Tag Archives: Foreign worker

Creating More Unemployment In America

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Investor’s Business Daily posted a story today about an executive order issued by President Obama.

The article reports:

This time, the president isn’t seeking to flood the country with tens of thousands of indigent, border-surging migrants in search of bigger benefits packages.

Instead, he plans to award via executive order work permits to 100,000 foreign college grads (including deportable aliens) to compete with U.S. workers for jobs.

Cui bono? Certainly not the U.S. workers he purports to champion.

Obama’s Homeland Security rule, published in the Federal Register on Thursday, amounts to yet another illegal power grab by explicitly treading on Congress‘ constitutional prerogative to set immigration quotas.

It also comes at a time when 94 million U.S. workers have been unemployed so long they’re no longer counted in labor-participation statistics. Some New Year’s Day present for millions of discouraged Americans.

The move is especially nefarious not just because it stands as another example of executive overreach but also because foreign workers already have U.S. workers at a disadvantage.

For one thing, they’re able to work cheaper. Unlike Americans, most have had free tuition rides from their sponsoring countries and carry no student loan debt. This enables them to tolerate lower wages than American grads saddled with high loan costs that can’t be shirked even in bankruptcy court.

The foreign workers are also exempt from Obamacare rules that add to the employer cost of hiring workers. While liberal politicians complain about sending jobs oversees, they seem to have no problem bringing foreign workers here to take American jobs. It is time Congress put an end to these endless executive orders. It is time for Congress to develop a spine.

Is This Really What We Had In Mind?

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It really is time to take a good look at America’s immigration policies. We need to allow people to come to America, but we also need to protect American workers.

Yesterday Computer World posted an article entitled, “Southern California Edison IT workers ‘beyond furious’ over H-1B replacements.” What is this about?

The article reports:

Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.

…The IT organization’s “transition effort” is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with “another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily,” SCE said in a statement. The “transition,” which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said.

“They are bringing in people with a couple of years’ experience to replace us and then we have to train them,” said one longtime IT worker. “It’s demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company.”

The article also illustrates one of the problems with crony capitalism:

Displaced IT workers have long protested and complained about the use of H-1B workers, but they are overshadowed by large tech companies that lead H-1B lobbying efforts in Washington. IT workers are also effectively silenced through severance agreements that include non-disparagement clauses and confidentiality provisions, as well as fears that public complaining may hurt re-employment prospects.

Replacing U.S. workers with H-1B workers violates the spirit if not the letter of the law. Hira (Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University, and a researcher on offshore outsourcing) pointed out that as a part of the application process to obtain H-1B approval from the Labor Department, an employer is required to attest to the following: “Working Conditions: The employer attests that H-1B, H-1B1 or E-3 foreign workers in the named occupation will not adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed.” This statement is in Form 9035CP of the LCA.

Further, Hira noted that the Labor Department states, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires that the hiring of a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed.

This is just wrong. I also wonder if the company has to provide health insurance for the foreign workers it hires. Is this another result of ObamaCare?