by CHQ Staff
As early as today, the House is set to vote on HR 1044, the so-called Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act or FHSI.
The FHSI, a long-sought legislative goal of the cheap labor wing of the US Chamber of Commerce and the globalist tech industry, is nothing but a green-card giveaway to 300,000 low-wage Indian contract-workers employed by U.S. companies. Passage of HR 1044 will mean cheaper workers for investors but lower wages for American STEM grads, especially those in computer science and engineering.
A loose coalition of economic nationalist conservatives and pro-labor progressives is working to defeat HR 1044, but the bill’s author, Rep. Zoe Lofgren is a senior House Democrat and close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Joe Guzzardi, of Progressives for Immigration Reform, says “Lofgren is the notoriously awful, vigorously anti-U.S. tech worker, H-1B advocate who, in her 25-year congressional career, has voted more than 30 times to increase high- and low-skilled visas.”
Mr. Guzzardi says the House version of HR 1044 has 291 cosponsors, mostly Democrats, and has been referred to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship. Both bills increase the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7 percent of the total number of such visas available in a single year to 15 percent, and eliminate the 7 percent cap for employment-based visas.
According to Mr. Guzzardi’s information from a USCIS insider, if the per-country cap were lifted, then for the next 10 years, nearly all of the Green Cards in the ordinary professional worker category would go to Indian nationals. Other companies that want to sponsor workers from the other more than 150 countries that receive employment Green Cards would have to wait at least a decade.
Passing these devoid-of-American-worker-protection bills — as employers, ethnic lobbyists, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and congressional sellouts urge — would allow an unjust system to continue unabated. Dozens of callous corporations that are pushing for the Lee/Lofgren bills have fired U.S. tech workers, and are now screaming about a nonexistent worker shortage says Mr. Guzzardi.
HR 1044 I backed by major tech firms including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, says Forbes contributor Andy J. Semotiuk, and the bill seems tailored to help employment-based applicants born in countries like India and China, and family-based applicants born in Mexico.
Currently, the U.S. grants 140,000 green cards annually to employment-based immigrants.
However, no more than seven percent can actually go to any one country, regardless of population size notes Mr. Semotiuk, who seems to favor more immigration. As a result of this limited number, there is an enormous backlog of applicants from some countries that some say may take decades to clear.
In fact, as of May 2018, over 395,025 foreign nationals are awaiting their green cards under the employment-based category. Of this number, 306,601 are Indian.
Enter the HR 1044 bill, which will supposedly resolve the backlog through a first-come, first-serve process. Immigrants from India and China would get the majority of the green cards, simply because of how many applicants there are from both countries now in the backlog, concluded Mr. Semotiuk.
Roughly 108 Republicans have co-sponsored the green card giveaway, enabled by HR 1044 – even though the Democrats’ legislation is backed by Silicon Valley investors who oppose the GOP.
Democrats also have kept the legislation secret — the bill has had no hearing or committee votes — and it is being quarterbacked by the immigration lawyer who helped Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer write the disastrous “Gang of Eight” amnesty in 2013.
The GOP legislators backing the giveaway include Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck, who is the top Republican on the House’s immigration and citizenship subcommittee, and Tennessee GOP Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, the top Republican on the appropriations’ subcommittee on homeland security.
Each year 800,000 young Americans graduate with degrees in healthcare, engineering, software, science, math, architecture, business, or design. However, their salaries and careers are damaged by the government importing 1.2 million foreign workers, mostly from India.
These 1.2 million foreign workers are eager to take Americans’ jobs at low wages, in part, because the federal government also allows employers to nominate them for hugely valuable green cards. Companies save a fortune in salaries by offering this taxpayer-funded bonus to their foreign contract-workers.
Enacting HR 1044 would be a disaster for America’s STEM graduates, putting downward pressure on wages just as the Trump economic boom is giving American workers their first wage increases in decades. It would also be a political disaster for President Trump, were he to sign it, as it would be a clear betrayal of his America and Americans first economic agenda.
We urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Representative (the toll-free Capitol Switchboard is 1-866-220-0044), tell your Representative American workers deserve a raise. Tell your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 1044 or any other bill that increases the importation of cheap foreign labor to compete with American workers and put downward pressure on American wages.
– – –
Background Photo “Capitol Hill” by K3nna. CC BY 2.0.
The reality of S386 is: through decades of abusing, now Indians have already taken up 75% of the total H1B visa. The green card cap for all the other countries is 7% while Indians have 20%. Now they want to pass s386 to occupy every single green card! And Chinese will not get any of the Green cards in the coming 10 years either! As a result, S386 should not be passed before the following two steps are fulfilled:
Step 1. Since a large part of these H1B visas are problematic and should checked, the illegal applicants should be revoked their H1B visas even green cards; Step 2. Since Indians have a cap of 20% while others only have 7%, we count how many more green cards are issued to Indians than people from other countries, and Indians should have zero green card until such a discrepancy is covered. The core is not about nationality, it is about CHEATING. In the name of fairness and justice, we should clear up those cheaters first. For example, nearly 75 out of 100 have passed an exam and get offered a job through cheating. One day clear evidence shows there exist cheating! Rather that given those 75 cheater a job immediately, we should check how many of them are cheaters and revoke their job offers, and give the offer to those legally passed the exam their jobs! Or else, by giving those 75 cheaters a job means unfair for those who may have the job but got their job stolen by those cheaters! Or we can choose a better such as increase the cap gradually, like 14% for the next year, then 28%, then 56% , then 100%. What’s more is that S386 will clearly hand over more jobs from US citizen to Indians and decrease total number of jobs for US citizens. The present S386 is absolutely the worst solution. The video below can help you learn the situation better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=-jqWcyx7Mcc&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0&app=desktop
just my 2 cents with my personal experience. I am of Indian citizenship and got a my Bachelors and Masters from a top 50 US university. This was 2008 (financial crisis). I got hired straight out of college in Financial Technology. Yes, at that point I was making entry level salary, but I know It wasn’t more or less than any other person in the company who started after college. In fact, the company had to spend an extra 5k on my H1B visa.
In 2010, they decided to sponsor my green card, another 10K+ expense for the company, all this time, I had salary bumps and bonuses commiserate to my performance in the company and on par with other American citizens. My Green Card was approved in 2012, and has been stuck there since then. At my current position at a different company, they also applied for my Green card to be transferred to them and I have renewed my H1b several times since my first one in 2009. At each position, I am getting paid the same amount as any American citizen would have, and each time the company took on the extra burden of paying for my visas. After 10+ years of working out of college, I make well enough to afford living in a nice part of San Francisco, take multiple vacations, not worry about eating out, buying nice things and drive a new car every few years. So I would like to challenge the argument that we are taking jobs to work for cheap. Does that happen, sure, but every Indian person I know who is on the same boat as my makes what I do or significantly more. I have friends who make well over 300K a year while still stuck on this Green card queue. We fall in the highest tax bracket, we don’t mooch of any social welfare.
So please tell me why me and my peers don’t deserve some relief while being stuck in system that is archaic based on the country of birth. Weed out the ones who are working for cheap, but to say that if you remove H1B, each one of those jobs will go to an American citizen is downright foolish. Most of these companies take on an extra financial burden to have someone on H1B so there clearly is a shortage of American citizens to take these jobs