Reformers have issued a blueprint that reshapes the United States’ existing national immigration system to put the interests of America’s working and middle class first.
The blueprint, released to Breitbart News by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), focuses on efforts to reduce foreign competition in the labor market against American workers.
“It has been evident for a long time that U.S. immigration policies serve no identifiable public interests, and in fact undermine the core interests of many Americans,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in a statement. He continued:
The economic crisis touched off by COVID-19 has elevated the need for a comprehensive overhaul of all aspects of immigration policy from urgent to imperative. Immigration Reform Blueprint for the American Worker,’ as its title suggests, does just that. It examines every aspect of our policies and provides commonsense reforms that can and should be adopted.
Among the blueprint’s recommendations to President Trump and lawmakers is a federal mandate that all public and private employers use the E-Verify system to weed out illegal competition against American workers.
Likewise, the blueprint reveals that the American economy would need to create 150,000 new jobs every month to meet labor market demands for hundreds of thousands of young Americans entering the workforce every year, the 1.2 million foreign nationals who are issued green cards annually, and the 1.4 million foreign nationals who are given work visas annually to take jobs in the U.S.
To lessen foreign competition, the blueprint urges a merit-based immigration system set on skills and “significant reductions” to the importation of millions of foreign nationals every year.
Work visas such as the H-1B visa program, the blueprint notes, are “being massively abused in a way that displaces many American workers and drives down wages for others.” The H-1B visa program is often the first step by multinational corporations to a larger outsourcing scheme.
Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
The blueprint requests a number of reforms to the H-1B visa program, including ending dual intent which allows H-1B foreign visa workers to seek out green cards despite their temporary nonimmigrant status.
Also, the blueprint suggests that employers be banned from paying H-1B foreign visa workers less than Americans for the same job, requiring employers to show that they actively sought American workers for jobs before applying for H-1B foreign visa workers.
The blueprint calls for increased penalties for employers who abuse the H-1B visa program and for halting work permits for the spouses of H-1B foreign visa workers.
Already, top officials with the Trump administration say long-awaited regulatory reforms are coming for the H-1B visa program. The regulations, set to be released shortly, are getting the fast-track treatment and are expected to prevent Fortune 500 companies from using the H-1B visa program as a cheap labor scheme.
The regulations could ensure that corporations no longer are able to use a loophole that has allowed them to replace American workers with H-1B foreign visa workers — that is, by requiring that corporations certify that their H-1B hires will not displace Americans at another company.
Last year, employers sought to import, renew, and transfer nearly 600,000 H-1B foreign visa workers for U.S. jobs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.