NumbersUSA Releases Numerical Consequences of Senate Committee Plan to Sell U.S. Skilled Jobs to Foreign Workers Last Week’s Senate Judiciary Committee Vote Would Nearly Triple WASHINGTON, DC – Today, NumbersUSA released the numerical consequences of a Senate plan to sell millions of additional work visas and permanent green cards to corporations so they can fill high-tech and other skilled jobs in the U.S. with foreign workers. The proposal, offered by Senator Specter (R-PA), was amended and adopted by the Judiciary Committee last week by a vote of 11-2. “This action occurred without any hearings and without any mention of the magnitude,” said Roy Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA. “The Senate Judiciary Committee slipped in these changes to immigration law as if they were minor adjustments to raise some extra revenue. But examination of the obscure legal language reveals that the Committee has opened up massive increases in our already unprecedented and unsustainable level of immigration.” To put the size of the increase (around 350,000 a year) in perspective, Beck noted that this country’s traditional immigration from all sources up until 1965 added up to around 250,000 a year. Since 1990, it has been averaging four times higher at around 1 million a year. “And then, in one short meeting last week – without extended public debate or even warning – these Senators recklessly voted to change the law to increase immigration flows by more each year than the total average immigration from all sources during our first 200 years as a nation,” Beck said. The Specter plan, as amended in Committee, exempts workers’ accompanying family members from the 140,000 visa cap on employment-based immigration. Between 2000 and 2004, an average of 54 percent of all employment-based green cards went to the spouses and minor children of workers. Exempting families of workers from the visa cap would appear to result in around 170,000 additional aliens immigrating permanently to the United States each year. The plan also raises the cap on employment-based permanent immigration by adding each year the lesser of 90,000 visas or any “unused” employment-based visas from any prior year. An extra 90,000 visas for workers would also lead to around 110,000 of their family members moving to the United States (based on recent experience). Altogether, these two provisions could generate a net increase in permanent immigration of more than 350,000 aliens a year, according to an analysis of the Specter plan by Rosemary Jenks, NumbersUSA’s Director of Government Relations. “The Senate Judiciary Committee has no right to force American workers to sacrifice their jobs to compensate for government overspending, as this plan ostensibly seeks to raise revenue to offset the profligate spending by Congress and the President” said Beck. “American workers deserve better and American communities need a reduction in immigration, not a plan that forces hundreds of thousands more workers into their already congested job markets and neighborhoods.”
NumbersUSA is a non-profit, non-partisan, public policy organization with more than 120,000 members. It favors an environmentally sustainable and economically just America and opposes efforts to use federal immigration policies to force mass U.S. population growth and to depress wages of vulnerable workers. |