Republicans Slip Massive Foreign Worker Expansion into DHS Funding Bill

House Republicans have slipped a massive foreign worker expansion into their Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill {snip}

After markups and hearings, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee approved the DHS spending bill which would blow the lid off blue-collar migration caps to the United States, spurring an influx of foreign visa workers in the labor market with whom working class Americans would have to compete for jobs.

“Who represents the working class? This bill suggests it’s not necessarily Republicans,” Jeremy Beck of NumbersUSA told Breitbart News.

Specifically, the $91.5 billion funding measure would loosen H-2A visa rules so that more industries related to the agricultural sector could import foreign workers and rewrites the program so that jobs do not have to be seasonal or temporary.

The H-2A visa program, as currently implemented, allows U.S. farms to annually outsource an unlimited number of American agricultural jobs to foreign workers, who can extend their stay for up to three years.

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In addition, the DHS spending bill includes an expansion of the H-2B visa program which allows U.S. employers to import about 66,000 foreign workers for seasonal non-agricultural jobs in industries like construction, landscaping, hospitality, and food services, among others.

The provision included in the bill, though, ensures that foreign workers who arrived in the U.S. on H-2B visas in the prior three years would not count against the annual cap. Beck estimates that the provision could see at least 200,000 additional foreign H-2B visa workers in the labor market.

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Expanding the H-2A and H-2B visa programs flies in the face of House Republicans’ recent efforts to dramatically cut down unfair foreign workforce competition against working class Americans {snip}

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“That’s what makes this so deflating … it’s still about displacing American workers in favor of exploitable foreign workers,” Beck said. “For all the good that H.R. 2 would do, this would take all the wind out of that sail.”