Sen. Mike Lee tried to get legislation passed on per-country caps that would benefit China and India but was blocked in the U.S. Senate.
The Utah Republican tried to get the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act passed in the Senate Thursday but was blocked by GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia.
(Video: Fox Business)
If passed, the bill would have eliminated per-country caps on employment-based green cards which is something that would have benefited immigrants from India and China who have long been seeking such a change.
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs slammed the “nonsense” Lee put before the Senate on Thursday, calling out the measure as one that would increase “cheap foreign labor” in the U.S. while placing American workers at a disadvantage.
“Senator Mike Lee, trying to sneak through a bill in the Senate that would be an absolute dream for outsourcers: cheap foreign labor, doubling the number of H-1B visa,” he said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
“It would be perhaps a nightmare for American workers and our middle class who have to compete with such,” he added, clarifying that the H-1B visas are not limited to just high-skilled workers but “for all sorts of skills.”
“It would remove green card limits on workers from other countries,” Dobbs explained. “Big countries like India and China principally would overwhelm the H-1B visa list and, guess what, they will be taking American jobs at lower pay – historically 27 percent lower than prevailing wages in the United States for American labor, replaced by H-1B visas.”
“That’s just terrific,” Dobbs quipped.
“Guess who stopped it? Senator David Perdue blocked it. Perdue said he actually supports the bill – it was too good to be true, wasn’t it?” he continued.
“But he wants to work on some of the bill’s language. Senator Perdue also said the bill is consistent with what the president is trying to do to fix our broken immigration system,” Dobbs told viewers.
“Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. But ask yourself: why would a populist president who’s worked so hard for the American worker, the middle class, the forgotten man and woman in this country agree to such a bunch of nonsense as Senator Mike Lee has put before the Senate?” the Fox Business host asked.
The bill, which failed to bypass a Senate roll-call vote on Thursday, passed the House in a 365-65 vote back in July.
Lee, who co-sponsored the measure with California Democrat Sen. Kamala Harris, argued in his floor speech that under the current per-country cap system, “immigrants from larger countries are only eligible to receive the same number of green cards annually as immigrants from smaller countries. As a result, the wait times for immigrants from larger countries have grown and grown, decade after decade, with no end in sight.”
(Video: YouTube/senatormikelee)
“This amounts to de facto country-of-origin discrimination – plain and simple – and no amount of legalese or wonkish policy arguments can cover up that fact,” Lee continued, adding that the system is “irredeemably flawed because it is incompatible with the goals that our employment-based visa system is meant to advance.”
“This bill is not comprehensive immigration reform. It is not even close to being that. And that is, in fact, why this bill is something that we can actually get done now,” the Utah congressman said.
But the green card giveaway reveals a troubling background which also heavily benefits America’s largest tech companies.
According to Breitbart News:
At stake is a massive giveaway for employment-based green cards for Big Tech — including those who have contributed directly to Lee, like Google, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon.
Lee’s S. 386 will ensure outsourcing firms such as Cognizant and Infosys, as well as giant tech conglomerates like Amazon and Facebook, have a green card system wherein only foreign workers on H-1B visas are able to obtain employment green cards by creating a backlog of seven to eight years for all foreign nationals.
Temporary foreign visa workers would reap the rewards as they would be recipients of the employment-based green cards which corporations would use to import the immigrants to replace American workers.
“Indian nationals will obtain more than 90 percent of all the employment-based green cards for at least a decade,” Breitbart reported, noting how giant tech corporations have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Lee.
Lee has amassed “more than $33,000 from the Microsoft Corporation, about $18,400 from Google, $12,500 from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, $12,000 from the Oracle Corporation, $11,000 from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, and nearly $11,000 from the Koch-owned Koch Agronomic Services,” according to Breitbart.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle and other corporations have pressed Congress to pass Lee’s bill.
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Frieda@bizpacreview.com
Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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