Paul Ryan: U.S. Must Hire More Foreign Workers for Economic Survival

Trump ran on a platform that included strengthening our economy and improving job opportunities for Americans by emphasizing a policy of “Hire American and Buy American.” Unfortunately, some members of Republican leadership are not on board with the president’s goals and programs. Hence, he has had to battle members of his own party to accomplish the agenda on which he ran.

Speaker Paul Ryan has a difficult time behaving as a true conservative. Perhaps that’s because he is not one. Whatever his reasons, Mr. Ryan has been less than helpful to President Trump on a number of issues. Foreign workers would be one.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s new 2017 budget allows the Department of Homeland Security to import at least 20,000 extra foreign blue-collar workers for seasonal jobs in the United States, instead of requiring companies to recruit, train, and pay marginalized Americans.

The bipartisan congressional language creates a headache for Trump and his deputies because it flips the politically difficult problem from Congress to the Department of Homeland Security of deciding whether to provide extra wage-cutting H-2B contract workers to companies or else to improve job opportunities for Trump’s blue-collar voters.

Abdicating responsibility is a time-worn practice of Congress, but it is especially disturbing when a Republican speaker shoves problems off on a Republican president. And this one came as a surprise given Paul Ryan’s original statements of his intentions on this issue. And it is not help to the president.

In December 2016, Ryan had agreed to trim the program when the partial 2017 budget deal was announced just one month after blue-collar voters backed Donald Trump’s campaign promise of a low-immigration, high-wage national economic policy.

Yet this shouldn’t come as a total surprise since Mr. Ryan has previously emphasized the importance of expanding opportunities to foreign workers as necessary for domestic businesses.

Here’s where this is a slap in the face to President Trump.

The [H-2B] program means companies don’t have to pay a premium to hire Americans for seasonal overtime work that leaves them unemployed in winter, and it also reduces pressure on the companies to recruit and train youths and marginalized Americans, including millions of Americans who have fallen out of the workforce. The imported workers are also paid at rates that are lower than needed to attract Americans to those jobs — which also means that the companies can pay lower wages to their full-time American workers.

As noted, there are elements within the Republican party who support expanded opportunities for foreign workers at the expense of Americans. And, of course, there are the Democrats and the media who eagerly anticipate another opportunity to claim that President Trump is abandoning American workers.

The H-2B program is backed by many politicians, notably Sen. Thom Tillis, a GOP Senator from North Carolina, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. Ryan has a history of backing “any willing worker” rules which allow companies to import foreign workers instead of hiring Americans at wages sufficient to help raise a family.

This program is only one of those in place to encourage foreigner workers to come to the U.S.

The H-2B program is one of many contract-worker programs run by the federal government, which allow companies to annually hire roughly 1 million foreign white-collar or blue-collar workers for multi-year or seasonal jobs that can be filled by Americans. These programs include the H-1B program, which has allowed companies to create a domestic population of almost 1 million foreign professionals, including doctors, information-technology experts, designers, and accountants.

Speaker Ryan behaves as though he comes from a different political party than President Trump. In so doing, he creates opportunities for the opposition as he undermines the president. Perhaps he really would have preferred that Hillary had won?

Source: Breitbart

Image: Gage Skidmore