SEEING RED WHEN GREEN CARDS LEAD TO PINK SLIPS FOR AMERICANS

BY Michael W. Cutler - December 2, 2011 (Part I of II)

Here is my most recent commentary for CAPS- Californians for Population Stabilization.

As I noted in my commentary below, the legal immigration system has flooded the labor market with increasing numbers of foreign high tech workers and filled seats in our universities with foreign students who will also ultimately compete with American students and workers for high tech jobs!

Incredibly, even as more and more American families are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the ever increasing college tuitions for their sons and daughters to attempt to provide them with a decent future, there are politicians calling for providing instate tuition for illegal alien students! These politicians are apt to talk about being compassionate for these illegal aliens but never utter a single word about the plight of American students! As education costs are lowered for illegal aliens, the expenses incurred by universities have to be payed for somehow and increasingly, that “somehow” involves raising tuition and other fees and cutting back on programs on campus!

Under the current economic crisis, millions of Americans are unemployed and still more are underemployed. Just about every political candidate for a wide variety of elected positions including those who are seeking the Presidency are quick to embrace the need to create new jobs- yet not one candidate has really addressed the issue to liberate jobs currently held by foreign worker!

For millions of our fellow citizens, The “American Dream” is becoming more elusive than ever before. Rather than discuss how American workers can be provided with jobs in high tech industries, candidates for the Presidency talk about how important it is to import more foreign workers for the high tech jobs!

It is beyond belief that not a single GOP candidate for the Presidency has even mentioned the idea of training American workers to enable them to take these important jobs! Instead they talk about providing visas to enable foreign nationals to take jobs that Americans would sorely want to have because they are desperate to hold onto their homes and their ability to support themselves and their families. These are the people who line up looking for work whenever and wherever jobs become available.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is that all-inclusive body of laws that regulates the entry of aliens into the United States and also their presence in the United States.

The INA establishes the way that applications for immigration benefits are to be adjudicated and the grounds under which an alien might be removed (deported) from the United States.

The INA:”…excludes aliens seeking to immigrate “for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor,” except that such aliens may be eligible for a visa if:

the Secretary of Labor has determined that (A) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work, and (B) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the United States workers similarly employed.”

Of course there are those who seek to game this visa process for their own personal gain. Corporations who seek to lower labor costs generally resort to two tactics- outsourcing jobs, often moving entire factories outside the United States where they can hire workers at a fraction of the cost that American workers would expect and ignore not only labor laws but health and safety laws as well as environmental laws. Let’s face it, all companies, no matter what industry they are involved in all share the common goal of maximizing profits.

Company executives are not the only people who stand to gain by hiring aliens for so-called hi-tech jobs. Immigration lawyers are eager for companies to hire aliens to take jobs in the United States- this is how lawyers earn their wages. Companies that hire American citizens and lawful immigrants have little need for immigration lawyers. In order to drum up business, lawyers have to convince employers to hire them so that they can provide them with highly skilled professionals at significantly lower wages than American professionals would expect to be paid.

The antidote for those who would commit visa fraud is simple, ICE needs to conduct investigations randomly and routinely to deter those who would seek to game the process. With extremely limited resources, such investigations are few and far between. The result is that while the law makes it clear that no foreign workers should be admitted to the United States to work if it would harm American workers similarly employed, in the real world, Americans are routinely displaced by foreign workers.

The problem is twofold. First of all, ICE has no resources to routinely conduct any of these investigations and the administration not only lacks to the desire to conduct these investigations, but has promulgated immigration policies that bemoan the fact that the DREAM Act may have failed, but that for all intents and purposes, ICE will deal with foreign students as though that vigorously opposed legislation had passed! Could you imagine anything more outrageous? The administration has taken to doing end-runs around the United States Congress! If the administration is happy with a law that is passed, then it enforces it. If a law the administration finds a law it favored did not pass, it simply issues policy directives that, for all intents and purposes, have the same affect as the law would have had, if it had passed!

When states attempt to remedy problems such as the immigration crisis by passing their own immigration laws because the federal government assiduously ignores those laws, then the federal government initiates lawsuits against those states!

Yet I have yet to hear the Republican candidates for the Presidency hammering away at the outrageous tactics of the current administration- could it be that they would be no better if any of those candidates are elected?