Breitbart:
There is no justification for importing more low-skilled foreign laborers, a new study shows, despite efforts by the Republican establishment to do just that.
Every year, 66,000 foreign guest workers are brought to the United States on the H-2B to take seasonal jobs in blue-collar industries. Due to pressure from the big business lobby and the Republican establishment, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly has increased the cap by another 15,000 foreign guest workers.
A study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), one of the few organizations that compiles data on the H-2B visa and its impact on American wages and unemployment, found that there were 136,000 H-2B foreign workers in the U.S. in Fiscal Year 2016, noting that an increase is not necessary:
And this-
Breitbart:
The majority of low-skilled, foreign laborers arrive states like Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Colorado, according to a new study.
Every year, 66,000 foreign guest workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-2B to take seasonal jobs in blue-collar positions. In a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the H-2B visa-holders are shown to take the largest amount of jobs in Texas, where blue-collar employers asked for 18,002 foreign workers in 2016 alone.
Florida employers asked for the second-highest number, requesting nearly 8,000 H-2B workers in 2016. In Louisiana, employers asked for almost 4,500, while Colorado employers asked for more than 6,000.
Despite claims of labor shortages for blue-collar workers in these states, the average wages for the H-2B workers remain below $14 an hour. This, according to CIS researchers, depicts a job market that is not suffering from labor shortages, but instead suffering from an over-saturation of help where wages remain stagnant or decrease.
Let me get this straight. They have just now concluded that importing poverty is a lose-lose?
God help us.
There’s no reason to import more high skilled H1-B visa workers either. I have to go begging for contract work here and there because of all the cheap foreign engineers in the US.
The H1-B visa program ought to be cancelled altogether. It can be replaced with a smaller, far more targeted program for particualr skills that really are lacking. As for the general labour, it suits big business to have a excess of labour to keep the labour costs down. Screw that. Let the American or Canadian consumer pay a few more cents for lettuce, apples, avocados or whatever and they’ll be happy to when they know that it’s going to a citizen whose not sending most of what they earn out of the country. Believe it or not, I am a FreeTrader but at some point you need to protect yourselves and your citizens.
A company from eastern Europe or south America puts together a group of people with all the credentials to get into the US and then “sells” this package to large tourist attractions, Centerra, THE vendor for the National Park Service, is a big customer of foreign workers. It just saves them a lot of time because you don’t have to actually go out and advertise and interview workers. Sure they have some American workers but all the gaps are filled through the foreign worker program. A lot of seasonal (summer) workers. One of the problems with labor in the tourism industry is that high school and colleges typically start two weeks before labor day and end two weeks after memorial day. This makes it almost impossible to hire students from the US. When most of us went to school the school year started after labor day and ended before memorial day. In addition as the population ages the shoulder seasons of summer travel are much busier so you usually need a full staff into the end of September. Most adults don’t want a job that only works 4 months of the year and the remote location of many National Parks makes commuting difficult.
Not trying to cover for these folks, because it can be done without the visa program, just pointing out some issues that have arisen in the last 30 years.
When you answer to the Chamber of Commerce thats what you do.
Chamber of Commerce are not our friends.
@Frank July 19, 2017 at 3:22 pm
You haven’t described a problem of capability, nor capacity, but purely of cost. As seen in remote but lucrative construction projects, if you’re willing to pay more than they can make “at home”, people will “camp” near site until the job is done. A location so remote that you’d have to leave home a month before the job starts, and have to take another month to get back, but pays 50% to 100% for the four (six) months than you’d gross working the full year an easy commute from home, will be turning down hugely qualified current citizens (I’m hesitant to say locals, when the locale is so remote)? Non-students, north of the freeze line, economically trapped in an urban(ish) zoo, being offered the chance to work a summer in the woods (on the seashore, even being bitten by other people’s children while wearing a costume in a theme park) to pocket more than they’d make working the full year in a Walmart (if they can get hired)? Then they can hunker down for the winter on their savings. Those jobs are going empty?