Foreign Workers are Now Ready to Undercut American Workers

I am providing you with a press release that was issued by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on May 12th that should be of great concern to all Americans.

Now the administration has taken yet another action that is impossible to fathom. The ICE news release makes it clear that the administration will stop at nothing to create ever more incentives for aliens to come to the United States and be provided with more opportunities than ever before even as citizens of our country are finding the “American Dream” to be more elusive than ever before!

According to the press release foreign students who are studying for high-tech professions will now be provided with more opportunities to secure employment in our country once they receive their degrees. Meanwhile American computer programmers and other high tech professionals whose jobs haven’t been outsourced to India or other countries will now find that even more foreign students may well seek to replace them in the job market!

Meanwhile American students will now find that they will be competing with foreign students for jobs when they all graduate from college.

This is not a new problem. High-tech workers have long been undercut by so-called “temporary” foreign workers who are able to secure H-1B visas and other such visas, and then legally work in the United States for wages that are lower than prevailing wages. The thing is that now even foreign students will be given more opportunities to now undercut American workers!

Especially in this era of extreme economic hardship for ever so many citizens of our nation, where it is estimated that one in five American families live below the poverty level, what I want to know is why our government is seeking to create training programs for unemployed Americans or underemployed Americans so that they can acquire the high-tech skills that would enable them to contribute to our nation’s economy and competitiveness, thereby building their futures while they improve America’s future?

Meanwhile, it seems as though nearly every week the various news programs on radio and television report on the unemployment rate. It also seems that on any given day a parade of politicians will call for the creation of new jobs to get Americans back to work. Clearly there are many American citizens and resident aliens who are either unemployed or underemployed. The cascade of harm that this does to our nation can be felt in most American communities across our nation.

Americans who are not able to support themselves and their families become dependent on various assistance programs that weigh heavily on the budgets of government on all levels. The quality of life for these families suffer greatly as stress levels go up as living standards go down for reasons that are out of the control of those who lose their jobs through no fault of the their own.

The unemployment of large numbers of Americans contributes to the foreclosure of mortgages which adds to the huge inventory of homes for sale at sub-market prices which causes even more homeowners to find that their houses are “under water.” This means that the current value of their houses is less than the mortgage that they are paying off. Furthermore, as more houses are left vacant when the owners default on their mortgages, crime in those communities that have significant numbers of vacant houses increases as prostitutes, drug dealers and assorted homeless people break into those vacated houses. This further erodes home values.

Meanwhile foreign workers do what would be expected- they send as much of their earnings back to their families in their home countries. This is money that is not spent or invested in America. At the same time the administration has mortgaged our children and our grandchildren’s future to create economic stimulus packages that were purportedly designed to pump money into the economy to prime the economic pump of our nation. How does this square with seeking to entice ever more foreign workers to come to the United States to take jobs Americans would take for fair wages?

Before you fall for the argument that our nation must have talented foreign workers in order to be competitive in the global economy, consider how rampant fraud is in these programs where attorneys seek to make certain that foreign workers get hired, thereby blocking American workers so that the attorneys can collect their significant fees.

The point is that often highly skilled and educated American workers either find that their jobs have been sent overseas or that foreign workers have been brought here under a “temporary worker” visa program. (With virtually no effort to make certain that temporary workers remain on the jobs they were brought in to do and that they don’t overstay the amount of time they were admitted to remain in the United States, the only reason that these workers could be described as temporary is because no one lives forever!)

The high tech industries don’t generally hire illegal aliens. They hire temporary workers who have the education that makes them desirable as employees of many high tech industries. These foreign workers also have another valuable trait: they will accept significantly lower salaries than their American counterparts. Often, immigration law firms, not unlike salesmen who want to close a deal, do whatever they can to get employers to hire foreign workers. For the law firms, their livelihood depends on this and so they are very motivated to make certain that foreign workers take priority over American workers.

If you don’t believe me, check out this video of a segment of Lou Dobbs Tonight that aired on November 15, 2007 and dealt with the issue of H1B visas and made it clear that there is no shortage of American engineers, computer programmers and others with graduate degrees in the high tech industries.

Here is the link to that segment that runs about 5 minutes:

http://programmersguild.blogspot.com/2007/11/lou-dobbs-challenges-bill-gates-to.html

What will really infuriate you is the video of an immigration lawyers’ conference in which lawyers were being coached to “not find qualified U.S. workers!” The lecturer who is instructing the attorneys is a guy by the name of Lawrence M. Lebowitz, the Vice President of Marketing for the firm of Cohen & Grigsby. This video was posted on You Tube by the Programmer Guild, an organization that is comprised of computer programmers. This video runs for roughly 4 minutes and 30 seconds and I urge you to watch this video that was, I believe, made clandestinely. This is the link to that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

I want you to now consider that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is that all-inclusive body of laws that regulates the entry of aliens into the United States and also their presence in the United States. It deals with immigration benefits and the grounds under which an alien might be removed (deported) from the United States. Under the INA, the law…”

.” ..excludes aliens seeking to immigrate “for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor,” except that such aliens may be eligible for a visa if: the Secretary of Labor has determined that (A) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work, and (B) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the United States workers similarly employed.”

The immigration laws of the United States are supposed to protect America and Americans from the entry and presence of aliens whose presence in our country is harmful. This certainly includes aliens who pose a physical threat to our safety and to national security. The laws are clear about that- but it is also important to remember that prior to the Second World War, the enforcement and administration of our immigration laws was the responsibility of the United States Department of Labor out of the obvious concern that a massive influx of foreign workers would have a negative impact on the American workforce.

Furthermore, when aliens who are admitted into the United States under various nonimmigrant visas, such as students, H-1B visas and other such visas or even under the Visa Waiver Program overstay their authorized period of time or other violate the terms of their admission into the United States, there is scant effort made by ICE to to seek these illegal aliens out to enforce their departure from the United States.

Estimates as to the actual number of such visa violators vary from 4.5 million to perhaps as many as 6 million or even more. I have been told by some folks at DHS that the number may be as high as 10 million- yet ICE has allocated less than 4% of its already meager resources to go after these visa violators! This is the equivalent of having fewer than 300 special agents of ICE assigned to locating these millions of illegal aliens!

In May of last year, CNN aired a report by Casey Wian, a CNN journalist who has been covering the immigration issue for many years. This time the focus was entitled “Tracking Down Visa Violators.” I was interviewed for this report.

Here is a link to Casey’s excellent report:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/05/31/am.wian.border.patrol.cnn?iref=allsearch

Finally you should understand that some of the students who acquired their high-tech degrees put their educations to use in contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and in finding high-tech means of carrying out terrorist attacks! Why are we continuing to provide such training to potential adversaries? If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!

We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.

My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.

The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.

If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!”

The practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there. The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!

The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians.

I believe our nation’s is greatly benefited by the rich diversity of our people which is why I could never imagine living anywhere except New York City, arguably the most diverse city in our nation if not, in fact, the world. However, my idea of diversity most certainly does not include members of MS-13, the Mexican drug cartels or members of other transnational gangs or members of al-Qaeda!

If this situation concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!

All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are! We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance. This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue! You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem! Democracy is not a spectator sport! Lead, follow or get out of the way!

ICE announces expanded list of science, technology, engineering, and math degree programs Qualifies eligible graduates to extend their post-graduate training

Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Investigator, an expert witness in more than a dozen Congressional Hearings is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to the ‘911 Families for a Secure America.’ He writes about the nexus between immigration and national security.