Speaker Paul Ryan Squeezes 15,000 Extra H-2B Workers From DHS Chief John Kelly

John Kelly, the chief of America’s homeland defense, announced he would add another 15,000 to the country’s foreign worker rolls and print more H-2B visas to fill open slots in U.S. businesses.

The decision was part and parcel of Speaker Paul Ryan’s run-around of President Donald Trump’s border crack-downs.

Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, an organization that puts American interests at the forefront of U.S. border policy, said Kelly’s announcement comes as a threat to American workers who are already facing stagnant pay.

From Breitbart:

Kelly will print 15,000 additional H-2B visas for foreign blue-collar workers in 2017, according to a statement from the agency.
The 11.00 a.m. announcement said:

U.S. businesses in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary nonagricultural workers will be able to hire up to 15,000 additional temporary nonagricultural workers under the H-2B program …

“Congress gave me the opportunity to provide temporary relief to American businesses in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary workers,” said DHS Secretary John Kelly. “As a demonstration of the Administration’s commitment to supporting American businesses, DHS is providing this one-time increase to the congressionally set annual cap.”

The decision was forced by GOP leaders in Congress, and is “a betrayal of [President Donald] Trump’s campaign promise to deliver blue-collar jobs to Americans,” said one opponent of the wage-cutting H-2B visa program.

“Kelly’s decision to increase H-2B foreign workers threatens to reverse the trend of reports emerging around the country of employers working harder and raising pay to successfully recruit more unemployed Americans for lower-skilled jobs,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which favors pro-American immigration reforms. He added:

Congress gave Kelly the authority to put around 70,000 more of those jobs out of the reach of Americans; at least Kelly limited the damage to keeping just 15,000 more Americans out of the labor market. Nonetheless, this is yet another example of the Administration and Congress failing to keep the Trump campaign promise of putting American workers first.”

The concession by Kelly marks a win for the GOP legislators and allied business groups who oppose President Donald Trump’s popular “Buy American, Hire American” policy.

The additional inflow of foreign workers will reduce marketplace pressure on employers to develop labor-saving technology and to streamline their business practices. The extra outsourcing visas will also reduce the pressure on companies to offer marketplace wages to recruit new employees, will reduce their incentive to train unemployed Americans from rural and urban areas, and reduce their incentive to lobby state legislators for more vocational training programs.

Nationwide, companies already employ at least 1.5 million wage-cutting foreign outsourcing workers, most of whom work in white-collar jobs sought by American graduates.

Kelly’s closed-door decision does not allow for a full regulatory process, which would normally allow the public to provide comments against an expansion of the cheap-labor program.

The “lack of comment period is due to lateness of the legislation (May), [the] requirement to consult with [the Department of] Labor and [the] requirement to follow the law on federal rule making in order to provide additional seasonal worker visas before we get deeper into the summer season,” spokesman David Lapan told Breitbart News on Friday.

The agency statement insisted the extra foreign workers were only for threatened businesses which are “in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary nonagricultural workers.” But DHS will only require a statement — not evidence — of “irreparable harm” from executives, saying “to qualify for the additional visas, petitioners must attest, under penalty of perjury, that their business is likely to suffer irreparable harm if it cannot employ H-2B nonimmigrant workers during fiscal year (FY) 2017.”

At the same time, DHS is only going to require a statement, rather than cold, hard evidence, to show “irreparable harm.” And based simply on that statement, DHS officials will determine if the applicant is worthy for the visa.

Think that’s bad?

Well, DHS doesn’t even define what “irreparable harm” is. That means businesses can pretty much say whatever they want, and voila, their cheap labor can be federally approved.

Again, from Breitbart:

For example, companies [can claim they] suffer harm when they cannot use cheap seasonal H-2B workers to lower wages for full-time American employees, according to H-2B employers.

If wages for summer workers are forced up by market conditions, “this causes a ripple effect in all wages across the board,” Josh Denison, the hiring chief at Denison Landscaping in Oxon Hill, Md., complained to a reporter in the October 2015 issue of the industry magazine, Lawn & Landscaping. Denison continued:

If your $10.30 [an hour] basic domestic or H-2B laborer has an arbitrary wage increase, then you have to adjust wages across the board in a sliding scale to keep it fair and balanced. What happens to the $12 guy if the new guy is making more? And what happens to the $15 guy?

The program already delivers roughly 115,000 as foreign seasonal workers to Americans companies each year, mostly in the South and East. Many H-2B workers also work at winter resorts in Colorado.

So where’s Ryan’s footprint on this?

Only all over.

Breitbart explains:

In December 2015, House Speaker Paul Ryan inserted a difficult-to-read passage into the annual spending bill that greatly expanded the program. After the November 2016 election, however, House Speaker Paul Ryan reversed the expansion.

In May, however, Ryan and other legislators again expanded the H-2B program while hiding their plan from voters. They passed the buck to Kelly by adding language in the May budget supplemental which allows the DHS secretary to expand the H-2B program by up to 70,000 new workers each year. Lobbyists then pressured Kelly — and the legislators who control the DHS budget — to quickly expand the program via low-profile regulatory changes so that foreign workers can be hired and rushed into jobs later this summer, fall and winter.

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Chris Wolf

6 years ago

Paul Ryan deserves a participation trophy.
I’m sure he has a trophy room full of them.

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Chris Wolf

6 years ago

Paul Ryan has already sealed his fate as a tragic figure of epic proportions. And Mitch McConnell is a flat out criminal crony.
As a pair, the shame of the nation.

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Patti York

6 years ago

I am so SICK of this Ryan clown. He IS the swamp, nothing but trouble, ignoring the president’s plans and agenda and the very LOUD message from voters last November.

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Suresh

6 years ago

Corrupt RINO Paul Ryan is married to democrat and also supports muslim immigration since he gets paid well by saudi/qatar/OIC Lobbyists to further their Islamization of America Agenda.

Send them Free coupons for Iced coffee in one of these top 3 chains with muslim staff they make special Islamic spiced coffee http://bit.ly/2snziZ8

Left/Liberals/RINO’s Love it ! Psst …don’t send them the article link till they drink the Iced coffee. LOL !

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Mahou Shoujo

6 years ago

It is time to get rid of all democrats in the administration, even those who call themselves Republicans.

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Chris Wolf

6 years ago

A scare crow and a turkey gobbler.
A bean counter and a mob boss.
What a disgrace of leadership.

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Chris Wolf

6 years ago

Ryan was the ultimate responsibility behind those dozens and dozens of phony repeal votes over five years — what a fraud!
FRAUD!

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