India’s Visa Workers Lash Out at Dick Durbin for ‘Poison Pill’ in S.386 Talks

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 12: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) speaks at a press conference with DA
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The leading lobbying group for India’s massive workforce in the United States is claiming that Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin has torpedoed closed-door talks with GOP Sen. Mike Lee.

The talks were set to hammer out a deal that would approve Lee’s S.386 bill and provide several hundred thousand of India’s visa workers with a fast track to green cards and citizenship.

“Due to the new poison pill provisions Senator Durbin has demanded as ransom in order to allow equal treatment for Indian-Americans, there is a possibility that other Senate Offices, who were on board previously, will now hold out against the bill,” the group said via Facebook late Monday. The post continued:

In such an eventuality, we will have no choice but to hold Senator Durbin directly responsible for adding the poison pill, in his desire to harm the Indian American community, while shedding crocodile tears for the Durbin widows and Durban Deportees his hold has caused since September 2019.

The group did not explain the supposed “poison pill” but did amplify its angry message by posting a tweet that repeated their claims that Durbin is a racist:

The talks are being held as Sen. Lee (R-UT) tries to push his S.386 bill through the Senate without a vote, via the unanimous consent process.

Lee’s bill would remove long-standing rules designed to distribute green cards among many countries and, instead, give the next several years’ worth of green cards to India’s workforce of 300,00 Indian graduates and their 300,000 Indian family members. The Indian workers were mostly hired by U.S. tech companies, investors, and Indian-born managers in the United States and were imported via the OPT, H-1B, and L-1 visa programs.

Lee’s bill would add hundreds of thousands of pro-Democrat Indians to the ballot by 2040, so threatening House GOP legislators in swing seats.

His bill would also encourage many more Indian graduates to take U.S. jobs in exchange for the promise of citizenship. There is no limit to the number of Indians who can enter the United States to pick up Optional Practical Training work permits at U.S. universities. Currently, at least 50,000 Indians have taken white-collars jobs in the United States via the OPT program, usually at salaries far below the level needed by U.S. graduates.

But Durbin blocked the bill because it would block a similar number of migrants from diverse other countries around the world. Durbin has repeatedly told the Indian visa workers that he wants them to get green cards and citizenship.

Several GOP senators have also blocked the bill, usually on behalf of local employers who would lose their inflow of non-Indian workers.

South Dakota GOP Sen. Mike Rounds has also threatened to block the bill because it would cut dairy farmers’ ability to get green cards for experienced Mexican workers with TN visas.

The White House has not said anything against Lee’s S.386 bill. In fact, President Donald Trump has done little to follow through on his 2016 promise to curb the H-1B program, partly because of intense pressure from the investors whose corporate stocks spike whenever white-collar salaries are nudged downwards.

For example, Trump’s deputies are currently trying to preserve the 2015 rule that aids investors by granting work permits to 100,000 spouses of India’s H-1B workers. Trump’s deputies are also protecting the fraud-ridden Optional Practical Training program that annually gives work permits to 300,000 foreign graduates of U.S. colleges so they can compete against for jobs against the 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees.

Blue-collar Americans are enjoying useful wage gains in Trump’s growing economy, but the flood of foreign graduates is helping to minimize wage gains for U.S. graduates, even as immigrants also push up housing costs.

The Immigration Voice group consists of India’s visa workers who want Congress to provide them with the green cards that were promised by their U.S. employers in exchange for taking Americans’ jobs at reduced wages. They are loudly backing Lee’s “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrant Act,” often by spotlighting Indian children who may have to return to India when their parents’ visas expire.

The Facebook message by Immigration Voice included much Indian-style personal invective against Durbin:

We have heard rumors that there is a possible agreement between Senator Lee and Senator Durbin. It seems Senator Durbin has demanded a hefty ransom of an arm and a leg, to not oppose equality and equal treatment under the law.

No other Senate office had a hold before Senator Durbin decided to block the Fairness bill in September. With this “hold” on the Fairness bill, Senator Durbin decided to deliberately hurt the Indian-American immigrant families, and their children. This is not a new thing for Senator Durbin, as he has spent considerable time in Congress trying to hurt Indian-American immigrant families and children. Senator Durbin’s record is well documented on this specific aspect. Please read https://www.facebook.com/243363639063201/posts/2654882897911251

Due to the new poison pill provisions Senator Durbin has demanded as ransom in order to allow equal treatment for Indian-Americans, there is a possibility that other Senate Offices, who were on board previously, will now hold out against the bill. In such an eventuality, we will have no choice but to hold Senator Durbin directly responsible for adding the poison pill, in his desire to harm the Indian American community, while shedding crocodile tears for the Durbin widows and Durban Deportees his hold has caused since September 2019.

Senator Durbin does not command respect amongst his colleagues precisely for playing these kinds of unworthy games with the lives of common people living in America. That is why we had preemptively and clearly stated our position about Senator Durbin adding any poison pill. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2654882897911251&id=243363639063201

Dear Senator Durbin,

Your senate colleagues know that you are not an honorable man. Your colleagues say you are not be trusted. Because of your shenanigans and untrustworthy office, some of your colleagues have even shared with us that you are not worthy of being in the Senate. As they say, your reputation precedes you.

We just want to make sure that you are aware that if another Senator blocks the Fairness bill over anything that you added in the fairness bill as ransom for equality, the Indian American immigrant community and our future generations will hold you directly responsible for deliberately adding poison pills to our families and our children.

We persistently insist that you do whatever is necessary to pass the Fairness bill — for this bill would have been law by now and giving relief to thousands of individuals who have spent decades living and giving to our great nation that we all love, the United States. BUT FOR YOU.

Team IV.

The push by India’s visa workers is opposed by multiplying groups of college-graduate, Twitter-using. activists who oppose and have shown how Lee uses India’s workforce in the United States to pressure other senators to submit to the S.386 bill

India’s pressure tactics include repeated claims that Durbin is racist and hates Indians, despite Durbin’s repeated advocacy for mass migration from many countries into the United States. India’s government is also lobbying for Lee’s bill, partly by offering easier access to India’s consumer market for U.S. companies who back the S.386 bill. India’s government wants S.386 because India’s economy grows when the U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy brings India’s workers to the United States and sends remittances and other jobs back to India.

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