Laid-off retail workers should learn to code for new software jobs, says Democrat heavyweight Rahm Emanuel.
“There’s going to be people, like at J.C. Penney and other retail [outlets]. Those jobs are not coming back,” Emanuel told ABC News November 6.
“Give them the tools, six months, you’re going to become a computer coder. We’ll pay for it, and you’ll get millions of people to sign up for that,” Emanuel said. “They are not going back to parts of the retail economy, and we need to give them a lifeline to what’s the next chapter.”
Even if older American retail workers can learn the skills, Emanuel’s plan would likely fail because Fortune 500 companies prefer to hire foreign visa workers instead of hiring the existing supply of American young software professionals.
And the government quietly delivers this resident army of at least 1.5 million white-collar visa workers via the Optional Practical Training program, the H-1B visa program, as well as via the J-1, L-1, H4EAD, E-3, Curricular Practical Training, TN, and B-1/B-2 programs.
Emanuel may not know about this huge labor policy, even though he is a former chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and also a former mayor of Chicago.
Most of these foreign workers are imported from low-tier universities in India and work for many years at low wages in mid-skill jobs in the hope of getting green cards and citizenship delivered via a current or future employer. Some work as H-1B contractors at brand name companies, like Facebook and Amazon, but most compliantly serve as gig workers for little-known subcontractors in the hope of getting the huge deferred bonus of green cards.
CEOs at Fortune 500 companies quietly outsource many of their full-time jobs to this huge “Green Card Workforce,” so cutting their payroll costs and boosting their near-term stock values for shareholders and C-suite executives.
This green card outsourcing prevents many American graduates from getting paid jobs where they can use the degrees they earned with borrowed tuition money. This outsourcing also pushes many experienced American professionals from mid-career jobs, while millions more face lower salaries and persistent job insecurity.
Corporate diversity reports, university reports, and census data show that large slices of the nation’s technology workforce consist of ill-paid, ill-treated foreign workers who have the same job security and professional authority as migrant stoop workers in U.S. fields.
The foreigners’ limited skills and lack of workplace rights help to reduce productivity, lower the quality of software, and slow research. But those losses are acceptable because the foreign workers successfully minimize U.S. professionals’ role in the sector, so minimizing the formation of innovative rival companies.
So this labor policy delivers workplace stability, cheaper graduates, and higher stock values to the current executives and leading shareholders of the Fortune 500 companies.
However, President Trump has begun to reform this green card workforce to steer many of these white-collar jobs back to Americans.
In contrast, Joe Biden’s 2020 plan would import many foreign workers for jobs that retail workers can accomplish with pride.
He promised to “reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees,” to wipe out Trump’s asylum reforms, bar any deportations for 100 days, and end migration enforcement against illegal aliens unless they commit a felony.
Biden also promised to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import temporary workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S. universities into white-collar jobs. He would “exempt from any cap [the] recent graduates of Ph.D. programs in STEM fields.”
Biden also wants to accelerate the inflow of chain migration migrants and dramatically accelerate the inflow of poor refugees to at least 125,000 per year.
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