Jobs

In my examination of Sen. Rubio’s (and the Gang of Eight) immigration bill, particularly its claim of modernizing our legal immigration system, today I take a look at guest worker program components of the bill.

The bill establishes a guest worker program for lower-skilled workers that ensures our future flow of workers is manageable, traceable, fair to American workers, and in line with our economy’s needs. The modernization of our visa programs will ensure people who want to come legally – and who our economy needs to come legally – can do so.

The Truth about the Rubio Amnesty

• Sen. Rubio’s bill is perfectly designed to displace millions more American workers and to continue to depress wages across the labor market. Having taken care of the “jobs Americans can’t do” by pumping up the number of H-1Bs, those “jobs Americans won’t do” will be filled by 200,000 new permanent “guest” workers 200,000 new permanent “guest” workers.
  
• A new W visa will be created for non-agricultural workers (with yet another separate visa category for Ag workers) in occupations that do not require a bachelor’s degree, excepting computer occupations. This includes 18 of the top 20 fastest growing occupations in the U.S., such as registered nurses, truck drivers, and landscaping workers.
• In March 2013, there were 6.4 million unemployed persons in the U.S. who have less than a bachelor’s degree.
• The construction industry has a special carve-out that allocates it at least 15,000 workers, and can go as high as 66,000. In March 2013, there were 1.2 million unemployed construction workers.
• In the “Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers” occupational category, which has a median hourly wage of $10.98 an hour, the number of guest workers can go up to 20,000 and can never go down. That one’s for you, Sen. Graham.
• Sen. Rubio’s “conservative” solution is to create another government bureaucracy, the “Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research,” under the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS). This commission would be staffed with “experts” who will determine just how acute a labor shortage there is in lesser-skilled occupations and recommend how many new guest workers should be admitted every year.
• Employers can apply for guest workers unless the unemployment rate in a designated area is above 8.5 percent. There is no metric to account for the fact that unemployment rates have been going down across the country because Americans are dropping out of the workforce, not because they are returning work.
• The new bureau can even declare a “shortage occupation” to allow employers to bring in workers even when unemployment is above 8.5%.
• Sen. Rubio has made much of the requirement that employers in shortage occupations that bring in workers have to pay a slightly higher wage, but that wage would only be slightly higher than the already depressed prevailing wage. Wages for workers without college degrees have been stagnant the 1970s.

There are currently about 700,000 foreign students studying at U.S. universities. Some of them are among the world’s best and brightest; many of them are not. A high percentage of foreign students remain in the United States after graduation to compete for jobs, despite the fact that this technically violates the terms of their student visa. That is yet another example of immigration law that has been circumvented administratively, in this case by the creation of Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows foreign graduates to work in the United States for up to 29 months while they apply for a guest worker program or a green card. Sen. Rubio’s bill will bring in hundreds of thousands more tech workers to add to an already overabundant supply of competing workers, at the same time it amnesties millions of low-skill illegal aliens and dramatically increases legal immigration. This is a solution only a D.C. politician could dream up; and one that can only be defended by misrepresentation.

After educating the world’s brightest and most innovative minds, we will no longer send them home to benefit competing economies like China and India; we will instead staple green cards to their diplomas. We will also expand the highly skilled H1-B visa program from 65,000 to 110,000 to fill jobs Americans can’t do. To accomplish the move to a more merit-based immigration system, we eliminate certain categories of family preferences that have allowed for chain migration and completely eliminate the diversity visa lottery, among other reforms.

• Sen. Rubio’s bill will bring in hundreds of thousands of tech workers to add to an already overabundant supply of competing workers, at the same time it amnesties millions of low-skill illegal aliens and dramatically increases legal immigration.
• Sen. Rubio is bragging about wanting to immediately raise the annual admissions of tech workers by 70 percent, and by almost 180 percent in a few years’ time.
• The endless refrain about foreign students being the “best and brightest” is simply not true, and it denigrates American students who truly are the most outstanding in the world. Native-born students consistently outperform their foreign counterparts at university and in the workplace.
• The percentage of those students who stay in the U.S. after graduation is already at an all-time high. Even though foreign students have to promise to return home after graduation in order to be eligible for a student (F-1) visa, many take advantage of the ever-expanding Optional Practical Training (OPT) which allows foreign graduates to work in the U.S. for up to 29 months while they apply for a guest worker program or a green card.
• There is absolutely no shortage of workers in tech fields. There are many more graduates who have degrees in tech fields every year than there are jobs created in the industry. In fact, American tech workers are being driven out of the field, replaced by foreign, often younger, and cheaper foreign workers.
• FAIR’s own study on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers points out that there is an oversupply of STEM graduates every year. Two-thirds of STEM graduates are not working in fields directly related to their degree because there are too few jobs available to them, with many jobs being given to foreign STEM graduates or H-1B guest workers.
• Sen. Rubio relies on talking points provided by Microsoft and other tech companies that have been thoroughly discredited by the Economic Policy Institute.
• The bill also expands and creates new avenues for admission, for example, allowing an unlimited number of visas for spouses and children of green card holders, and permitting immigrants to sponsor their adult children. Unmarried children of green card holders can be sponsored regardless of age, and married sons or daughters can be sponsored up to the age of 31. Of course, these married adult children will bring their spouses and own children with them.

In the last installment of my four-part series of some of the myths by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) about the Gang of Eight immigration bill, I take a look at how the Gang of Eight amnesty bill claims to protect American workers.

The Bill Will Protect American Workers

Rubio Speak

This bill protects American workers from unwarranted immigration for jobs that Americans are willing and able to do. For example, the proposal would not allow any work visas to be issued if the unemployment rate in a certain area is above 8.5 percent, which is the norm in many cities.

The Truth about Rubio Amnesty

• There are no jobs that Americans won’t do because there are no jobs that Americans aren’t already doing. Americans are reluctant to take certain jobs because wages for these jobs have remained stagnant for the last forty years while conditions for workers have worsened. Even so, 30 percent of farm laborers are U.S. citizens. According to a Center for Immigration Studies analysis, out of 472 occupations listed by the Census Bureau, native-born workers are the majority of workers in 466 of these occupations.
  
• 8.5 percent unemployment is extraordinarily high. Since January 1948, the unemployment rate in the U.S. has averaged 5.8 percent.
• What Sen. Rubio means is that the quota for guest workers will increase unless unemployment goes higher than 8.5 percent. With the passage of his bill, hundreds of thousands more guest workers will immediately begin to flood the labor market.
• The unemployment rate for construction workers in March 2013 was 14.7 percent. It has been above 8.5 percent for 61 out of the last 64 months. The unemployment rate for agricultural workers in March 2013 was 13.5 percent. How does Sen. Rubio explain the supposed worker shortage in these sectors? He simply relies on talking points supplied to him by industry and open borders lobbyists.