Both the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) have noticed new regulations designed to protect foreign workers from the explosion of exploitation within the labor market. While the attempts to stop the exploitation should be applauded, the new regulations are properly understood as mere Band-Aids on deep wounds.
When it comes to debates over immigration, one of the common errors is distinguishing between aliens who enter legally as opposed to illegally. Often, we are told that legal immigration is beneficial, but illegal immigration is harmful. A recent Washington Times article highlights an extreme example of this by calling for admission of a million H-1B aliens while deporting the illegal alien population.
The CHIPS Act was hailed as bringing the vitally important semiconductor industry to the United States. Part of the benefit sold to taxpayers footing the bill on this $50 billion+ investment was that it would create jobs for Americans. While that sounds like a good bargain, the industries gaining tax credits and Federal grants have started singing the old “labor shortage” tune.
Enrique Balcazar, 37, and Elizabeth Balcazar, 21, operators of Balcazar Nature Harvesting, LLC (BNH), were sentenced in Federal court for using the H-2A agricultural visa program to import forced labor. Enrique received 40 months in prison along with fines, and his daughter received time served and fines. BNH was fined approximately $508,000 in restitution to 55 H-2A employees.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: The United States is suffering through a labor shortage. Our nation's captains of industry simply cannot find Americans with the grit and determination necessary to complete an honest day's work. Because of this alleged deficiency in the American workforce, our government must open the floodgates and import vast numbers of foreign workers to fill the gaps.
Mauritson Farms, a winery, settled with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) and 21 alien farmworkers for retaliation. The aliens had the audacity to complain to their boss about unfair wages and unsafe working conditions.
The latest data on "ghost job ads," unemployment, and catch-and-release show how easily replaceable some workers are in this market.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there were 171,000 fewer Information Technology (IT)-related jobs across companies in the United States in June. This caused a .3% increase in the IT unemployment rate in just one month.
The Democratic Party platform proclaims promises to "protect wildlife habitats and biodiversity...by conserving 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030." But anyone familiar with NumbersUSA's sprawl studies understands that promise is undercut by immigration-driven population growth.
It isn’t even Christmas in July yet, but the Biden Administration is making a list and checking it twice. Too bad they want to reward the naughty, not the nice. Reading the smoke signals, it appears Biden is shelving the Trump era rule tying H-1B visa allocation to the petitions offering the highest wages, rather than the current random lottery system.