visas

New Year’s Surprise: Obama Regulation To Give Work-Permits To Foreign College-Graduates

As the nation prepares to ring in the New Year, President Barack Obama is preparing a colossal new executive action that could print-up work permits for a huge number of foreign white-collar graduates every year, above and beyond the levels set by Congress.

This executive action, which directly bypasses Congressional lawmakers, is likely to reverberate across the presidential race, as GOP voters look to choose a nominee they believe will most effectively roll back the President’s still-expanding agenda.  And it will certainly raise new security concerns as it covers categories of immigration utilized by migrants from the Middle East and nearby regions.

President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security plans to publish the proposed rule tomorrow, the last day of 2015.

The 181-page rule focuses primarily on giving work-permits to foreign college-grads who will compete against Americans for white collar jobs, despite the large number of American graduates now stuck in lower-wage positions and struggling to pay off college debts. The rule will also make each foreign graduate much cheaper for U.S. employers to hire than many U.S.-born college grads.

“Obama has gone the Full Monty to bust the immigration system,” says immigration lawyer John Miano. “What is going on is he is effectively giving Green Cards to people on H-1B visas who are unable to get Green Cards due to the [annual] quotas… it could be over 100,000.”

The new rules to aid foreign college-graduates are an extension of his earlier efforts to bypass popular laws against illegal immigration, said Miano, the co-author of a new book about the painful impact of the white-collar guest-worker programs, titled “Sold Out.”

This executive action could have been prevented, however, had the bipartisan 2016 omnibus funding included language proposed by Immigration Subcommittee Chairman
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
80%

.

In April, Sessions proposed language to reduce and cap the number of work-permits — dubbed “Employment Authorization Documents” — that could be distributed to foreign workers each year. Sessions’ recommendation was rejected by GOP and Democratic leaders in Congress, and so House Speaker
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
56%

’s December omnibus is enabling the president’s new executive action.

In 2012, Obama bypassed laws against illegal immigration by awarding two-year work-permits to at least 800,000 younger foreign migrants who were brought here by their illegal immigrant parents. In 2015, the courts blocked his November 2014 amnesty plan to award work-permits to roughly 5 million resident migrants who have U.S.-born children. From 2009 to 2015, Obama also allowed at least 250,000 Central American migrants into the United States to request asylum or refugee status. In 2013, Obama added roughly 2 million extra foreign workers to the economy, while roughly 4 million young Americans began looking for work.

“The objective here is to strip American workers of their protections from foreign labor embodied in the Green Card quotas” that are set by Congress, not the White House, Miano said.

The annual award of Green Cards — and vital preliminary work-permits — is limited by quotas that mostly impact the many Indian and Chinese graduates who come to the United States as H-1B guest-workers, or who first arrive as students and later start working in the United States via the Optional Practical Training and H-1B programs.

Roughly 650,000 foreign graduates are working in the United States for roughly 5 years each under the H-1B program. Roughly 120,000 foreign graduates of U.S. colleges are working in the United States for two years each via the OPT program, often called the ‘mini-H-1B program.’ Without this new regulation, most of those foreign graduates will return home after several years, forcing companies to hire U.S. graduates in their place.

The foreign graduates typically get entry-level jobs that would otherwise go to new U.S. business graduates, designers, doctors, programmers, engineers and scientists.  Also, the foreign graduates are used to replace mid-level American professionals once they seek mid-career pay-raises to help pay for mortgages and child-rearing.

According to the pending regulation, “many of these changes are primarily aimed at improving the ability of U.S. employers to hire and retain [foreign] high-skilled workers who are beneficiaries of approved employment-based immigrant visa petitions and are waiting to become lawful permanent residents (LPRs), while increasing the ability of such [foreign] workers to seek promotions, accept lateral positions with current employers, change employers, or pursue other employment options.”

The new policy also creates a large economic incentive for U.S. employers to hire foreign college-grads instead of new American college-grads.

That’s because the policy will allow U.S. employers to hire foreign college graduates at very low salaries. The foreign graduates will gladly take those low-wage white-collar jobs because the new policy allows them to get deferred payments from the federal government — valuable permanent work-permits that are the first step on the golden pathway to Green Cards and citizenship.

In contrast, employers can’t pay American graduates with this combination of low-salaries plus the federal promise of citizenship — because the Americans already have citizenship.

That means employers must pay more money to hire American college-grads than they would to hire foreign college-grads. That puts a huge disadvantage on American graduates because they need higher salaries to pay off their expensive U.S. college debt.

Miano slammed the new regulations, and said they reflect Obama’s preference for foreigners over Americans.

“Notice that when foreign workers are going to lose their jobs, Obama has DHS make protecting their jobs the agency’s highest priority,” chiefly by minimizing enforcement of immigration laws, he told Breitbart News. But “when American workers lose their jobs to foreign workers, Obama does absolutely nothing,” he said.

“We have a president with a very warped sense of priorities,” he added.

The public can object to the new regulations, according to the DHS document.

DATES: Written comments must be received on or before [Insert date 60 days from date of publication in the FEDERAL REGISTER].

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, identified by DHS Docket No. USCIS-2015-0008, by one of the following methods:

Federal eRulemaking Portal: You may submit comments to USCIS by visiting http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.

E-mail: You may submit comments directly to USCIS by e-mailing them to:

USCISFRComment@dhs.gov. Please include DHS Docket No. USCIS-2015-0008 in the subject line of the message.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter, at @NeilMunroDC
  Read more about New Year’s Surprise: Obama Regulation To Give Work-Permits To Foreign College-Graduates

Citizen's Group Announces Disney Boycott and Demonstrations to Protest Policy of Replacing Americans with Foreign Workers

North Palm Beach, Florida-Jack Oliver, president of Floridians for a Sustainable Population (www.flsuspop.org), today announced his organization is leading a coalition of grassroots groups and activists who are calling for a nationwide boycott (www.boycottdisneynow.com) and demonstrations to protest the Disney Corporation's decision to fire hundreds of its long-time employees last January, and replace them with newly hired foreign workers.

"American Workers Matter," said Oliver, "and the only way to send that message to Disney's management is for American consumers to boycott its amusement parks, movies, and entertainment products across the board." In addition to the boycott, the coalition announced plans to hold protest demonstrations October 17th at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

"Not only has Disney demonstrated its callous indifference to the wellbeing of hundreds of long-serving, loyal employees, but by forcing its employees to train their foreign replacements before handing them their pink slips, the company shows that beneath its family friendly disguise, it is as heartless and cruel in real life as the big bad wolf in its classic Little Red Riding Hood cartoon," said Oliver.

"Disney is hardly the only corporation eager to save a few bucks by throwing American working families under the bus, while at the same time reporting billions of dollars in corporate profits," continued Oliver. "But we are targeting Disney because it is an iconic American corporation, and because we believe its corporate bosses are betraying the legacy and tarnishing the name of Walt Disney, a great American patriot, who would never stand for this outrageous action if he were still alive," he added.

"We urge people to go to our website: www.boycottdisneynow.com and join the boycott, and also sign up to join one of our Disney protest demonstrations in Anaheim, or Orlando on Oct. 17," said Oliver.

Jack Oliver can be reached at (561) 225-1152; or by email at: jack@flsuspop.org Read more about Citizen's Group Announces Disney Boycott and Demonstrations to Protest Policy of Replacing Americans with Foreign Workers

Debate Prep on Immigration

By Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies, September 16, 2015

Participants in the two Republican debates later today are certain to be asked about their views on illegal immigration and the Middle Eastern refugee crisis. The answers are not difficult, and yet one candidate after another flubs them. Here's a template for answering the first question, with the second to follow.

Actually fixing immigration will be hard work, but explaining it isn't – or shouldn't be. And yet, from Trump's saying whatever pops into his head, to Carson's frivolous assurance that he would seal the border within a single year, to Jeb's detailed plan to enforce the rules after amnestying all the illegals, and to the clichéd boasts by the rest that they will "secure the border," the candidates' responses to illegal immigration queries do not speak well to their political skills.

At the risk of sounding like a middle-school English teacher, they need to introduce the problem, offer three concrete solutions that are understandable, hold together, and make sense both politically and as policy, and then conclude by showing how they point to the future:

Well, Hugh, I'm glad you asked that question. Until we have in place an enforcement system that will prevent the settlement of another 12 million illegal aliens, we're not even going to talk about what to do with the ones already here. We're not going to amnesty them and we're not going to launch a dragnet to find them. If they're arrested for something else, I'll make sure we have resources in place to deport them, but in the meantime my administration would focus on the three things we need to have in place before we even talk about the illegals already here.

First, we need nationwide E-Verify, so when a company hires somebody, and is filling out the paperwork for Social Security and the IRS, they also check, using this free online system, whether the new employee is telling the truth about who they are. The system's already in place, it's used millions of times every year, including by the great folks at (insert name of company in your state), and unlike the Obamacare website, it actually works. But it's optional now and needs to be rolled out nationwide, so that all our businesses and workers are playing on an even playing field.

Second, we need a check-out system for foreign visitors. One thousand new illegal aliens will settle in our country today, and most of them will have come in legally on some kind of visa, but just stayed when their time was up. Better fencing at the border won't fix that. Right now, we're pretty good at checking people into our country, but after that, it's the honor system. Heck, we don't even send a text message thanking them for visiting our country and reminding them to make sure they head home on time.

Finally, we need to undo the damage President Obama has done to law enforcement. For state and local police (insert reference to your state here), the ability to partner with immigration authorities is vital to public safety. And yet this president has dismantled the arrangements between local cops and immigration agents, winked at sanctuary cities, and even punished towns and states that have tried to do the right thing.

Once those three goals are met – not on paper in Washington, but in fact, in the real world – then we'll take another look at the illegal immigrants already here. And there's likely to be a lot fewer of them, simply owing to attrition. In fact, of the illegals here today, fully two and a half million have moved here since President Obama was inaugurated. If he had just done his job, this whole problem would be much smaller and less wrenching. In a (fill in name) administration, we will finally work our way out of this mess.

It's a little long for a debate response when there are eleven people on the stage, but even in abbreviated form it's concrete, coherent, and concise.

http://cis.org/krikorian/debate-prep-immigration Read more about Debate Prep on Immigration

Pear harvest sweeps in early

Harsh summer temperatures ushered in an early pear harvest for Hood River Valley.

Fruit bearing trees were ready two weeks early, causing pickers to scramble and collect the crop starting in late July.

The Hood River News talked ramifications with growers around the upper and lower valley. The consensus: summer pears are looking good, if in some cases a little small. Laborers to pick the fruit also remains an issue.

Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers executive director Jean Godfrey said the pear harvest began last week, which is two weeks earlier than its usual mid-August start.

She’s hearing from growers (and the company represents 350 of them), that while the crop is “clean” — meaning low russeting — the overall fruit size is smaller than usual.

“I’m hearing that it looks good, but it’s a little smaller than we’d like,” Godfrey said. “That’s due to the weather; it’s been so hot and it stresses the trees. But the crop is about an average-size crop.”

Some growers are seeing full-bodied pears, however.

Bartletts are next for Parkdale grower Gordy Sato, who said the Starkrimson crop is coming in fast this week. All told, “the pears are beautiful,” he said, large and russet-free, referring to the reddish spotting and dimpling that can make most varieties of pears less marketable.

“Our pears are definitely sizing up, generally larger than the lower valley,” said Sato. “I know that some growers are seeing smaller sizes. They had cold weather at the wrong times, and then watering cutbacks, particularly in the Farmers Irrigation District,” he said.

Lower valley grower Craig McCurdy of McCurdy Farms, which grows primarily pears, said that location is key when it comes to fruit size and quality because the topography and soil change the farther south you go.

McCurdy’s farm taps into Farmers Irrigation, and he’s had to cut back on watering due to drought conditions, which affect size and quality. Also detrimental was a hail storm that hammered the lower valley in early May. It narrowly missed his trees, but it damaged others in the area.

His fruit size is good, but quality “might be a little off from what it was last year, just due to heat,” he said. “We’re getting a little sunburn and more yellowing to the fruit, especially on Anjous.”

Craig Mallon, Quality Control Manager at Duckwall Fruit, explained that pears have shrunk throughout much of the valley due to the “defense mechanism” of fruit trees in response to summer heat spells, which scorched into the triple digits.

This could hurt the value of the crop. Smaller pears means smaller profits, he said, as well as less space filled in each bin of fruit.

“The pear size will be smaller than the average year,” said Mallon. “The overall Bartlett crop might be down as much as 10 to 12 percent.”

Another issue local orchardists face is lack of staffing.

“Our main problem is finding pickers,” Sato said. Enrolling in U.S. Labor Department programs last year and this year has helped, but Sato said immigration rules and an aging harvest work force are main contributors to a general work force shortage in Oregon and California.

McCurdy said his farm is okay for the time being. However, “labor is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as we go along,” he said. “It’s not going to go away.” Many of his workers are second or third generation valley residents, and travel across the border between the United States and Mexico.

Increasingly, third generation residents are pursuing careers outside the Ag sector, said McCurdy.

“The third generation graduated from high school here, and most of my employees have kids in college,” McCurdy said. They’re shifting away from ag, he said, because they’ve grown up with it — as have his own children — and “they don’t want anything to do with it.”

At Duckwall Fruit, there’s no shortage of labor for the Bartlett harvest, said Mallon, but the issue could rear up for other varieties later this year.

“It doesn’t seem like an overabundance of staff,” said Mallon.

Godfrey said by the time Anjou picking comes around, there will be a shortage.
  Read more about Pear harvest sweeps in early

Illegal immigration top GOP talking point at New Hampshire presidential forum

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — The Republican Party's presidential class called for aggressive steps to curb illegal immigration, seizing on a delicate political issue as more than a dozen White House hopefuls faced off in New Hampshire on Monday night for a pointed preview of the first full-fledged debate of the 2016 primary season...

The candidates focused their criticism at Democrats instead of each other.. They addressed several contentious issues, immigration topping a list that included abortion, climate change and foreign policy.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who may not qualify for the upcoming formal debate, called the flow of immigrants crossing the border illegally "a serious wound."

"You want to stanch the flow," he said as his Republican rivals watched from the front row of the crowded St. Anselm College auditorium. On those immigrants who have overstayed visas, Perry charged, "You go find 'em, you pick 'em up and you send 'em back where they're from."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum went further, calling for a 25 percent reduction of low-skilled immigrants coming into the country legally.

"Everyone else is dancing around it. I'm going to stand for the American worker," Santorum declared...

Trump, who launched his presidential bid by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, declined to attend the New Hampshire event. He cited criticism from the local newspaper host, yet he is expected to play a prominent role in Thursday's formal debate, where only the GOP's top 10 candidates — as determined by national polls — will be allowed on stage.

Monday's event was broadcast live on C-SPAN and local television stations in Iowa and South Carolina — states that, along with New Hampshire, will host the first contests in the presidential primary calendar next February...

Just one woman was featured on stage Monday night: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is unlikely to qualify for Thursday's higher-profile debate.

Democrats are also eager to debate Republicans on immigration.

GOP leaders have acknowledged the need to improve the party's standing among the surging group of Hispanic voters. Yet while many Democrats favor a more forgiving policy that would allow immigrants in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship in many cases, many Republicans focus on border security.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, once a lead salesman for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, said Americans want the border fence completed and more border security agents before there's any discussion of what to do with those 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

Others offered a softer tone on the divisive issue Monday night.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said "law-abiding, God-fearing" immigrants in the country illegally should be allowed to stay. Those who break the law, he said, "have to be deported or put in prison."

Bush said fixing the nation's immigration system is a key part of his plan to help the economy grow 4 percent each year. He also called for reducing legal immigration, particularly the number of people allowed to enter the country on family petitions...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called the move "a buzz saw to the nation's economy."

"I want to balance a sustainable environment with a sustainable economy," Walker said.

Several candidates involved Monday night won't make the cut for Thursday's debate...

Fiorina charged that Clinton has repeatedly lied during investigations into her use of a private email server and an attack on an American embassy in Libya while she was secretary of state.

"These go to the core of her character," Fiorina said.

"We have to have a nominee on our side who's going to throw every punch," she continued. "This is a fight.".. Read more about Illegal immigration top GOP talking point at New Hampshire presidential forum

USA to Issue More Green Cards Than Populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina Combined

The overwhelming majority of immigration to the United States is the result of our visa policies. Each year, millions of visas are issued...

The lion’s share of these visas are for lesser-skilled and lower-paid workers and their dependents... added directly to the same labor pool occupied by current unemployed jobseekers.

...most will be able to draw a wide range of taxpayer-funded benefits, and corporations will be allowed to directly substitute these workers for Americans. Improved border security would have no effect on the continued arrival of these foreign workers, refugees, and permanent immigrants—because they are all invited here by the federal government.

greencardgraph

The most significant of all immigration documents issued by the U.S. is, by far, the “green card.”...

Under current federal policy, the U.S. issues green cards to approximately 1 million new Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) every single year....

These ongoing visa issuances are the result of federal law, and their number can be adjusted at any time.

...there is virtually no national discussion or media coverage over how many visas we issue, to whom we issue them and on what basis, or how the issuance of these visas to individuals living in foreign countries impacts the interests of people already living in this country.

If Congress does not pass legislation to reduce the number of green cards issued each year, the U.S. will legally add 10 million or more new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years—a bloc of new permanent residents larger than populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina combined.

This has substantial economic implications.

The post-World War II boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s averaged together less than 3 million green cards per decade—or about 285,000 annually. Due to lower immigration rates, the total foreign-born population in the United States dropped from about 10.8 million in 1945 to 9.7 million in 1960 and 9.6 million in 1970.  

These lower mid-century immigration levels were the product of a federal policy change: after the last period of large-scale immigration that had begun in roughly 1880, immigration rates were lowered to reduce admissions. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population fell for six consecutive decades, from 1910 through 1960.

Legislation enacted in 1965, among other factors, substantially increased low-skilled immigration. Since 1970, the foreign-born population in the United States has increased more than four-fold—to a record 42.1 million today...

Georgetown and Hebrew University economics professor Eric Gould has observed that “the last four decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the wage and employment structure in the United States… The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.”

During the low-immigration period from 1948-1973, real median compensation for U.S. workers increased more than 90 percent. By contrast, real average hourly wages were lower in 2014 than they were in 1973...

President Coolidge articulated how a slowing of immigration would benefit both U.S.-born and immigrant-workers: “We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here. As a nation, our first duty must be to those who are already our inhabitants, whether native or immigrants. To them we owe an especial and a weighty obligation.”

It is worth observing that the 10 million grants of new permanent residency under current law is not an estimate of total immigration. In fact, the increased distribution of legal immigrant visas tend to correlate with increased flows of immigration illegally: the former helps provide networks and pull factors for the latter...

Yet the immigration “reform” considered by Congress most recently—the 2013 Senate “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration bill—would have tripled the number of green cards issued over the next 10 years...

Polling from Gallup and Fox shows that Americans want lawmakers to reduce, not increase, immigration rates...

Please take the time to read the FULL article - it's worth the time!
  Read more about USA to Issue More Green Cards Than Populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina Combined

Revealed: The Secret Immigration Chapter in Obama’s Trade Agreement

...secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.

The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it...

The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, which is one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade in fact unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law. TiSA, like TPP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) deals, are international trade agreements that President Obama is trying to force through to final approval. The way he can do so is by getting Congress to give him fast-track authority through TPA.

TiSA is even more secretive than TPP...

Voting for TPA, of course, would essentially ensure the final passage of each TPP, T-TIP, and TiSA by Congress, since in the history of fast-track any deal that’s ever started on fast-track has been approved.

Roughly 10 pages of this TiSA agreement document leak are specifically about immigration...

Obama will be able to finalize all three of the Obamatrade deals, without any Congressional input, if Congress grants him fast-track authority by passing TPA...

The Senate passed the TPA last month, so it is up to the House to put the brakes on Obama’s unilateral power...

“This Trade and Services Agreement is specifically mentioned in TPA as being covered by fast-track authority, so why would Congress be passing a Trade Promotion Authority Act that covers this agreement, if the U.S. weren’t intended to be a party to this agreement – so at the very least, there should be specific places where the U.S. exempts itself from these provisions and there are not,” explained Jenks.

...this is a draft, but at this point “certainly the implication is that the U.S. intends to be a party to all or some of the provisions of this agreement. There is nothing in there that says otherwise, and there is no question in my mind that some of the provisions in this Trade and Services Agreement would require the United States to change its immigration laws.”

In 2003, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that said no immigration provision should be in trade agreements – and in fact, former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) voted for this resolution.

The existence of these 10 pages is in clear violation of that earlier unanimous decision, and also in violation of the statements made by the U.S. Trade Representative.

“He has told members of Congress very specifically the U.S. is not negotiating immigration – or at least is not negotiating any immigration provisions that would require us to change our laws. So, unless major changes are made to the Trade and Services Agreement – that is not true,” said Jenks.

There are three examples within the 10 pages of areas where the U.S. would have to alter current immigration law.

First, on page 4 and 5 of the agreement, roughly 40 industries are listed where potentially the U.S. visa processes would have to change to accommodate the requirements within the agreement.

Jenks explained that under the agreement, the terms don’t have an economic needs based test, which currently U.S. law requires for some types of visa applications in order to show there aren’t American workers available to fill positions.

Secondly, on page 7 of the agreement, it suggests, “The period of processing applications may not exceed 30 days.”

Jenks said this is a massive problem for the U.S. because so many visa applications take longer than 30 days.

“We will not be able to meet those requirements without essentially our government becoming a rubber stamp because it very often takes more than 30 days to process a temporary worker visa,” she said.

Jenks also spotted another issue with the application process.

“The fact that there’s a footnote in this agreement that says that face to face interviews are too burdensome … we’re supposed to be doing face to face interviews with applicants for temporary visas,” she added.

“According to the State Department Consular Officer, it’s the in person interviews that really gives the Consular Officer an opportunity to determine – is this person is a criminal, is this person a terrorist … all of those things are more easily determined when you’re sitting face to face with someone and asking those questions.”

The third issue is present on page 4 of the agreement. It only provides an “[X]” where the number of years would be filled in for the entry or temporary stay.

Jenks explained that for example, with L visas under current U.S. immigration law, the time limit is seven years – so if the agreement were to go beyond seven years, it would change current U.S. law.

This wouldn’t be unconstitutional if Obama has fast-track authority under TPA, as Congress would essentially have given him the power to finalize all aspects of the negotiations, including altering immigration law.

“I think this whole thing makes it very clear that this administration is negotiating immigration... Read more about Revealed: The Secret Immigration Chapter in Obama’s Trade Agreement

Homeland Security Working Overtime to Add ‘New Americans’ by 2016 Election

Sources at the Department of Homeland Security report to PJ Media that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is reallocating significant resources to sending letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election.

President Obama’s amnesty by edict has always been about adding new Democrats to the voter rolls, and recent action by the Department of Homeland Security provides further proof. Sources at the Department of Homeland Security report to PJ Media that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is reallocating significant resources away from a computer system — the “Electronic Immigration System” — to sending letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election.

This effort is part of the DHS “Task Force on New Americans.”

PJ Media has obtained an internal “Dear Colleague” letter written by Leon Rodriguez, the “director and co-chair of the Task Force on New Americans.”  The letter refers to a White House report called “Strengthening Communities by Welcoming All Residents.”

Leon Rodriguez has a tainted history...

The Rodriguez letter states:

This report outlines an immigrant integration plan that will advance our nation’s global competitiveness and ensure that the people who live in this country can fully participate in their communities.

“Full participation” is a term commonly used to include voting rights.  To that end, resources within DHS have been redirected toward pushing as many as aliens and non-citizens as possible to full citizenship status so they may “fully participate” in the 2016 presidential election.  For example, the internal DHS letter states one aim is to “strengthen existing pathways to naturalization and promote civic engagement.”

Leon Rodriguez

Leon Rodriguez

Naturalization plus mobilization is the explicit aim of the DHS “Task Force on New Americans.” Multiple sources at DHS confirm that political appointees are prioritizing naturalization ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Empirical voting patterns among immigrants from minority communities demonstrate that these new voters will overwhelmingly vote for Democrat candidates...

Other DHS sources report that racial interest groups such as La Raza (translated to “The Race”) and the American Immigration Lawyers Association have been playing a central and influential role in rewriting the administration’s immigration policies...

This means that DHS is not only rushing green card holders toward citizenship before the next election, but also jamming previous visa holders toward green card status.  These policies and priorities add to the brazen public positions of the president toward enforcing immigration laws.

Some Senators don't want to protect American workers

 
 
The displacement of citizen workers by foreign nationals brought here under flawed visa programs is a serious problem for this country, but falls very low on the scale of importance to many U.S. Senators.
  
This was clearly shown at the recent Senate hearing described by John Miano in a blog on the Center for Immigration Studies website.  Here he names the names of organizations that appear to control certain Senators’ positions on the issue of jobs for Americans first.
 
Neither of Oregon’s 2 Senators is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Senators Wyden and Merkley both have very poor records on importation of foreign workers.  Sen. Wyden’s voting record on reducing unnecessary worker visas is F over his whole US Senate career from 1989-2015.  Senator Merkley’s is F- over his Senate career, 2009-2015, on the same subject: unnecessary worker visas

 
By John Miano, Center for Immigration Studies, March 22, 2015 
[abridged version]
 
I testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Reforms Needed to Protect Skilled American Workers. It was a great honor to be invited. However, participating in an event like this highlights the growing isolation between Washington and the rest of America.
 
At one time there was a consensus that American citizens should come first under our immigration laws. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that preserving jobs for American workers is a primary purpose of our immigration laws; see, for instance Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 334 (1993).
 
No such consensus exists in today's Washington.
 
The impetus for the hearing was the recent replacement of Americans by H-1B workers at Southern California Edison, Northeast Utilities, Cargill, and Walt Disney World.
 
You would think that members of Congress, upon learning that Americans workers are being replaced by foreign workers, would response in unison, "This is outrageous. That needs to stop now!"
 
I sensed such outrage from Sens. Durbin, Grassley, Sessions, and Vitter—but none of the rest present.
 
In fact, the impression I came away with is that most of the senators did not think it is even a problem when Americans are being replaced by foreign workers.
 
(Senators, that was just my impression. I know that some people put on a restrained face hiding rage behind that. If I left out any senator at the hearing who was outraged, I will be happy to amend this post and link to any statement you have made that Congress should act immediately to stop the replacement of Americans by foreign workers.)
 
 
While at the hearing, I saw that a number of organizations had put out a statement that included the following claim:
 
MYTH: Foreign workers displace American workers in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. 
 
The liars who signed this statement are:
• American Immigration Lawyers Association
• BSA | The Software Alliance
• Compete America Coalition
• Computer & Communications Industry Association
• Consumer Electronics Association
• Council for Global Immigration
• FWD.us
• HR Policy Association
• Information Technology Industry Council
• National Association of Home Builders
• National Association of Manufacturers
• National Venture Capital Association
• Partnership for a New American Economy
• Society for Human Resource Management
• Semiconductor Industry Association
• Silicon Valley Leadership Group
• Tech CEO Council
• TechNet
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
 
While I was in the hotel room the night before, I watched a Rachel Maddow segment on MSNBC in which they went over a poll that asked Americans what the biggest problem in the country was. The number one problem, by far, was government.
 
It would behoove some senators to read Aesop's fable of The Ass and His Purchaser. The moral is "You are known by the company you keep."
 
Senators, when you hang out with liars, like those listed above; when you put their statements in the record; and when you repeat their statements without question you look like an ass too. You are measured by the company you keep.
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  Read more about Some Senators don't want to protect American workers

Populism On Immigration Is the Winning Message

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest held a hearing on the displacement of American workers through the H-1B and related guest worker programs. Among the witnesses was Prof. Hal Salzman of Rutgers. This exchange pretty much says it all, with regard to the fictitious “STEM shortage.”

Q. Prof. Salzman, in an article that appeared in U.S. News and World Report, you wrote, “guest workers currently make up two-thirds of all IT hires.” That’s two-thirds of all information technology hiring in America was done by guest workers. What would happen if the guest worker green card provisions in the Gang of Eight bill, or the SKILLS Act, or I-Squared became law? How would it change things?

Prof. Salzman: Well, it would dramatically increase the number. And we find, based on those estimates, that it would provide enough guest workers to fill 100 percent of the jobs with perhaps 50 percent left in reserve that could then be used to backfill and replace current workers. So the current bills supply more than even what the industry says it needs to fill every new job.

So who would lose those jobs? Right: American citizens. In his prepared testimony, Salzman added:

* The U.S. supply of top performing graduates is large and far exceeds the hiring needs of the STEM industries.

* Future demand for computer science graduates can be met by just half to two-thirds of the current annual supply of U.S. computer science graduates.

* Guestworker supply is large and highly concentrated in the IT industry; it is likely a factor in both stagnant wages and job insecurity.

* The predominant function of IT guestworker visa programs is to facilitate the offshoring of IT work.

* A growing function of the IT guestworker visa programs is to replace American workers for domestic-based projects.

* The number of guestworkers is equal to two-thirds of current entry-level and early-career hiring.

* Current guestworker visa policies for students and new graduates appear to provide incentives to colleges and universities to establish Masters programs that, as their business model, almost exclusively recruit foreign students into lower quality programs that provide easy entry into the U.S. labor market, further expanding the supply of entry-level STEM workers. …

* “Green Cards for Grads” provisions in I-Squared, S. 744 and other bills would provide incentives for colleges and universities to establish or expand current Masters programs as “global services” that offer a green card for the price of a graduate degree, and that are offered primarily or even exclusively for foreign students and directly or indirectly exclude U.S. students.

* In sum, current policies and the proposed changes in high skill guestworker visas and immigration policies that increase the supply of guestworkers are likely to accelerate the already deteriorating labor force conditions and career prospects for STEM graduates and workers.

None of this seems very hard to grasp. All across America, workers have seen their wages decline as jobs grow ever scarcer. This is Obamanomics: Democrat Party cronies get rich, while the middle class withers away.

Jeff Sessions, as always the main spokesman for the aspirations of American workers, said this at today’s hearing:

People aren’t commodities. We compare labor to commodities, but they’re not commodities. They’re human beings. They have families. They have hopes and dreams. They want stability in their lives. They would like to have a good job at a company like the biggest utility in California—California Edison [where hundreds of Americans were laid off and replaced with guest workers]… We have no obligation to yield to the lust of big businesses… Mr. Zuckerberg is worth $27 billion, I guess he is 27 years old, I’m not sure. So he wants more foreign workers. I would like to think he might want to pay his employees more and maybe not have quite so many billions, if he’d like to be helpful, and maybe he could get more local workers.

And here he is on video, with his customary plain-speaking style:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/populism-on-immigration-is-the-winning-message.php

It is undeniable that Congress’s duty is to American workers, not foreign workers, however admirable those individuals may be. The message that Sessions articulated today, as he has repeatedly over the past several years, is devastating. The Democrats cannot stand up against it. If Republicans consistently articulate a populist, pro-American worker message on immigration, they will sweep the 2016 election from the presidency on down to your local county commissioner. And they will be doing the right thing for the people they represent. Read more about Populism On Immigration Is the Winning Message

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