Horowitz: With so many Americans hurting, Trump must cancel the H-1B visa lottery

Nothing demonstrates the darkness of the liberal agenda in the shutting down of America’s economy than the push for more foreign labor. If they are saying we need to spend trillions of dollars to help hurting Americans who are out of jobs, you’d think it would be a no-brainer to cancel foreign worker visas, not talk about increasing them.

This week, President Trump has an opportunity to draw a bold contrast on rebuilding the country with American labor. The H-1B visa program and its lawless sister program, Optional Practical Training (OPT) work permits, have gerrymandered Americans out of entry-level white-collar jobs – from programming and engineering to pharmacy and nursing. They are also responsible for creating a brain gain for countries like China at our expense, leading to the offshoring that is exacerbating our crisis in the medical supply chain. Now is the time for Trump to finally end these visas, and next week he has the perfect mechanism to do so.

Every year, the government holds an H-1B lottery on April 1, in which USCIS randomly selects 85,000 foreign visa applicants to take basic white-collar jobs from Americans. Along with those visa winners are their spouses, who are given H-4 visas. Through a lawless administrative loophole, every year roughly 50,000 of the spouses wind up also receiving employment authorization documents enabling them to compete with American workers.

With everything being canceled for Americans, isn’t it prudent to cancel the lottery to bring in more foreign workers? Even before the crisis, 71 percent of jobs in Silicon Valley went to foreign workers, and 74% of American STEM graduates overall failed to land jobs in STEM fields. “Let’s be clear – these workers were never needed, and the law has never required employers asking for white-collar contract workers to show that they couldn’t find U.S. workers,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies in an interview with CR. “Most of these workers are brought in because they are cheaper, not because of a labor shortage or skills gap. They have already directly displaced hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers over the years.”

Vaughan noted that now is the perfect time to end the racket. “Now, the case for them is even thinner, with forecasts of double-digit unemployment rates due to the response to the pandemic,” said Vaughan, who has been studying this issue for decades. “How can anyone argue with a straight face that we need [foreign] workers of any kind right now, with so many American businesses shutting down?”

Shockingly, page 64 of Nancy Pelosi’s 1,100-page pandemic panic bill contains a provision extending H-1B work permits for 100,000 foreign workers for three years. You read that right. The very same people who are now going overboard and mandating unconstitutional shutdowns of all businesses, even those that don’t engender public gatherings, are now replacing us with foreign workers. It’s rooted in the same perverted ideology as placing Americans under house arrest, but releasing criminals from prison.

The combination of these actions taken by the Left demonstrates that this is not being done out of prudence to contain the spread of an epidemic, but as a means of putting law-abiding American taxpayers and workers last at every turn.

Trump can end this racket by simply canceling the lottery this year and preventing the importation of 85,000 new foreign workers at a time when every job will matter to Americans. Moreover, he should cancel the unauthorized OPT program, which allows hundreds of thousands of foreign students who graduate in American universities to take American jobs without costing employers payroll taxes.

The need to further incentivize companies to hire Americans comes out of news reported by investigative journalist Paul Sperry last week that Wells Fargo and Bank of America are facing severe worker shortages. Why? Because India shut down its offices, and Indian workers don’t have the telecommuting capabilities that most Americans do. This problem will spread, because India just announced a nationwide lockdown for three weeks. Now would be a perfect time to cut off the foreign worker visa-to-outsourcing pipeline and rebuild these companies with American workers – and protect our supply chains to boot.

At the same time, the politicians are pushing for more H-2B low-skilled visas as well. DHS Secretary Chad Wolf announced a 35,000 expansion of H-2B visas on March 5, pursuant to unlimited authorization DHS was granted by Congress to raise the caps. But it’s not too late to pull them back. Republicans must shut off these visas in whatever bill they wind up passing the Senate.

One thing is clear: liberals can’t have it both ways. They can’t push endless redistribution of wealth during a potential great depression under the guise of helping workers and then bring in more foreign workers to take jobs. It’s time for Trump to call them out on it and use his authority to end the sellout of the American worker once and for all.