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Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/html/sites/all/modules/memcache/dmemcache.inc:63) in /var/www/html/includes/bootstrap.inc on line 585 The Who's Roger Daltrey Slams Britain's Former Open Borders Policy | NumbersUSA - For Lower Immigration Levels
The Who's Roger Daltrey Slams Britain's Former Open Borders Policy
Monday, November 18, 2013, 3:00 PM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA
Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of the Who, has blasted the former Labour-led government of the United Kingdom for allowing in large numbers of foreign workers. Daltrey, who has also criticized the current government for failing to tackle high immigration numbers said immigration has "undercut" workers.
Last month, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that immigration, welfare, and education were all connected ast the country, like the U.S., begins to re-examine its immigration policy.
I will never, ever forgive the Labour party for allowing this mass immigration with no demands put on what people should be paid when they come to this country. I will never forgive them for destroying the jobs of my mates, because they allowed their jobs to be undercut with stupid thinking on Europe, letting them all in, so they can live 10 to a room, working for Polish wages.
I've got nothing against the Poles at all, but that was a political mistake and it made me very angry. And the people who get it in the neck are the immigrants, and it's not their fault.
This is not the first time Daltrey has criticized the previous government for their immigration policies. In 2011, he said the last government left the "the British working man screwed like he’d never been screwed before."
Letters & Endorsements - Wednesday, September 30, 2009
One year after an internal assessment showed extensive fraud and abuse in the H-1B visa program, Senator Chuck Grassley is asking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hold employers accountable by requesting evidence from petitioners that H-1B visa holders actually have a job waiting for them in the United States.
Under current U.S. immigration policy, the Obama Administration will authorize an average of 138,000 new foreigners each month to fill American jobs, regardless of whether the U.S. economy is producing or losing jobs, or whether U.S. wages are rising or falling.
Should the U.S. increase its H-1B visa program? Wages belie claims of a labor shortage
Articles - Thursday, May 8, 2008
The following analysis was prepared by U.C. Davis Computer Science
Professor Norman Matloff and published on December 7, 2006 in the San
Francisco Chronicle.
Once again, the tech industry is putting heavy pressure on Congress to
expand the H-1B visa program. Though the industry says the foreign
workers are needed to remedy a tech labor shortage, for most employers
the attraction of H-1Bs visa holders is simply cheap labor. The H-1B
visa program allows skilled immigrants to work in the United States on
a temporary basis.
The program's scope is far more general than just the tech industry.
For example, the San Francisco Unified School District has hired a
number of H-1B visa-holding school psychologists, elementary school
teachers and so on. But the most common field in which employers hire
H-1B visa holders is software development. The visas granted in
computer-related fields are 10 times more numerous than in the next
Norman Matloff, December 7,2006
The following analysis was prepared by U.C. Davis Computer Science
Professor Norman Matloff and published on December 7, 2006 in the San
Francisco Chronicle.
Once again, the tech industry is putting heavy pressure on Congress to
expand the H-1B visa program. Though the industry says the foreign
workers are needed to remedy a tech labor shortage, for most employers
the attraction of H-1Bs visa holders is simply cheap labor. The H-1B
visa program allows skilled immigrants to work in the United States on
a temporary basis.
The program's scope is far more general than just the tech industry.
For example, the San Francisco Unified School District has hired a
number of H-1B visa-holding school psychologists, elementary school
teachers and so on. But the most common field in which employers hire
H-1B visa holders is software development. The visas granted in
computer-related fields are 10 times more numerous than in the next
most common tech field, electrical engineering.
Labor shortage?
The industry claims that it needs to import workers to remedy a
severe labor shortage. Yet this flies in the face of the economic data.
A Business Week article has pointed out that starting salaries for new
bachelor's degree graduates in computer science and electrical
engineering, adjusted for inflation, have been flat or falling in
recent years. This belies the industry's claim of a labor shortage.
Additional analysis at the master's degree level shows the same trend,
flat wages -- contradicting the industry's claim that workers at the
postgraduate level are in especially short supply.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is personally leading the industry's
charge for more H-1B visas. Yet Microsoft asked its contract software
developers earlier this year to take a seven-day furlough, to save
money. And the firm admits that its salaries are not keeping up with
inflation. Again, none of this squares with Microsoft's claims of a
labor shortage.
The hidden agenda: cheap labor
The hidden agenda here is industry access to cheap labor. Several
university studies and two congressionally commissioned reports have
shown that H-1B visa holders are paid less than Americans. Though the
law requires H-1B holders to be paid the "prevailing wage," the
definition of that term is filled with numerous gaping loopholes, as a
2002 congressional report showed. Yet Congress added even further
loopholes in legislation in 2004. Just think tax code, and you'll
understand what I mean.
The H-1B program does not require most employers to give hiring
priority to qualified U.S. citizens and permanent residents. If the
employer is also sponsoring the foreign worker for a green card, there
is such a requirement, but again loopholes render the rule meaningless.
As prominent immigration attorney Joel Stewart has said, "Employers who
favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers
who apply."
False claims of the industry
The industry says the H-1B holders are needed to maintain its level
of innovation. I, too, support facilitating the immigration of "the
best and the brightest," but very few H-1B holders in the tech field
are in that league. Government data show that the vast majority make,
at most, in the $60,000 range (Intel's median is $65,000). Yet even
non-techies know that the top talents in this field make more than
$100,000. And the vast majority of awards for innovation in the field
have gone to U.S.-born workers.
The industry lobbyists highlight some of the famous immigrant
entrepreneurs in the industry, such as Jerry Yang and Sergey Brin,
co-founders of Yahoo and Google. Yet neither of them immigrated to the
United States as an H-1B visa holder; both came to the United States as
minors with their parents. Thus they are irrelevant to the H-1B issue.
The lobbyists also like to cite Andy Grove, an early Intel employee,
yet he came to the United States as a refugee, not under employer
sponsorship.
More important, none of these firms has been pivotal to the industry
technologically. There are lots of good Web search programs. In fact,
Yahoo bought the one it uses, rather than developing its own. Rest
assured, we would all still be surfing the Web without Yahoo and
Google. And we would have the hardware to do it too, without Intel; IBM
could have chosen from many good chip vendors when it introduced the PC
in 1981. Indeed, no one firm has been crucial to the tech industry in
general.
Why, then, is Congress now poised to accede to the industry's demands
on H-1B visa quotas? As the saying goes, "Follow the money." As Sen.
Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said after Congress enacted the H-1B program
expansion in 2000, "There were, in fact, a whole lot of [members of
Congress] against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech
community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in
public." Meanwhile, a reasonable H-1B reform bill by New Jersey Rep.
Bill Pascrell is being ignored, not only by the Republicans but also by
his fellow Democrats.
You may have thought that November's election changed things, but they aren't changing that much after all.
Norman Matloff is a professor of computer science at UC Davis.
In October 2011, the Washington Post asked 1,000 adults if they would support an increase in visas to foreign workers with advanced degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 59% say they oppose such a plan. Of the respondents who say they lean Republican, 63% say they oppose such a plan.
Protect Jobs and Wages Support Tougher Enforcement - Tuesday, November 18, 2008
When asked about what governments should do to address illegal immigration, 83% of respondents supported stronger border controls, 74% supported cracking down on employers, and 68% supported deportation.
The German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2008
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which wants to reduce
immigration, said Brown's bill will end up hurting American workers of
all races and ethnic backgrounds.
"Why would you want to bring in 10,500 more foreign workers at a time
when we've got 20 million Americans who either can't find jobs or are
forced to take part-time jobs when they want to work full-time," Beck
said. "Brown's bill is about pandering. It's a form of pork-barreling.
Once one special interest gets their pork, the others will all be lined
up. In the meantime, Americans of every ethnicity are looking for a
job."
As long expected, a backlash to the Irish-specific visa has now arrived, with Roy Beck, president of the Washington-based anti-immigration group Numbers USA, telling the Boston Globe that the Irish are “basically upset because they don’t have the special privileges that they once had,” and should not be given favor ahead of other groups.
“They have to share those privileges with Latinos and Africans and Asians,” he said.
"By having lots of nationalities in there, we're trying to take
ethnicity off the table," said Roy Beck, the founder of
NumbersUSA. "We chose our name because we knew that too many
people on both sides of the issue got sidetracked on who
immigrants are."
Beck said that's what has scared politicians off in the past from
addressing the country's immigration levels, adding that the timing
of the ad was intended to encourage the GOP candidates to focus more
on jobs than they have in previous debates.
Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, a national organization that favors lowering immigration levels said of the marches: "The fact is when you are an illegal worker, it's not a very good time to be marching in the streets for jobs when 22 million Americans can't find full time jobs."
Tying the immigrant issue to the battle over bargaining rights here, he called "a pretty smart thing that will get people's interest, I guess."
Anti-illegal immigration activist Roy Beck, who leads NumbersUSA, blasted Obama on his commitment to Americans without jobs.
"Pres. Obama spent most of the speech talking about preventing U.S. jobs from going overseas to be done by foreign workers there, and then incongruously argued for increasing the number of foreign workers to take the scarce jobs we keep in the U.S," he said.
Beck also criticized Obama for failing to push for mandatory E-Verify for all American employers. E-Verify is a free, Internet-based federal program that allows employers to check the eligibility of employees to work in the United States.
By Cindy Carcamo -- Orange County (Calif.) Register
But any such shift would require solid Republican majorities in Congress and a cooperative White House, plus the ability to overcome opposition from some professional societies such as IEEE-USA and GOP-leaning grassroots that oppose much legal immigration. "I don't think [the GOP] will have a lot of success," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, which is trying to reduce legal immigration; it now totals about 1 million people annually.
Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, a group that advocates for strict limits on immigration, said strategists who urge a softer stance will be hard-pressed to find "any Republicans who want to stay in office who want to take their advice."
A more conciliatory approach, Mr. Beck said, would turn off independent voters, who tend to support more restrictive immigration policies, particularly at a time of high unemployment, and whose movements back to the GOP in recent months are likely to spur big gains for the party this November.
"This is why TPS was created," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA. "The problem is we have (had) three straight presidents who made a mockery of TPS. They turned it into PPS -- it's a permanent protected status."
Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, a group that favors immigration restrictions, said the visa is too often used to bring in average rather than top talent. "We don't advocate reducing the 65,000 cap," he said. "We just advocate increasing the criteria so H-1Bs are only used to hire really top quality programmers."
Immigration Enforcement Could Open Up Jobs For Unemployed U.S. Workers, Speakers Say
Quoted - Monday, November 23, 2009
Immigration is contributing to economic disparity by depressing the wages of U.S. workers, according to Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA. Beck told the forum that the best way to protect U.S. workers is to actively enforce immigration laws and reduce the number of visas and green cards issued to foreign nationals. "Immigration enforcement is about creating jobs for unemployed Americans," because "when a government action results in an illegal foreign worker leaving a job, an unemployed American gets to go back to work," Beck said.
Daily Labor Report -- 11/23/09
Immigration is contributing to economic disparity by depressing the wages of U.S. workers, according to Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA. Beck told the forum that the best way to protect U.S. workers is to actively enforce immigration laws and reduce the number of visas and green cards issued to foreign nationals. "Immigration enforcement is about creating jobs for unemployed Americans," because "when a government action results in an illegal foreign worker leaving a job, an unemployed American gets to go back to work," Beck said.
Beck recommended that lawmakers let temporary visas run out for the workers already in the United States so that "workers, tourists and students go home as they promised" and those jobs could then be filled by U.S. workers. In addition, he suggested the introduction of legislation to suspend the issuance of as many permanent work visas as possible during the recession. In addition, Beck advocated letting employers run their entire workforce, not just new hires, through E-Verify, the federal government's electronic employment verification program. Beck also favors making E-Verify a mandatory program for all employers.
H-1B guest worker visas are not a useful way to drive U.S. innovation, a new EPI paper finds. In Are foreign students the ‘best and brightest’? Data and implications for immigration policy, Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, discusses the H-1B program, which allows employers to temporarily hire foreign STEM workers.
H-1B visas are often described as a way to attract the “best and brightest” to American shores, but many employers use the H-1B program as a source of cheap, compliant labor.
Contrary to the claims of industry lobbyists, H-1B workers are no more distinguished than their U.S. peers. Instead, employers prefer to hire foreign workers over similarly qualified U.S. workers, because legal loopholes in how the “prevailing wage” is calculated let them save on labor costs.
By Norm Matloff -- EPI.org
H-1B guest worker visas are not a useful way to drive U.S. innovation, a new EPI paper finds. In Are foreign students the ‘best and brightest’? Data and implications for immigration policy, Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, discusses the H-1B program, which allows employers to temporarily hire foreign STEM workers.
H-1B visas are often described as a way to attract the “best and brightest” to American shores, but many employers use the H-1B program as a source of cheap, compliant labor.
Contrary to the claims of industry lobbyists, H-1B workers are no more distinguished than their U.S. peers. Instead, employers prefer to hire foreign workers over similarly qualified U.S. workers, because legal loopholes in how the “prevailing wage” is calculated let them save on labor costs. The H-1B visa also ties workers to their employer, effectively rendering them captive for the duration of their visa. The H-1B program does not encourage U.S. employers to hire outstanding talent or the best and brightest workers.
The AP reports that the home-improvement store Menards has had so much trouble staffing its store in booming Minot, N.D., that’s it’s going to hire people in its home base in Wisconsin and fly them to North Dakota and back each week. The starting wage will be $13 an hour, as opposed to the $7.25 minimum wage the firm pays elsewhere, and the workers will be put up in hotels and given meal vouchers.
In his recent op-ed Alex
Nowrasteh argues that we should increase our legal
immigration system and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in
order to bolster our sluggish economy (“Free markets require
increased legal immigration,” Wednesday). There is a consensus
among nonpartisan economists that low-skilled immigrants, both
legal and illegal, are a fiscal drain on taxpayers.
Recent Immigrants to Canada are a huge drain on the country's economy, a conservative think-tank said Thursday. Immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1987 and 2004 rreceived about $6,000 more in government services per person in 2005 than they paid taxes, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.
Although it seems like only yesterday, six months have passed
since last August when foreign-born student workers exposed the
Hershey Company's abuse of the State Department's Summer Work
Travel (SWT) program.
College students from Turkey, Moldova and China as well as other
nations came at their own expense to work at Hershey allegedly to
promote "lasting and meaningful relationships" with their American
peers.
In reality, SWT turned out to be just another cheap labor program
that allows multimillion dollar corporations to exploit
unsuspecting workers. The disappointed students who came to the
United States on J-1 visas spent last summer lifting 50 pound
pallets of candy bars, often on the night shift, for small money.
Counting adults 18-64 who were laid off in the recent
recession as well as single twenty-somethings still looking for jobs, the new
working-age poor represent nearly 3 out of 5 poor people — a switch from
the early 1970s when children made up the main impoverished group.
By HOPE YEN -- Associated Press
Working-age America is the new face of poverty.
Counting adults 18-64 who were laid off in the recent
recession as well as single twenty-somethings still looking for jobs, the new
working-age poor represent nearly 3 out of 5 poor people — a switch from
the early 1970s when children made up the main impoverished group.
While much of the shift in poverty is due to demographic
changes — Americans are having fewer children than before — the
now-weakened economy and limited government safety net for workers are heightening
the effect.
Canada should reduce immigration during deep economic recession, say the
authors of a detailed analysis of the earnings of immigrants over their
first 10 years in the country that also touts the benefits of selecting
newcomers based on earning potential.
By Adrian Humphreys -- National Post (Canada)
Canada should reduce immigration during deep economic recession, say the
authors of a detailed analysis of the earnings of immigrants over their
first 10 years in the country that also touts the benefits of selecting
newcomers based on earning potential.
Canada
should emphasize skill-assessed immigrants because their earning power
“consistently and substantially” out-performed other classes of
newcomers, the study says.
The unemployment situation across America is bad, no
doubt. But for African-Americans in some cities, this is not the great
recession. It’s the Great Depression.
Take Charlotte, N.C., for example. It is a jewel of the “new South.”
The largest financial center outside of New York City, it's the showcase
for next year’s Democratic National Convention. It was a land of hope
and opportunity for many blacks with a four-year college degree or
higher.
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, in
Charlotte, N.C., the unemployment rate for African-Americans is 19.2
percent. If you add in people who have given up looking for jobs, that
number exceeds 20 percent, which, according to economists Algernon
Austin and William Darity, has effectively mired blacks in a depression.
As for immigration, Obama told attendees at the event sponsored by the Univision television network that it is not appropriate to grant "temporary protected status" to undocumented workers. Obama said he cannot suspend deportations by executive order.
The president said deportation of criminals is up 70%, while deportation of non-criminals is down.
Education also came up as Obama told the crowd at a Washington high school that he is working for the DREAM Act, which would create a path to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants who seek college degrees.
Since November 2010, the unemployment rate has tumbled from 9.8% to 8.9% in February. That seems to signal a return to healthy job growth. But is it real?
While unemployment has fallen nearly a full percentage point, just 407,000 payroll jobs have been created — a mere 0.3% rise.
How can that be? Maybe it's because the real jobless rate — which includes those unemployed Americans so discouraged they've stopped looking — is higher than 8.9%. Much higher.
Testimony of Michael S. Teiterbaum on Availability of U.S. Tech Workers
Congressional Testimony - Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Vice President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Michael S. Teitelbaum, offered testimony to the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation discrediting the myth that there are not enough high-tech workers in the United States.
Testimony of Roy Beck, Author and Executive Director of NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Judiciary Commitee of the U.S. House of Representatives
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