Democrats’ Migration Bill Rewards Hiring Discrimination Against U.S. Graduates

The Democrats’ $1.7 trillion spending bill expands hiring discrimination against Americans by rewarding CEOs who hire foreign graduates, say experts on migration law.

“This is structural discrimination that will remove any any leverage for Americans to get better wages or working conditions,” said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies.

The bill allows CEOs to hire an uncapped population of foreign graduates with dangled offers of government-awarded, fast-track green cards.

It will be “inherently impossible [for U.S. graduates] to compete … the foreign workers will always accept less pay because they also get the incredibly lucrative benefit of permanency in the United States,” Law said. Many foreign graduates also have little college debt to pay off.

The giveaway to investors and the Fortune 500 is buried in obscure language on page 799 of the bill. For example, “adjust the status” is agency jargon for providing a green card:

The Secretary of State shall exempt an alien (and the spouse and children of such alien) from the numerical limitations described in sections 201, 202, and 203, and the Secretary of Homeland Security may adjust the status of such alien (and the spouse and children of such alien) to lawful permanent resident, if such alien submits or has submitted an application for adjustment of status.

[…]

‘‘(B) such alien—

‘‘(i) is the beneficiary of an approved petition under subparagraph (E) or (F) of  section 204(a)(1) [link added] that bears a priority date that is more than 2 years before the date 1he alien requests an exemption from the numerical limitations; and ‘‘(ii) pays a supplemental fee of $5,000;

Foreign workers would only to wait two years and pay $5,000 to pick up their green cards — despite a law which limits on the annual number of cards t0 roughly 140,000 per year. Of course, the workers likely must first work at lower wages for several years before their employer successfully nominates them for green cards.

The draft legislation “is expanding every category of legal immigration over the limits that Congress has set in the law,” said Rosemary Jenks, the government relations director at NumbersUSA. “Instead of being honest about it, transparent about it, and just increasing the caps, they do this nonsense to try to hide what they’re doing.”

“This is a complete abdication of [Congress’] role in safeguarding the welfare of the American citizens,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers. The “employment visa program is destroying the professional classes.”

So far, the giveaway to the Fortune 500 has not been covered in establishment newspapers — and Democrats have minimized any mention. For example, the Associated Press reported October 28:

The White House economic framework only broadly described how the $100 billion would be used. It said the money would help reduce various backlogs in the immigration process, provide more legal representation and make “the asylum system and border processing more efficient and humane.”

The corporate giveaway gets little recognition because few Americans know that U.S. immigration law already allows companies to hire an unlimited number of foreign graduates on temporary visas — and also to nominate an unlimited number of these temporary workers for green cards.

These openings in immigration law have already allowed employers to create a parallel “green card workforce” of roughly 1 million foreign graduates. The visa workers are trying to get permanent green cards by competing against Americans for good careers in tech, banking, insurance, design, fashion, academia and healthcare. In October, Facebook was fined for discriminating against Americans while trying to reward foreign workers with green cards.

However, the size of the foreign workforce is limited because only about 140,000 workers and family members can get green cards each year.

 

The resulting backlog means ensures that many Indian and some Chinese graduates must work — at lower wages — for their U.S. employers for 15 years or longer to get the green card. This lengthy period of indentured service deters other Indian and Chinese graduates from taking U.S. jobs in the green card workforce, much to the distress of U.S. investors.

But this bill allows the foreign workers to bypass the annual cap and avoid the backlog. In turn, CEOs will be able to deliver on the dangled promise of green cards and recruit many more foreign graduates for many types of jobs needed by indebted U.S. graduates.

“It will force [U.S.] college graduates to work in a secondary labor market,” said Law. “They will not have the same types of opportunities [as foreign graduates] because this allows employers for a very nominal price to lock in their permanent supply of cheap foreign labor,” he said.

The existing green card workforce does suppress salaries for many American graduates, and boosts stock prices by more than $100 billion, according to a study touted by business. This process transfers wealth from young people’s salaries to older people’s stock portfolios.

The workforce also shifts jobs and wealth from interior and peripheral states — such as Sen. Sherrod Brown’s Ohio, or Sen. Joe Manchin’s West Virginia — to the large coastal states.

The indentured foreign workforce also solidifies the CEOs’ control over their technology, because it minimizes the CEOs’ reliance on outspoken Americans professionals who have the legal right to quit and then join rival firms.

Amid silence from the establishment media and the GOP establishment, both Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN have spotlighted the proposed discrimination.

The bill “grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America,” said an October 28 statement from Banks. “Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a  ‘hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates,'” the statement said.

Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group has lobbied the Biden administration for greater access to foreign workers.

The FWD.us network of coastal investors stand to gain from the government delivery of more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and high-occupancy renters. The network has funded many astroturf campaigns, urged Democrats to not talk about the economic impact of migration, and manipulated coverage by the TV networks and the print media.

Immigration law is extremely complex. For example, there are multiple lines for foreign workers to get green cards, and multiple stages that are managed by different agencies. Many wait to get H-1B work permits in an annual lottery, then wait in line to be approved for a green card, and then wait in another line for the green cards. Fortune 500 hiring managers dip into this pipeline, via pyramids of subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, to hire and fire from a population of roughly 1 million no-rights, gig-workers for a wide variety of white-collar jobs.

The draft bill would dramatically expand the volume of this student-to-citizen worker pipeline by widening the exit for foreign workers to reach the dangled green cards at the end, said Jenks. Under the bill, “there’s no limit on the number of [green card] petitions that can be approved, so it’s just a matter of [agency] manpower” needed to process the applications, she said.

“I have no doubt that there will be a push within [the Department of Homeland Security] to hire more [bureaucrats] and speed up the whole process of approving the petitions, getting them on the waiting list  … and then they can stay here,” she said.

The bill also provides the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency with a grant of $2.8 billion, plus permission to hire more bureaucrats with funds from fee raises paid by would-be immigrants.