The foreign outsourcing industry is increasing its H-1B visa lobbying efforts to ensure the flow of foreign labor continues as the Trump Administration conducts a full legal review of the program.
The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), which represents a the tech and outsourcing industry in India, paid two lobbying groups a total of $150,000 to push back against any reforms to the H-1B visa, according to News Bytes. Those lobbying groups are the Lande Group, which was paid $50,000, and Wexler & Walker, which was paid the other $100,000. The lobbying expenditure from the foreign outsourcing group is an increase of $60,000 compared to what the organization spent in the last quarter.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U.S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced.
NASSCOM is using the lobbying groups to push the administration to cater to the pro-outsourcing agenda which hopes to continue the flow of cheaper, foreign labor.
The Lande Group, for instance, is lobbying for NASSCOM on specific immigration and labor issues like “high skill immigration, green cards, visa processing, U.S.-India relations, U.S.-India matters, tax reform, (and) border adjustment tax,” the disclosure states. Meanwhile, Wexler & Walker is lobbying on all issues from a pro-immigration standpoint.
Trump’s Hire American agenda has been lambasted by big business, the tech industry, and the open borders lobby, all of which profit from foreign national visa programs who use the random lottery system.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook have all been lobbying to maintain the status quo on the H-1B visa and push for amnesty, which would drastically plummet American workers’ wages as it would legalize an estimated 11 to 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Trump’s executive order targeting abuses of the H-1B visa, as Breitbart Texas reported, calls for the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Labor Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct a “full legal analysis” of all the problems negatively impacting American workers in the visa system.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.