The legislator responsible for keeping the GOP’s House majority in November says companies should be allowed to hire an unlimited number of foreign university-graduates in place of Americans.
Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told CNBC:
I think we should bring in people in the high-tech fields. I actually also believe that when [foreign students] graduate from one of the [university] schools in my district … we should staple a work visa to their diploma.
The number of foreigners who want to migrate to the United States is far above 100 million. In a 2012 study, Gallup reported the number at 150 million, which is one foreigner for every two Americans.
Stivers and his interviewer, establishment journalist John Harwood, both recognized that Americans’ wages rise whenever a high-productivity economy ensures a shortage of young Americans or immigrants for open jobs. But both Stivers and Harwood also showed they want more foreign workers to lessen the growing pressure on companies to pay higher wages to people outside Washington D.C. or New York:
Stivers: The American people have been so long without a raise, since 2008. It’s probably a long time coming, but it’s on the way, and you can see it already in the labor shortages that are out there.
Harwood: You’re right, we do have a labor shortage. Doesn’t that make it a bad idea to cut legal immigration, which the president and some in the Congress want to do?
Stivers: Well, I don’t want to cut legal immigration.
Stiver’s statement came out shortly before President Donald Trump used a White House awards ceremony to show he wants immigration to be a centerpiece of the 2018 midterm elections:
Blue wave means crime. It means open borders. Not good. We need new laws. We need border laws, we need immigration laws — we need them fast, we’re going to get them. Hopefully the midterms will help toward that end.
Trump’s plan reflects his 2016 success in winning support from a surprise wave of blue-collar voters who recognize they are usually ignored by hostile D.C. elites and investors. Without Trump’s victory, GOP leaders likely would have backed the Democrats’ demands for a huge cheap-labor amnesty.
Since his inauguration, Trump has pushed on many fronts to raise wages by curbing illegal migration and legal immigration. However, many of his efforts — but not all — have been blocked by business-first Republicans and by immigration-first Democrats whose base is urging “Abolish ICE!” in the 2018 campaign.
Trump wants the blue-collar voters to turn out again in the midterms, but Stivers is trying to raise more donations from the GOP’s usual business backers.
As Harwood picked at his salad, Stivers argued that his high-immigration/low wages policy is the same as Trump’s low-immigration/high-wages policy:
Stivers: In fact, I don’t think the president wants to cut legal immigration. He’s suggested replacing the lottery with a merit-based system that would bring us people that we need in the high-tech fields.
Harwood: He wants to cut legal immigration in half.
Stivers: I think we should bring in people in the high-tech fields. I actually also believe that when you graduate from one of the schools in my district — I have Ohio University down in Athens, if you keep going down 33, or if you go 33 West, you’ll bump into the Ohio State University — all these foreign students that come here on a student visa, I think we should staple a work visa to their diploma because we’ve educated them here, and then we force them to go home and compete against us, which is a silly economic policy.
Harwood: So you don’t agree with the president on cutting legal immigration?
Stivers: I believe we should help people, that want to come here that have skills, help us grow our economy. I’m for that.
Stivers’ stated support for the “visa stapling” plan of limitless college-grad immigration, however, is muddied by his support for an pro-American bill immigration pushed by Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte which was strongly opposed by business groups, including the U.S. Chamber.
Also, Stivers seems to have recognized the unpopularity of this easy immigration plan. He avoided looking at Hardwood for much of the exchange as he agreed with Hardwood’s indignant opposition to any cuts in legal immigration.
Stivers’ apparent demand for an essentially endless, infinite supply of wage-cutting workers likely reflects the demand from GOP donors, whose wealth and stock values rise as wages fall. The GOP’s pro-immigration, cheap-labor donors include Koch Network, the American Business Immigration Council, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Information Technology companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various other CEOs.
Massive immigration also suits business and investors because immigrants serve them as taxpayer-aided consumers, and as extra renters and home-buyers who drive up housing costs.
Those donors’ demands for more foreign workers and consumers help to explain the leaders’ repeated rhetorical support for more amnesty bills, and their repeated closed-door efforts to quietly block President Trump’s popular low-immigration/high-wage campaign promises.
Stiver’s “stapling” proposal was included in the 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill, which was blocked by GOP voters. But it is still being pushed by major CEOs, their lobbyists, and their globalist spokesmen from the Cato Institute who urge that an unlimited number of “Employer-Based” green-cards be awarded to foreign workers::
The cheap-labor policy is also backed by multiple GOP Senators, including Sen. Cory Gardner, who is managing the Senate GOP’s 2018 campaign plan.
Also, Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder is pushing four cheap-labor bills via the pending 2019 homeland-defense appropriations bill. The beneficiaries would include migrants who say they fear criminal gangs, the low-tech dairy industry, and landscaping companies seeking cheap seasonal labor. Yoder’s bill also includes his H.R. 392 plan to fast-track green cards for many of the 1.5 million low-wage college-graduate outsourcing-workers who have H-1B or L-1 visas to work in the United States.
Stivers is a member of the House Committee on Rules which has the power to strip Yoder’s cheap-labor proposals from the 2019 bill.
Stivers’ 15th district is just to the South and West of Columbus. The district is solidly Republican, and whites are roughly 90 percent of the population. Ohio employers are importing foreigners to take jobs sought by American youths via the H-1B, L-1, OPT and other visa-workers programs. For example, Stivers cited Ohio State University which imports almost 200 foreign college-graduates to take prestigious college jobs each year and Ohio University in Athens which is importing 50 foreign c0llege graduates for good jobs in 2018. In 2017, Ohio employers asked for visas to bring in 4,563 new visa-workers and asked to extend visas for 2,714 resident H-1B visa-workers who hold jobs in Ohio.
Business groups and Democrats tout polls which prod Americans to declare support for migrants or the claim that the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants.” The alternative “priority or fairness” polls — plus the 2016 election — show that voters in the polling booth put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.
Harwood’s opposition to Trump’s cuts in legal immigration reflects the interest of the elite establishment in Washington D.C., which gains power and prestige when a bigger economy delivers more revenue to Washington — regardless of flat wage levels — plus more power over Americans’ lives and culture. Immigration also boosts diversity, which helps the establishment rule over a divided citizenry.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers.
In contrast, American employees gain when a shortage of workers forces employers to compete for their time by offering higher wages. The beneficiaries include African-American bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey, Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high schoolers, resort workers in Hilton Head, construction workers, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers at small businesses, and even Warren Buffett’s railroad workers.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.