Fortune 500 Lobby Tells Trump: Your Visa Worker Curbs May Cause Discrimination

Even brief and temporary curbs on the use of imported contract workers may cause discrimination against “our personnel based on country of birth,” according to a letter sent by Fortune 500 lobbyists to President Donald Trump.

The letter was sent to warn Trump as he pushes forward with plans announced on April 22 to review the various visa programs. The programs provide a growing army of foreign contract workers to Fortune 500 firms, despite the coronavirus crash that is causing mass unemployment among swing-voting U.S. graduates.

The letter, signed by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and many other companies, says:

We urge you to avoid outcomes, even for temporary periods, that restrict employment-authorization terms, conditions, or processing of L-1, H-1B, F-1, or H-4 [visa worker] nonimmigrants. Constraints on our human capital are likely to result in unintended consequences and may cause substantial economic uncertainty if we have to recalibrate our personnel based on country of birth.

Immigration reformers scoffed at the lobbyists’ hand-wringing.

“The ‘unintended consequences’ these cheap labor advocates fear if guest worker visas are curtailed are having to hire American workers at livable wages,” said Rosemary Jenks, government relations chief at NumbersUSA. Her group favors a national policy of lower immigration and higher wages

Livable wages are “a consequence we should not only support but demand,” she added.

“Every piece of data the government collects …. [show]  there are massive numbers of native-born Americans and legal immigrants already here not working,” said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

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Trump’s April 22 announcement is giving Trump another opportunity to fulfill his March 2016 campaign trail promise: “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

That promise helped Trump win many votes from swing-voting graduates. But Trump and his deputies have ignored that 2016 promise since his Inauguration day promise of “Hire American.”

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Fortune 500 companies use many visa programs to keep an army of roughly 1.3 million white-collar foreign employees in a wide variety of U.S. jobs, including many starter jobs in third-tier subcontractors. These foreign employees accept lower wages and tough conditions in hope of winning the deferred bonus of green cards and citizenship for themselves and their descendants.

Roughly 750,000 foreigners — mostly Indians — are imported via the white-collar H-1B program. {snip}

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The visa workers are edging out Americans as they fill up starter jobs, mid-career jobs, and increasingly, in executive jobs — despite the growing list of corporate failures caused by the U.S. executives’ preference for outsourcing their workforces.

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