Report: GOP Cuts Deal with Business Lobby for 2X Importation of Foreign Workers

Republican Senators have reportedly cut a deal with the business lobby to more than double the annual importation of low-skilled foreign workers to the U.S. to take blue-collar American jobs.

Every year, the U.S. companies are allowed to import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign workers to take blue-collar, non-agricultural jobs. The H-2B visa program is used by businesses to bring in cheaper, foreign workers and has contributed to blue-collar Americans having their wages undercut.

An exclusive report by the Washington Times reveals that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SC), and Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) have made a deal with the business lobby to import more than double the amount of foreign workers on the wage-cutting H-2B visa to ensure that business has readily cheap labor available instead of having to recruit Americans for the blue-collar jobs.

The Republican lawmakers negotiated the deal with the H-2B Workforce Coalition and the Seasonal Employment Alliance, both of which are tasked with lobbying Congress to import more foreign workers to inflate the labor market that keeps U.S. wages stagnant.

The annual inflow of low-skilled foreign workers would increase from 66,000 to at least 132,000 under the terms of the GOP-business deal. Though proponents of the deal tout that businesses would be mandated to use E-Verify, the system that certifies a worker is not an illegal alien, for new hires, those same businesses would be rewarded with H-2B foreign workers to replace the illegal aliens whom they previously hired.

The H-2B foreign workers hired by businesses to replace illegal alien hires would not be counted against the 132,000 a year cap. Also, H-2B foreign workers hired in regions of the country that have been hit with natural disasters would also not count against the annual cap.

Republican lawmakers are looking to slip the more than doubling of the H-2B visa program into a last-second spending bill that is expected to be passed before the new year.

In total, there are roughly 1.5 million foreign workers in U.S. college-graduate jobs, plus at least 300,000 blue-collar or manual labor jobs. Meanwhile, there are five million Americans who are not in the labor force who want a job with more than 500,000 Americans saying they are discouraged by their job prospects.

Every year, America’s working and middle class have their wages reduced by an inflow of more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled foreign workers who are admitted to the country. This importation of illegal and legal foreign workers has left the country’s bottom line of workers with stagnant wages since the 1970s and forces them to compete with foreign workers for blue-collar jobs.