A group of Indian visa-workers is offering to pay the federal government $1,500 per family to jump the line for green cards, according to a friendly report by the McClatchy news bureau.
The proposed trade would send just $1,500 from each Indian family to the federal treasury in exchange for a fast-track to the hugely valuable prize of citizenship for at least 100,000 outsourcing-workers and their family members.
That small payment would save the Indians from paying lawyers’ fees, allow them to compete directly against American professionals for jobs, and allow them to quickly begin the chain-migration process for their many parents and siblings. The money could be used to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, say the advocates, who are also hoping their proposal will be supported by their ally, Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder.
“It goes from insulting to preposterous to propose such a thing,” countered Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies. She continued:
It is insulting for them to think they should get to jump in line ahead of others for paying a ridiculously low sum of money, and it is preposterous [for them] to think they somehow are preferred immigrants over millions of others who have been sponsored and are waiting their turn in line.
The McClatchy news service reported the offer from the Indian group, Immigration Voice:
Immigration lobbyists are pitching a plan to pay for disaster relief by charging high-skilled workers from India and China a fee to obtain green cards.
And they’re leaning hard on Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas, to help …
under this proposal green card applicants from certain countries could pay an additional fee to bypass the green card backlog. The money would be would be earmarked for disaster relief, which [the group’s lawyer also] said would increase the chances of passing green card policy reforms.
An additional $1,500 green card fee for all employment-based Chinese and Indian immigrants would raise $1.5 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by Immigration Voice. A fee of $2,500 would raise another $1 billion …
In January, the group said their funds could be used to pay for a border wall, said McClatchy:
Mexico refuses to pay for President Donald Trump’s wall, but advocates representing another group of foreign workers legally in the U.S. say they would eagerly raise billions for the barrier if it’d help them get green cards faster.
Who? Under the proposal, Indian and Chinese tech workers would step up and kick in $2,500 each or more in fees if it meant they could get their green cards after five or six years instead of waiting decades as some do now.
“The Indian high-skilled workers will gladly, enthusiastically and happily pay for the wall if given an opportunity to do so in order to get fair treatment on green card waiting times,” said Leon Fresco, an attorney for Immigration Voice, an advocacy group working with members of Congress on the measure.
The Immigration Voice group says it represents up to 300,000 Indian outsourcing workers, plus up to 300,000 family members, who are waiting for green-cards that have been sponsored by their employers. The group is already working closely with Yoder to pass a fast-track green-card bill in the 2019 appropriations bills.
Indian advocates say some Indians visa-workers face a waiting line of up to 150 years to get a green card. The problem, they say, is the so-called “country caps” on the distribution of the 140,000 employer-based visas awarded each year. Those caps theoretically limit nationals of each country to just 7 percent of the annual 140,000 visas, chiefly to ensure a wide distribution of the visas to diverse countries.
But most of the Indians get through the green-card line in several years, partly because the complex visa rules allow roughly 23,000 Indian workers and families get green cards every year. That actual inflow is far higher than the notional 9,800-per-year limit set by the 7 percent country cap.
There are roughly 300,000 Indians in the green-card line because brand-name U.S. companies, hospitals, banks, and universities have outsourced millions of U.S. jobs to Indian subcontractors, such as Infosys, Cognizant or Wipro. Most of the 300,000 Indians in the line were imported for temporary U.S. jobs via the L-1 and H-1B visa-worker programs and were later rewarded when their employers sponsored them for the huge prize of green cards.
Nationwide, the U.S. government helps companies keep a population of roughly 1.5 million visa-workers in American white-collar jobs. The various visa programs — H-1B, L-1, J-1, H4 EAD, OPT, TN — allow employers to hire cheap foreign doctors, therapists, programmers, engineers, accountants, designers, architects, managers, recruitment specialists, P.R. experts, and many other professionals. These huge labor programs boost the stock market by lowering salaries for many American college graduates and also push many Americans into lower-tech, lower-wage careers, such as journalism.
For example, Northwestern University is using the H-1B program to hire roughly 170 foreign graduates each year to fill science and teaching jobs for just $65,000 a year, according to government data provided by MyVisaJobs.com. U.S. science grads — whether young or old, male or female, Asian, Latino, African-American, or European-American — were not offered those university jobs.
The university is paying its H-1Bs workers just above Chicago’s “living wage” of $59,215, as estimated by CNBC.
In July, Yoder worked with the Indian group to win initial approval for a bill that would abolish the country caps.
If the country caps are removed by Yoder’s bill late this year, U.S. Fortune 500 companies and Indian outsourcing firms will be able to offer fast-track green cards to roughly five times more Indian hires each year. That giveaway will help investors greatly accelerate the organized outsourcing of middle-class healthcare and technology jobs to lower-wage Indian employees, so boosting the investors’ stock values.
The new green-cards-for-cash plan is being offered to Yoder because he chairs the House homeland defense appropriations committee, which oversees immigration and emergency management. Immigration Voice’s political advisor, Leon Fresco, told McClatchy:
“At the end of the day, Yoder has a massive hand here because he needs to write the FEMA legislation,” said Leon Fresco, the strategist and general counsel for Immigration Voice. “One way or another there’s no way this doesn’t go through Yoder.”
Fresco notes that Yoder plan to eliminate the country caps will not raise the annual distribution of green cards to H-1B workers.
But Yoder’s plan will allow U.S. and Indian companies to recruit and import more workers via the L-1 visa program. The program has no cap and it allows visa-workers to be paid minimum wages, even for white-collar jobs.
The State Department is already issuing almost 80,000 multi-year L-1 visas each year, creating a resident population of perhaps 400,000 L-1 workers. Some L-1 visa-workers are used to set up new businesses in the United States, but many are used for outsourcing work, alongside H-1B visa-workers.
The resident population of H-1B workers with three-year visas is at least 500,000 and may reach 900,000.
Yoder’s dive into the middle-class outsourcing controversy comes as he faces a difficult election campaign in a district that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. His district already includes employers who have outsourced white-collar jobs to 1,400 H-1B workers, according to H-1BFacts.com.
Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.
But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or the return of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Yoder’s office did not dismiss the cash-for-green-cards plan. According to McClatchy:
“We are still in the early stages of looking into this specific proposal, but we remain committed to ensuring that (a green card bill) gets across the finish line and becomes law,” Yoder’s spokesman C.J. Grover said in an email.
Yoder is expected to push his country-caps plan in the must-pass homeland defense budget, during the lame-duck session after the voters have cast their votes and as retiring legislators look for lobbying jobs with business.
Many reports show high levels of corruption in the H-1B program, reflecting the high levels of corruption in the home countries. For example, corruption in India is ranked as the 81st most corrupt country, partly because of caste vs. caste hostility, according to Transparency International. The corruption debilitates the country’s economic growth, say critics.
The home-country corruption has ensured numerous arrests of Indian executives in the United States, plus a series of lawsuits against large Indian outsourcing companies. The lawsuits charge the Indian companies with discriminating against Americans to ensure the placement of more Indian workers in U.S. jobs.
“The most objectionable result of lifting the country caps would be to reward the [American] companies that have used the [temporary] guest-workers to replace Americans,” said Vaughan. “It completes the process for them … it institutionalizes this in a way that will cause permanent harm to Americans who aspire to white-collar jobs.”
Moreover, the “guest-worker visas are not meant to be a stepping stone for green cards,” she added. But for Indian visa-workers, “that was their expectation, and it was wrong, and now they are demanding their expectations be filled … They think adding a little money to the discussion might be enough to grease the way, but that is not the way Americans see their immigration system,” she added.
“Americans value fairness in our immigration system,” along with the need for some diversity, minimal corruption and a first-come-first-served policy, she said.
Also, the Indians’ offer to pay for approval by Yoder and other legislators to jump the line “shows the disdain they have for other categories” of would-be immigrants, said Vaughan. “To suggest for a mere $1,500 they should be allowed to jump in line, that they are somehow more worthy … in the way you would try to buy off a police officer for not writing a ticket — it smacks of the same kind of mentality,” said Vaughan.
The $1,500 payment is also trivial, she said, because the acceleration of green cards would be extremely valuable, she said. It would allow the visa-workers to quit their low-wage outsourcing jobs sooner, and also accelerate the arrival of their elderly parents via chain-migration rules, she said. Parents “are one of the most expensive demographic groups [for taxpayers] because of their likely need for health care benefits, and the fact that they have not contributed over a lifetime to Social Security or any other social welfare program through taxes,” she said.
The promised payment of $1.5 billion is enough to keep the federal government operating for four hours. In 2017, the federal government’s budget was $3,664 billion.
But the Indian lobby has managed to win sponsorship from more than 80 percent of the House for Yoder’s H.R. 392 bill to remove the country caps. Their lobbying campaign relies on frequent group visits to member’s district offices, plus the persuasive power of the Indian doctors from local hospitals and the wives of visa-workers, Fresco told Breitbart News.
Yoder’s bill might get passed this Fall, Vaughan said. “I don’t think most members of Congress understand the implications [of the country cap removal] and they are attracted [to the argument] that it is somehow more fair to do away with the per-country caps,” she said.
“Per-country caps ensure a diverse flow of immigrants from many countries,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He continued:
Without those caps in place, India will consume the lion’s share of the permanent skilled visas, creating a discriminatory system that favors a single foreign nation. H.R. 392 shreds any pretense that programs like the H-1B and L visa [programs] are anything but a track for intending immigrants – not a short-term foreign labor program. No one promised [these Indian] temporary guest workers that they would ever have the chance to immigrate permanently.
“Allowing temporary guest workers the opportunity to pay for green cards – no matter where the money goes – completely undermines the integrity of our immigration system,” said Hauman, adding:
The last thing we need is another pay-for-play route to citizenship like the fraud-ridden EB-5 program.
Immigration Economics
Overall, the Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.
Four million young Americans will join the workforce this year, but the federal government will also import 1.1 million legal immigrants, and allow an army of at least 2 million visa-workers to work U.S. jobs, alongside asylum-claiming migrants and illegal aliens.
That flood of outside labor 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. Immigration also pulls investment and wealth away from heartland states because investment flows towards the large immigrant populations living in the coastal states.