Advocates for American workers and employees are applauding President Donald Trump’s April 20 promise to suspend the legal inflow of foreign workers into the U.S. labor market.
“Truly Magnificent,” said a tweet from the American Workers Coalition. “#AmericanWorkers have been counting on you. THANK YOU!!!!!”
“Thank you,” said Sara Blackwell, the Florida workplace-rights lawyer who founded Protect American Workers. “We need to get America back on its feet.”
The groups represent some of the millions of swing-voting American college graduates who zig-zag between support of Trump’s American-first economic policies and their own liberal-minded political preferences. Millions of those voting graduates are now losing their jobs in an economy where Fortune 500 companies quietly employ roughly 1.5 million foreign graduate contract-workers in place of American graduates.
Many polls have shown the public strongly objects to companies hiring foreign workers before American employees. For example, an August 2017 poll reported that 68 percent of Americans oppose companies’ use of H-1Bs to outsource U.S.-based jobs that could be held by Americans.
“I applaud the President for what he has done,” said Jay Palmer, a former technology worker whose job was outsourced by Disney. Since then, he has worked to expose widespread corruption in the H-1B industry.
“It is a great time to reform the process, and to get the fraud out,” he said, adding that the government should protect the Indian tech workers who have fought against the abuses,” he said.
A tweet from U.S. Tech Workers said:
Thank you Mr. President! For too long our immigration policies have decimated the American working class. In this time of crisis, we are grateful for you taking action in protecting working Americans. This is also a welcome opportunity in reforming our immigration system.
“Thank you @realDonaldTrump for protecting American workers by halting most immigration and guest worker programs while at least 22 million Americans are out of work!” said a tweet from NumbersUSA.
“RT if you are THRILLED Trump is suspending all immigration to the United States!” said a tweet from Charlie Kik, founder of Turning Point USA.
Dale Wilcox, executive director, and general counsel, Immigration Reform Law Institute, said:
President Trump’s action to suspend all immigration is perfectly legal and appropriate. Federal law endows the chief executive with broad powers in times of national crisis. Coronavirus is crippling both the health and work prospects of American citizens. To allow a continued influx of foreign nationals at this time would only worsen the situation.
The President is right to modify immigration policy in response to our changing circumstances,” said a tweet from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “This is a full-blown pandemic. Let’s hear the details!”
“A temporary halt in all immigration is extremely popular right now,” said a tweet from Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUUSA. “In an April 9-10 survey, USA Today/Ipsos polling found that 79% of Americans supported temporarily stopping immigration from all countries. ”
Trump’s message prompted 63,000 responses by the next afternoon.
Many Americans have lost money, jobs, and careers to the business-backed inflow of blue-collar and white-collar workers.
Since 2017, Trump has effectively blocked the inflow of illegal blue-collar migration through the southern border. That helped blue-collar Americans get higher wages during the economic boom before the shocking arrival of China’s Wuhan virus.
The immigration suspension will help Americans recover lost wages, said a statement from Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary:
President Trump is committed to protecting the health and economic well-being of American citizens as we face unprecedented times. As President Trump has said, ‘Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers.’ At a time when Americans are looking to get back to work, action is necessary.
A tweet from Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies said:
Amid the applause, many reformers are apprehensive that the reform will be short-lived and superficial. “The White House Press Secretary’s statement below sure seems to suggest that work visas [such as the H-1B] will be included in the immigration moratorium. If they’re not, then the “lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens” rhetoric is BS.
So far, Trump has done little to protect millions of swing-voting college graduates from the visa workers who are imported by CEOs and investors.
In March 2016, Trump slammed the H-1B visa program, declaring:
The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.
Nationwide, companies keep roughly 1.5 million foreign graduates in white-collar jobs. Those imported graduates often work for Indian-run outsourcing companies that work with U.S. companies to transfer many additional white-collar jobs to poorly-regulated companies in India.
American managers who have worked in these companies tell Breitbart News that each imported Indian worker helps to export five additional jobs to India.
The job transfer boosts the apparent profits and the short-term stock values of U.S. companies. But the huge inflow of foreign workers has eroded the quality of U.S. software and technology, so allowing China to take the lead in critical technologies, such as 5G communications, say the American managers.
Business groups are denouncing the job protections for Americans.
Trump’s statement is “a political act to demagogue & distract from awful handling/approval of COVID-19,” complained Todd Schulte, who runs the FWD.us advocacy group for wealthy West Coast investors. It is also an “effort to use [the] crisis to enact hardliners’ long-held wishlist to radically slash immigration,” he added.
Trump’s tweet announcing the suspension offered no details, but the policy will likely include carve out exemptions to mute anger from executives, Democrats, and journalists. The exemptions may include the roughly 4,000 foreign doctors scheduled to arrive by June via the J-1 visa program, the blocs of H-2A farmworkers who are already scheduled for myriad farm tasks, and some family reunifications.
The duration of the suspension is unclear, and it will likely be tied to the rapid recovery of the economy and of Americans’ regaining their white-collar and blue-collar jobs.