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.
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Background Photo “Capitol Hill” by K3nna. CC BY 2.0.
If H1B workers are the cream of the crop and are the only ones with enough brain power to fill high tech jobs that supposedly no other American worker can, then someone please explain why the minimum required salary for H1B positions is set at $60,000???? Minimum salary for such hard to find skills in reality should be $150,000+. If these skills are in such demand then the employers should be willing to pay through the nose for them. The reason it’s set so low is to allow a legal loophole to be exploited for the purpose of driving down wages… PLAIN AND SIMPLE. Raise the minimum H1B salary requirements, enact tariffs on foreign services and require trading partners to meet or exceed US environmental, human rights and worker protections laws.
If this bill passes Americans will be homeless and begging on the streets while Indians will be enjoying the high life.
[…] “Despite much controversy surrounding HR 1044, debate was limited to 20 minutes, regular rules were suspended, and the final tally was 365–65, with Democrats voting 225 yea, eight nay; Republicans, 140 yea, 57 nay, with three abstaining, and positioned as a bipartisan success. Defenders of American jobs, pro-labor progressives and organizations that promote fair immigration, including U.S. Tech Workers, however, universally denounced the bill. […]
Govt should shut down L1 and H1 visa program completely and GC as well. Tax the companies investing in other countries and not employing americans locally . That way only Americans will be employed and there wont be any umployment at all. Further build border wall to stop illegal immigration. Restrict airlines flying into American airspace and do not allow airlines to fly to other countries, seal the borders. Put sanctions against every nation Asia, EU, Africa , Antartica even 🙂 and stop trading with all. Produce the crops locally the crops and eat them. Each state can act as a different country and US will be great again.
I hope you are not serious.
@Mathew .. true but most of those H1B workers have abused the immigration system by having fake work experience and not skilled at all let alone highly skilled. It is open fact now that most Indian lie on their resume. You want to give green card to those people ?
you said most what about the rest. you want them to suffer?
I truly believe its not most but few. But unfortunately a few can tarnish the image of all.
Agreed, these so-called indian IT companies already abusing our system, they sponsor people directly from india on fake work experience and majority education is not equivalent to the US education system. They want this bill because india is the only nation who can accept any job on any low wage. I saw some are working on $17000 per year. This is a clear abuse of our system. They did so many layoffs of US citizens and hired cheap indian labor with no experience. if somebody has doubt just call any indian consulting firm and ask them for a job. if they know you are from india , they will offer you free training and placement with food and accommodation where you need to share a room with 5 more indians. How somebody lives in this kind of environment but indian accept that. This is why our Tech giants outsource their work and save taxes and high-cost salaries.
Please contact your senators to oppose this bill if it’s being voted in senate.
And also will Kill the L1 Visa.. because those who come here under L1, and are not able to change into H1B will never be able to get green card. By the way, there is no country immigration, individuals does. So if these are the rules, the very same ones that you knew when came.. why they are unfair?
All those companies did not kidnapped you on India, or Etiopia, or Sudan or Brazil.. you came knowing it could happen.
So I am completely against this one that will create new loop roles to be solved.. It is not the solution, the RAISE act is.
This bill needs to be stopped. It will provide GC to atleast 1 million Indians (500K H1B + 500K+ family members) in a very short period and that will flood the job market and drive the wages lower.
Companies such as Amazon are luring Engineers away from India with the promise of L1 and Green card. This creates huge talent shortage in Indian Tech industry as well. The creme of expert always get poached by US tech companies.
So there has to be in check and balance.
Understands no increase in number of green cards issued. But it is better to put country cap from India, China and next in line on Employment green card. Reason being it brings diversity of talent from around the world, and at the same time set the expectation right for the people who want to migrate to US on H1/L1.
Check and Balance is key for everyone -so everyone thrives.
Raj I am sure you have got your green card and feeling competition from people from India and thats why saying such stupid reasons like diversity. talent has nothing to do with country and gender. it can happen anywhere, it happens in india due to competitive schools and population to complete with.
Let me clear you one thing, it’s not called talents, its called giving favors by so-called fake IT consulting companies to your own people who accept any low wages. If india has talent then they never accept jobs at low wages. Our Tech Giants using them because they need cheap labor and india is the only population who can work on any salary because they wanted to leave their country because of no standards of living, no education, no hospitals, no housing and even no Toilets. If you have Talent than first solve your country’s biggest problem and it is a “Public toilet”.
This bill does not increase green card wow by a single number. All it does is so discriminating against large countries such as India and China. Today an applicant from Ethopia or Iran or Pakistan with a master’s degree can get a green card in 1 year in EB2 category. Someone from India will need to wait 15 years due to the 7% country limit. This will do exploitation of those who are waiting their time for green card and such in H1B visa. This will reduce the risk number of people on H1 B in any given year.
@Mathew, I second that!!
It’s really sad for the people who are misunderstanding this bill(H.R1044)
*Top 10 reasons to pass HR 1044*
(from @LeonFresco Twitter #hr1044)
1) The only thing this bill does is to ensure that all new applicants will wait the exact same time for a green card, regardless of country of birth. No moral reason to treat people differently based on their nationality.
2) Under this bill, there will never be any person from any non-backlogged country that EVER has to wait longer for receipt of a green card than anyone from India or China who applied on the same day (or any day after)
3) The point of the EB green card system is to help the American economy — The per-country limits depress the average wage for new employer-sponsored immigrants by $11,592. This hurts the American economy and American workers.
4) Backlogged immigrants work in jobs requiring more experience and skills than the rest of the world. The average job zone [1 to 5 scale] was 4.1 for a position offered to an Indian immigrant, 4.0 for China, while all other immigrants were offered average job zone of just 3.7
5) The bill creates no new green cards and no new H-1B visas — even if 100,000,000 Indian tech workers suddenly now want to come to America after the bill passes, not 1 additional Indian worker will get a visa than otherwise because these categories are capped.
6) Any occupation that says it will lose its foreign worker supply as a result of this bill passing is admitting that its business model requires the discrimination of immigrants based on national origin. This is simply unjustifiable.
7) Family based immigration will also move closer to a first-come, first served system, which will help people to reunite with their long-lost family members in a fairer way that is non-discriminatory
8) No staffing companies support this bill — which means that the bill is only supported by companies who want their workers to have free labor mobility and the same working conditions as Americans
9) Passing a bipartisan bill would be a great thing for America to show that the Congress can still get together and work on common sense reforms to our broken immigration system; and
10) We can end the process of requiring employers to take country of origin into account when making employment decisions, which is prohibited by Title VII.
There are more than enough American workers to replace all the visa workers and ensure wages continue to grow.
I say eliminate the program and put some CEOs in prison for visa fraud.
Hi tech jobs are the jobs of the future and the visa worker program is designed to steal the future from American workers.
Any Republican who supports this bill should be primaried on that issue and that issue alone. And that includes Trump if he supports it.
American wages are only going to be improved by this bill, here are the reasons,
1. Most of the beneficiaries of this bill are already in US working under H1B visa from several years and this bill is not increasing the GC numbers.
2. This bill will improve the mobility of employees who are stuck in H1B visa with same wages due to GC Processing. This is the situation that consultancies use to get low wage employees.
It’s sad to see people posting false information like this without having proper knowledge of situation.
When foreigner who are getting jobs at expense of IUS, turn into citizen , only those new citizens will benefit , not US born
I have explained my reasoning above. If you know about the bill and situation better, go ahead and explain ratherr than saying a plain remark.
Hi Mathew, Agreed that H1b workers exploited at present will not be exploited and will ask for better salaries. But dont you agree, that as 1000s of them will have GC, there will be oversupply of STEM workers for limited number of Full time jobs and that would also depress the wages. H1B workers mostly work in consulting jobs and not on FT ones at least on the East Coast.