problem is that foreign workers do not demand the salaries and benefits that American workers demand, thus increasing the profit margin of the companies involved.

The article notes:

Massive corporations lobbying for endless corporate welfare along with visa pork is what has demographically gerrymandered the American worker out of entire industries and what has ultimately led to China’s gain and our drain. The pipeline begins with F-1 student visas. In the case of foreign students, it’s really the god of public education, which is being subsidized happily by the Chinese. The universities get cash from the Chinese government, while the Chinese get operatives and intelligence officers into the country to work in academic fields and occupations. The rest of the American people lose. We bring in roughly 369,548 Chinese foreign students a year, together with 80,000 more on immigrant visas. In other words, there are about as many Chinese students in the U.S. as the entire university enrollment in the state of Maryland.

Noted right-wing outlet CNN reported in 2019, “The sheer size of the Chinese student population at U.S. universities presents a major challenge for law enforcement and intelligence agencies tasked with striking the necessary balance between protecting America’s open academic environment and mitigating the risk to national security.” Yet these tech companies think we are not bringing in enough Chinese immigrants. The director of national intelligence warned, “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.”

The article concludes:

Indeed, corporate welfare mixed with endless visa pork has destroyed our sovereignty as citizens and has sold us out to transnational corporations that now have us over the barrel. Naturally, Congress will aggravate the very variables that got us into this mess.

This is only one example of the reason we need to drain the Washington swamp.