More college student groups are signing onto a letter urging President Trump to suspend the H-1B visa and OPT programs while 30 million Americans are jobless due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The Texas, Iowa, and Maine Federations of College Republicans, representing thousands of college students, have signed a letter with another 30 college student groups requesting that the OPT program be ended and the H-1B visa program be suspended to reduce foreign competition in the labor market.
“We are writing to you today on behalf of concerned graduating college seniors and young professionals nationwide,” the college student organizations write:
Specifically, we ask you to immediately take action to rescind the work authorization of hundreds of thousands of foreign, nonimmigrant skilled guest workers in order to ease the economic suffering of American college students and recent graduates looking for meaningful employment in these trying times. [Emphasis added]
…
Made worse by the coronavirus economic crisis are the hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant guest workers in the United States. These guest workers – and especially those in the OPT and H1B programs – take jobs temporarily at wages far below the average for their positions. This is because employers can easily pay these guest workers less than they pay Americans. This is not right. [Emphasis added]
This year, alone, millions of college graduates will enter the labor market looking for high-paying white-collar jobs. Collin Pruett, head of the Texas Federation of College Republicans, told Breitbart News that many of his members are STEM students graduating in computer science.
“A lot of our members are STEM majors,” Pruett said. “Especially in computer science with Austin emerging as a tech hub. These visas hurt Texas college graduates’ employment opportunities when they need them the most.”
The Texas student group has at least 5,000 members and represents 25 chapters, making them the second-largest College Republican Federation in the United States.
Charles Klapatauskas, head of the Iowa Federation of College Republicans, told Breitbart News that Iowan graduates must not have to compete against foreign visa workers while entering one of the worst job markets in history.
“Iowa is one of the biggest producers as far as agriculture and … continues to make a strong move forward in tech development and manufacturing,” Klapatauskas said. “Foreign visa programs devastate the thousands of students graduating from our phenomenal universities, hindering them as they seek to begin their professional careers.”
“At a time where the coronavirus has halted the hiring process for most companies, and most students have lost their summer internships or jobs, there is absolutely no reason to make positions available for those out of the country,” Klapatauskas said. “The country owes it to college students to protect the job market as students will be the ones to build and strengthen the U.S. economy down the road.”
The signatures, along with the Maine federation, comes as Trump is increasingly urged by grassroots campaigns to halt the flow of foreign workers into the U.S. labor market with tens of millions unemployed.
“We strongly support President Trump and any Republican who wants to protect college graduates by suspending these visas,” Pruett said.
Conversely, the donor class and big business lobby have asked Trump not only to continue the visa pipeline but expand legal immigration, claiming there is a labor shortage.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, the nation’s mass importation of foreign visa workers helps redistribute and shift hundreds of billions in wealth to blue states, already prosperous metropolises, and the richest of Americans.
Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs. Often, Americans are fired and replaced by foreign visa workers. Many are forced to train their foreign replacements.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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