After meeting with a “bevy” of big-business groups, President Barack Obama is reportedly considering granting them up to 800,000 additional guest-worker visas via executive actions.
According to the Associated Press, “one of the more popular requests among business and family groups is a change in the way green cards are counted,” which would “essentially free up some 800,000 additional visas the first year.” In addition, “other requests have included removing the requirement that some spouses of U.S. citizens return to their native country for at least three years before they can apply for U.S. residency, as well as extending work permits to the spouses of all temporary H1-B skilled workers.” The Obama administration is also considering granting work permits for low-skilled industries as well.
The Obama administration “has already increased the number of guest-worker permits by possibly 100,000 when it allowed the spouses of high-tech guest-workers who are applying for permanent residency to obtain permits.”
Numerous companies – like Microsoft and Cisco – have massively laid off American workers while pushing the Obama administration for more guest-worker visas at a time when scholars and studies from organizations on the left, right, and center have debunked the notion that there is a shortage of American high-tech workers. The Obama administration reportedly wants to appease big-business interests so they give him air cover for his potential executive amnesty, which may enable millions of illegal immigrants to get work permits in addition to temporary amnesty.
All of these actions would make it tougher for Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder to get jobs, as U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow has repeatedly emphasized. And as Breitbart News has reported, Americans are increasingly demanding a “pause” in the number of guest-workers who are admitted. A Reuters poll “found that 70% of Americans feel illegal immigrants threaten U.S. beliefs and customs, 63% believe more immigration at this time threatens the country’s economy, and 45% want fewer immigrants. A recent poll from The Polling Company found that 90% of likely voters feel that “U.S.-born workers and legal immigrants already here should get first preference for jobs.” Strong majorities of those who favor a pathway to legalization and citizenship for illegal immigrants even believe that “jobs now held by illegal immigrants should go to American workers.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) accused the Obama administration of “actively working against the interests of the American worker.”
“We have communities throughout America that are barely scraping by. Tens of millions of Americans are on welfare, unemployment, and public assistance,” Sessions said in a statement this week. “Yet the White House and their Senate Majority seem more concerned about the economic demands of large corporations, or the citizens of other countries, than about getting our own citizens back to work into stable jobs that can support a family and uplift a community.”