This plan would make it so unemployed American workers won’t have to pay taxes, and would get unemployment checks and welfare aid. This is all because the foreign temps would hold down the wages that Americans would be able to negotiate under standard employment.
The complex bill is a gift to donors and businesses because it would allow them to reduce wages offered in advertised jobs, thus deterring American applicants and then justifying their requests for H-2B visa workers. It also provides a huge loophole that technically keeps the current annual cap of 66,000 H-2B workers — but excludes from the cap any H-2B workers who got an H-2B visa in the prior three years. That clever loophole would allow employers to simultaneously hire up to four years of H-2B workers, or 264,000 foreign workers.
“This bill reads like it was written by landscaping industry… it’s a wish list of everything they could possibly want,” said Ed Tuddenham, a lawyer in New York. “The steel industry doesn’t get low-wage labor to compete with foreign steelmakers,” he scoffed.
The bill is being pushed by the H-2B Workforce Coalition, which includes hotel owners, golf courses, landscaping companies, realtors, the National Federation of Independent Business, building contractors, roofing companies, the racetrack association and many other groups. “Failure to enact a returning worker exemption will decimate seasonal businesses across the country,” the group claimed in a May letter, which also includes a 20-page list of companies looking to hire foreign workers instead of American workers.
The group declined to comment for this article.
In the House, the bill has been championed by Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot, chairman of the Small Business Committee, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) and Louisiana Rep. Charles W. Boustany. Their offices did not respond to multiple emails. Goodlatte’s constituency include many poultry growers who rely on cheap labor to manually process chickens and turkeys in slaughterhouses.
House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s office declined to comment.
In the Senate, the measure is being pushed by two new GOP Senators — North Carolina Republican Sen. Tom Tillis and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA). The Senators’ offices did not respond. Two veteran Democrats, Maryland’s Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Virginia’s Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), also supporting the measure.
So far, the “voter layoff act of 2016″ is still in the omnibus bill, a Hill aide tells Breitbart News.
The GOP politicians — and some Democrats — are supporting their donors and local business-interests when they tout their measure. But the politicians’ support may be entirely insincere — and they may intend to drop the pink-slip measure once public protest provides them with an excuse to give their donors.
That’s why business leaders are worrying the worker-replacement measure won’t make it though the closed-door appropriations process. “That’s the $50 million question right there,” Josh Denison, the hiring chief at Denison Landscaping in Oxon Hill, Md., told Breitbart News.
The pink-slip plan comes as GOP leaders also spurn pressure from their alienated voters for curbs on President Barack Obama’s ambitious and unpopular plans to increase the inflow of Muslim migrants during 2016. The leaders’ support for two unpopular priorities — more migrants and fewer working-Americans — reflects the clout of the GOP’s donor class.
The donors strongly support the importation of more customers and workers. Legal immigrants and temporary guest-workers provide top-level executives with taxpayer-subsidized consumers, taxpayer-supported low-wage workers, higher stock-prices on Wall Street and a better chance to win promotion into the corner office once the CEO retires.
This business-first policy is also echoed by the GOP’s new House Speaker, Rep. Paul Ryan, who has endorsed the “any willing worker” claim that U.S.-based executives should be allowed to offer any job to any foreign workers if Americans workers won’t take the job at an advertised wage. “We want to have a system where people can come here and work– go back and forth if they want to,” Ryan said in 2013.
In fact, Ryan endorses the H-2B worker program on his website. “Employers should be able to hire workers on a temporary or seasonal basis when they can’t find Americans to fill the jobs. Wisconsin, for instance, relies on seasonal labor for agriculture and other industries, but due to a lack of seasonal H-2B visas, some Wisconsin businesses face annual labor shortfalls. If we can link legal immigrants with small businesses, we can help spur economic growth.”
In Oct. 2015, only 62.4 percent of adult Americans had jobs. That’s down from 66.9 percent in April 2001, and level with the June 1977 level.
But in a Dec. 3 speech, Ryan also touted the need for higher wages and more employment. “Push wages up… Get people off the sidelines in this country. I could think of no better way to restore confidence in the American economy,” he said in a showcase speech at the Library of Congress.
There you have it, this is nothing more than an attempt by country-club Republicans to appease the corporations that put them in power. Meanwhile in a surprising turn of events, the left is split on the H-2B program, partly because various groups and publications have called it a modern form of indentured servitude. The existence of this plan feels like a giant leap backwards for America.
Source: breitbart.com
GO TRUMP!
sure they are
All of Congress should be tried for treason
TRUMP