Lawsuit challenges Obama & GOP thinking on high-skilled immigration

December 15, 2014

author Published by Jeremy Beck

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Could we be on the brink of a shift in conventional wisdom when it comes to high-skilled immigration?

Kenric Ward of the Daily Signal.

“Through a host of foreign-worker visa programs, the federal government ‘swells the number of foreign nationals in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) labor market where Washington Alliance members must compete. Indeed, (they were) designed with this purpose in mind,’ the lawsuit alleges.”

In “A Suit against One of Obama’s Immigration Orders Can Go Ahead, and It’s a Setback for the GOP Establishment,” John O’Sullivan writes that the lawsuit could change the debate more than any op-ed could:

“Legally speaking, this is the first step of a long battle. The Obama administration, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the corporate wing of the GOP are likely to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if need be. Politically, however, it focuses the attention of rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats on the impact of high immigration levels on the jobs and incomes of American workers; on the fact that this impact is spreading from unskilled blue-collar workers up the occupational ladder to high-skilled middle-income ones; and on proposals to double the number of new legal immigrants competing with Americans in the labor market as well as to amnesty those illegal immigrants already here.”

On cue, Tony Romm of Politico reports that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be coming to D.C. to lobby Congress for greater access to foreign workers.

And in an op-ed for USA Today, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker specifically praises the Optical Practical Training Program at the heart of the lawsuit. She claims: scoffs:

“Corporate America’s usual excuse – that it is importing workers to do the jobs that Americans won’t do – is completely unpersuasive in the case of technology jobs. Americans work hard and long to acquire such skills in order to give their families a better life. Importing technology guest-workers when there is no shortage of local ones amounts to depriving the American worker of economic opportunity and then offloading the social costs of doing so onto the American taxpayer locally and nationally.”

Pritzker, Nadella, and expansionist activists take advantage of the immigration media’s one-sided coverage of the high-skilled immigration debate. Patrick Thibodeau explains:

“An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement. This severance agreement will likely include a non-disparagement clause that will make the fired worker extremely cautious about what they say on Facebook, let alone to the media.

“On-the-record interviews with displaced workers are difficult to get. While a restrictive severance package may be one handcuff, some are simply fearful of jeopardizing future job prospects by talking to reporters.

“Now silenced, displaced IT workers become invisible and easy to ignore.”

Invisible no more?

In “What Obama’s Amnesty Means for the American Worker,” Kenneth Blackwell writes that middle-class voters are increasingly aware of how high-skilled immigration impacts their families:

“The White House has long courted the backing of corporations that lobby for greater access to foreign workers, even as they lay off Americans. And according to Politico, one of the first things the White House did as it shifted into ‘sales mode’ was to call tech companies and assure them of provisions ‘that would make it easier for them to retain foreign workers.’

“But when it came time to sell the provisions to the public, Obama spoke as if foreign workers wouldn’t need existing jobs at all because they would be creating new ‘jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America.’

“The reality is that, entrepreneurial as some of these foreign workers are, they are going to be competing with American workers, including recent graduates whose families worked and saved and sacrificed so they could get a fair shot at good paying jobs and fulfilling careers.”

JEREMY BECK is the Director of the Media Standards Project for NumbersUSA