The current level of immigration has a depressive effect on the wages of workers in the United States. On average, the United States has admitted one million immigrants every year since 1990. In addition, between 700,000 and 800,000 guest workers are admitted every year. There are 28.4 million immigrants in the labor force, including over 7.5 million illegal aliens.
According to the newest Dept. of Labor statistics the number of H-2A visas granted in FY17 increased by 20% from last year. The DOL approved 200,049 H-2A visas in FY17 compared to 165,741 in FY16.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released its analysis of the current USCIS data of the H-2B program for FY17, which ended on Sept. 30. Through their analysis CIS found key discoveries in H-2B areas including: certification numbers, average pay, occupations, and the additional 15,000 visas granted by DHS.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote an op-ed in The Hill about his bill The Legal Workforce Act that would mandate E-Verify for all employers and turn off the jobs magnet for illegal aliens. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) have co-sponsored the bill and it is scheduled for markup by the House Judiciary Committee today.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced the Agricultural Guestworker Act or AG Act this week, which would replace the existing, H-2A temporary guest-worker visa program with a new H-2C temporary guest-worker visa. The H-2C visa would expand the types of jobs that foreign workers could perform under the visa, adding both dairy workers and meat and seafood processors to the program.
Reuters reported that data provided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows that between Jan.1 and Aug. 31 of this year, USCIS issued 85,000 challenges or “requests for evidence” (RFEs) to H-1B petitions. This is a 45% increase compared to the same period last year which only issued around 59,000 RFEs.
In a recent study the Pew Research Center said that according to their findings, employers planned in FY16 on paying foreign H-1B visa workers higher salaries than those earned by Americans in similar fields. However, other experts have said that the methods used are flawed and, “not worthy of Pew or experienced researchers to put out”.
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that there is no evidence of a labor shortage to support the recent H-2B visa increase. DHS Secretary John Kelly announced this week that he will use the authority granted by Congress to approve an additional 15,000 H-2B visas over the annual 66,000 cap.
DHS Secretary John Kelly has decided to use the authority granted to him by Congress to provide 15,000 more H-2B visas through the remainder of the fiscal year. In the latest omnibus spending bill, Congress granted authority to DHS to approve around 70,000 additional H-2B visas in FY17 over the 66,000 cap.
The food processing industry has a history of seeking out desperate workers who will accept lower wages and deplorable conditions. There are not enough foreign workers, they say, to take these jobs...at the wages they are offering.
If these businesses took the radical step of raising wages, the Greeley Tribune warns, our cheap food would be... less cheap.
Bret Stephens of The New York Times penned an op-ed breathtaking in its contempt for the American people. His basic argument is that "so-called Americans" must be replaced by immigrants if America is to survive.
Harvard economics professor George Borjas wrote in a recent blog that he's seeing a shift in the narrative used by immigration expansionists to support an increase in legal immigration levels, focusing less on the benefits of mass immigration on the economy and more on the negative impacts of reducing immigration.
WITN News
The H-2B visa program is gaining attention from a bipartisan group of senators here on Capitol Hill who believe it will grow jobs.
But those against the bill don't like these jobs not going to America workers.
Chris Chmielenski, Director of Content and Activism for NumbersUSA, says, "It's going to foreign workers and usually at the expense of wages for American workers."
Chmielenski's group advocates for lower immigration levels.
A new Pew Research Center report shows that there are no major U.S. industries where immigrant workers outnumber American workers. The report uses Pew’s 2014 workforce estimates and the Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey to look at all workers ages 16 and over in a civilian industry including both legal and illegal immigrants in 2014.
Janet Yellen said on Tuesday during testimony before the Senate Banking Committee that “slowing the pace of immigration probably would slow the growth rate of the economy.”
In a New York Times op-ed entitled “Fix Immigration. It’s What Voters Want” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., argues President-elect Trump “has a clear mandate not only to stop illegal immigration, but also to finally cut the generation-long influx of low-skilled immigrants that undermines American workers.” He says the nation needs an immigration policy that focuses less on powerful special interests and more on everyone else.
Breitbart’s Neil Munro reports a last-minute Obama Administration regulation will create more foreign job competition for American workers specializing in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. It would: automatically extend the work permits of H-1B guest workers while they seek permanent employment-based green cards; increase their job portability; and create a new method for non-profits to hire H-1B workers by partnering with universities. And for foreign students who work under the Optional Training Program (OPT), the regulation would extend the length of their work permits so they can seek a H-1B slot.
Julia Preston wrote an article for The New York Times with the headline “Immigrants Aren’t Taking Americans’ Jobs, New Study Finds.”
A new authoritative study released by the National Academy of Sciences shows that mass immigration drives down annual wages by 5.2% for native-born workers who are in direct competition with immigrants for jobs while costing taxpayers around $299 billion in public services. The study found that the net economic benefit of mass immigration is around $55 billion but that money results from a $500 billion wage transfer from low-skilled workers to businesses.
New polling in 22 countries on all continents has found there are far more citizens who are concerned about what immigration is doing to their homeland than who approve of it.
In her acceptance speech last night, Hillary Clinton laid out several of the most important reasons why I work to dramatically reduce overall immigration:
The House Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment that would extend the H-2B visa increase that was passed in last year’s omnibus bill. The extension would be for one year and could quadruple the number of foreign, H-2B visa workers.
Expert witnesses told a Senate panel on Wednesday that there is no evidence to support the idea that H-2B visa workers fill in labor shortages for jobs that employers claim "Americans will not do". The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest held the hearing to discuss how the H-2B visa impacts American job opportunities and wages before a likely debate over the issue in Congress this summer.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a report showing that there is no evidence to support the labor shortage claims made by companies that advocate for an increase in H-2B visas. Key findings in the report show that companies save multiple dollars per hour by hiring lower-paid H-2B workers.
On Tuesday night, in his final State of the Union address, President Obama said that “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” While that statement may not be what is technically referred to as a political whopper, a la John McCain’s pronouncement in 2008 that “The fundamentals of the economy are strong;” or even Obama’s own promise that the 2009 stimulus bill would fund hundreds of “shovel-ready” projects, it is misleading, nonetheless.
Immigration does “grow the economy” and highly-skilled immigrants do contribute more in taxes than they receive in direct government services (education, healthcare, entitlements, etc.). It would be very difficult to find an economist who disagreed with the above statement.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., yesterday warned that the omnibus appropriations bill would quadruple a foreign worker program replacing Americans, expand the refugee program amid serious national security threats, and ignore the existence of dangerous Sanctuary Cities.
After reviewing the just-released text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal Rosemary Jenks, NumbersUSA’s Government Relations Director, told Breitbart News “there is no question… that TPP impacts immigration in a massive way.” This is contrary to statements by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., prior to ascending to the speakership.
"U.S. Workers Ask: Where's My Raise?" proclaims the Wall Street Journal in a serious June 3 analysis of many reasons for the stagnant wage situation for millions of Americans. But, as usual for mainstream media, the Journal totally ignored one of the most obvious factors: out-of-control immigration that adds to the country's giant labor surplus that allows employers to hold down wages.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service links the increase in immigration in recent decades to the decline of the median income for the bottom 90% of income tax filers. The report, prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, shows that as the percentage of foreign-born residents declined between 1945 and the early-1970s, the median income for middle-class Americans increased. But after the foreign-born percentage began to increase after 1970, middle-class wages stagnated before plummeting after 2000.
Chairman of the Senate's immigration subcommittee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post calling for "an honest discussion of immigration" and its effects on American workers and their families.
Washington Post -- Max Ehrenfreund
With another contentious debate about immigration approaching for the new Congress, it's worth remembering that immigration doesn't benefit everyone equally. Immigrants are better off when they can come here freely, of course, and so are most people already in the country, who benefit from immigrants' skills and labor.
NBC Bay Area -- Monte Francis
A Bay Area tech company has been slapped with a fine and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in back wages after a United States Department of Labor investigation revealed the company paid workers $1.21 an hour.
While making a speech in Washington on Monday, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez said that allowing an influx of foreign workers would boost wages and help the economy. This contrasts the findings of several studies.
Ezra Klein and David Frum agree that mass immigration yields benefits for millions of American professionals in the form of more affordable services. They agree that the tradeoffs - including lower wages and reduced opportunities - mostly fall on low-wage workers (although I know some American STEM workers who would beg to differ). But they disagree on whether concern for low-skilled workers should be central to immigration policy.
My commentary today in the Capitol Hill publication, Roll Call, addresses the meaning of Prof. Brat's defeat of U.S. House Majority Leader Cantor and the need for Congress to change the debate from HOW and HOW MUCH to increase immigration to WHETHER to increase or reduce the numbers. You may not be aware of the incredibly positive results for a large segment of our population when World War One suddenly cut off immigration a century ago. Take a look . . .
A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies asks whether or not there is a shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers in the United States, and their resounding conclusion is "no". The report released today and written by CIS researchers Steve Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there are more than 5 million native-born Americans with an undergraduate degree in STEM, but not working in STEM with another 1.2 million degree holders not working at all. Additionally, there are 1.6 million foreign-born residents with an undergraduate degree in STEM that are also not working in STEM fields or working at all.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is touting a new report from the American Farm Bureau in response to House Speaker John Boehner's recent statement that "immigration reform" is in jeopardy until Pres. Obama enforces existing immigration laws. The report's supposed shock factor is based on the claim that food prices in the United States will increase 5-6% over the next 5 years with an enforcement-first strategy.
Appearing on Sunday morning news shows, Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor appeared hesitant to confirm that the House will pursue immigration legislation this year. Ryan said that the likelihood of a broad immigration bill reaching President Obama's desk this year is "clearly in doubt," while Cantor said Congress should focus on “things that we can agree on.”
Last week media outlets coast to coast were covering news of what some called the largest fast food worker walkout in American history. In spite of the spiraling situation in Syria, the short-term strike took the headline on Drudge Report and was seen splashed on the front pages of major newspapers.Last week media outlets coast to coast were covering news of what some called the largest fast food worker walkout in American history. In spite of the spiraling situation in Syria, the short-term strike took the headline on Drudge Report and was seen splashed on the front pages of major newspapers.
Carpetmaker Mohawk Industries has settled a lawsuit with employees who claimed the company depressed wages by hiring illegal aliens. The company will pay $18 million after the six year battle.
As part of S.T.O.P. Amnesty in 4 Days, Roy Beck gave a presentation to a group of House staffers on Monday, March 22, bringing the message of uncontrollable population growth, high immigration numbers and the impact of illegal immigration on America's unemployed.
About 8 million jobs are held by illegal immigrants. Vulnerable and disadvantaged American workers have seen their incomes and job opportunities shrink. Forcing unemployed workers to compete with undocumented workers is not fair to hard-working Americans. http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/19/reclaim-8-million-jobs/
By Reps. Lamar Smith, Sue Myrick and Gary Miller -- The Daily Caller
CATO Institute's Dan Griswold suggests that the U.S. faces a crisis in filling lower skilled jobs because we aren't producing as many high school dropouts as in the past. Perhaps somebody could explain to him that we have around 2 million native-born high school dropouts who are actively looking for a job and can't find one -- and another 7 million who have dropped out of the job market altogether.
