By Darrell Dow
America’s immigration policy, as I wrote here in February, is little more than a wealth redistribution scheme aimed at enriching ruling class oligarchs at the expense of America’s middle and working classes. The news of the last week confirms it.
Last Spring, as government-imposed lockdowns wracked the economy, then-President Trump issued a series of proclamations barring the entry of immigrants who posed a risk to the U. S. labor market. The orders primarily affected H-1B visas used by technology companies to hire foreign coders and engineers. On December 31, 2020, Trump issued another proclamation extending the immigrant worker freeze through March 31.
This week, President Biden allowed the ban on visas for temporary workers to expire. The decision should please Silicon Valley and Indian IT service companies that have pressured the Biden administration to lift the ban. But even as “Lunch Bucket Joe” from Scranton, Pa., betrays American workers, spokesmen for the Tech Titans demand even more.
“Change is not happening fast enough under the Biden administration, and it is critical that it does,” said immigration lawyer Ashima Duggal, who represents tech entrepreneurs, scientists and investors.
Once the protector of working-class interests, the Democrat Party is now joined at the hip with Big Tech and the Corporatocracy. It wasn’t just Biden who wanted to import more foreign workers. Earlier in March, four Democrat Senators and Independent Angus King wrote to Biden to ask that he let the proclamation lapse so that foreign workers could fill tech jobs.
“The continuation of this ban creates delays and uncertainties for U.S. employers, their foreign-born professional workers, and their families,” the lawmakers wrote. “It’s also inconsistent with the previous messages and positions on this administration. Rather than attracting talented individuals to the United States, allowing these bans to remain in effect makes the immigration system harder to navigate and drives foreign talent to other countries.”
The H-1B program is a pipeline to funnel cheap foreign workers to American companies through a handful of Indian IT companies. The program displaces American workers and suppresses wages in IT industries. Unlike other guestworker programs, an employer is not required to seek a qualified American before hiring a foreigner. A loophole in the program allows “H-1B dependent employers” to not recruit Americans if the employer pays the foreign worker $60,000 a year. But how far does a $60,000 salary go in Silicon Valley or the DC suburbs? This effectively makes American college graduates pursuing IT jobs unemployable.
Meanwhile, the crisis on the Mexican border is unabated. Already, this fiscal year, border agents have apprehended almost 400,000 illegals. This week a top border official, Raul Ortiz, deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, said he expects more than a million illegal immigrants will arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
“We’re already starting to see some higher days of 6,000-plus apprehensions,” Ortiz said. “So I fully expect our border patrol agents to encounter over a million people this year.”
The wave of migrants that Biden unleashed with his reckless rhetoric and policy prescriptions will continue to exert pressure on low-wage workers, not to mention imposing huge costs on taxpayers through welfare and free education and health care. Though the unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent last month, millions of Americans remain out of work. Moreover, the unemployment rate for the bottom quartile of Americans, the cohort who largely compete with guestworkers and illegal aliens, stands at a whopping 23 percent.
The economic crisis of the last year has caused millions to lose their jobs and savings even as the stock market and profits of America’s largest companies have exploded. Yet Biden blindly continues to dismantle border enforcement and provisions designed to protect workers. These moves will enrich the Ruling Class donors who fund the two parties while further diminishing the prospects of many American workers to secure decent jobs and cultivate a posterity.
Darrell Dow is a regular contributor to American Remnant.
[…] too, is little more than a wealth redistribution scheme. As I’ve written elsewhere, George Borjas has shown that while immigration produces […]