Public policy nonprofit releases report on CHIPS and Science Act, cautions against hiring guest workers to fill jobs

Founder’s Corner Dear All Anyone involved with policy is familiar with the aphorism, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Despite many opportunities over several years to significantly reform the H-1B visa program, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) have fallen victim to the above. Case in point is the “H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform ...

Founder’s Corner Dear All: The adage goes “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”  And based upon what we saw last week from the open border enthusiasts and their lackeys in the U.S. House of Representatives, this appears to be their battle cry. Stalled in their previous attempt to attach a host of immigration provisions to ...

Nothing stops the push by Congress for more immigration – not 9/11, not the mortgage meltdown and Wall Street crisis, not dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics job reports and not COVID-19. Despite the fact that about 1 million new lawful permanent residents get work authorization each year, that about 750,000 guest workers arrive annually in ...

In a late Friday afternoon announcement, the Department of Homeland Security expanded the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, STEM, Optional Practical Training, STEM OPT. Now, F-1 student visa OPT candidates can have degrees in bioenergy, general forestry, forest resources production and management, human-centered technology design, cloud computing, anthrozoology, climate science, earth systems science, economics and ...

Founder’s Corner Dear All: Edmund Burke, the 18th century Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher said “laws, like houses, lean on one another.” It’s a particularly apt description of the multiple laws that govern our immigration system and which were passed to ensure the health, safety, and prosperity of every American. Sadly, events over the past two weeks ...

During the peak days of coronavirus, Amazon delivery trucks were a familiar sight in neighborhoods across America. Amazon’s logo is a smiley face arrow pointing from “A” to “Z” indicating that the company offers customers products that range from those with names that begin with the letter “a” and all through to the letter “z,” ...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States, has decided "mandate" is a word people reject, so he wants to replace it with "requirement.” It’s as if he thinks U.S. citizens are too stupid to notice it’s a distinction without a difference. In my opinion, Dr. ...

Founder’s Corner Dear All: Last week, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a damning report that HCL Technologies, one of the largest Indian IT outsourcing firms, “appears to be stealing at least $95 million per year in wages from its H-1B employees.” HCL Technologies is the same company that placed H-1B workers at Disney, leading to U.S. tech worker ...

Economic Policy Institute analysts Ron Hira, a Howard University associate professor, and his colleague Daniel Costa, EPI’s director of U.S. immigration law, international labor migration, farm labor and a forced migration specialist, recently published their research study titled “New Evidence of Widespread Wage Theft in the H-1B Program.” The title’s key words are “new,” because ...

Only the most willfully obtuse on Capitol Hill would deny that the Biden administration’s neglect of wide-open borders might lead to a national security crisis. Estimates vary on how many foreign nationals from numerous countries have unlawfully crossed the U.S. borders, but the independent news agency Axios put the total at 160. Distance isn’t a deterrent. ...

  While a disbelieving nation is focused on the endless border crisis, more immigration sleight of hand is ongoing in Washington. Cloaked in Congress-speak, the troubling details of the Build Back Better Act (BBB) are being hidden from a bad-news weary public.   The National Border Patrol Council’s Rio Grande Valley chapter vice president Chris Cabrera told Sen. ...

The Department of Justice caught social media titan Facebook blatantly reserving jobs for, and then hiring, foreign-born H-1B visa workers. In December 2020, the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed a complaint against Facebook with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer. DOJ alleged that Facebook refused to ...

A George W. Bush federal judge appointee voided a Trump-era H-1B regulation that switched the visa allocation system from a random selection lottery to a process that prioritizes higher-wage jobs. By putting emphasis on higher wages, tech employers would, President Trump hoped, be less likely to hire cheaper, foreign-born workers, ...

Late Friday evening, the House Judiciary Committee unveiled the immigration provisions they’d like inserted into the 2022 budget reconciliation bill. It goes without saying that immigration reform has no place in a budget bill but that’s not stopping Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) from doing all he can to push through the ...

Amidst COVID-19 chaos and confusion, the new academic year has started. At some institutions, weekly COVID-19 testing for students, including those who are fully vaccinated, and mask requirements, regardless of vaccination status, are required indoors and outdoors. Faculty and staff members are subject to the same rigorous requirements. To help end COVID’s spread, a few universities ...

With a good bit of arm twisting and a bit of fanfare this week, the House passed in a 220-212 party-line vote a $3.5 trillion budget resolution and advanced a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in tandem. According to CNBC, the vote allows Democrats to write and approve a massive spending package without Republicans and ...

Dear All: As expected Congress is up to its eyeballs in spending bills, from the $3.5 trillion social spending bill to more modest ones that fund various departments and agencies. Notwithstanding these legislative train wrecks, some interesting developments occurred on the immigration front this week. Biden Administration Defends Trump’s H-1B Wage Rule In January 2021, former President Trump’s ...

Dear All, I’ll begin with a shout out to the twenty or so tech worker activists who protested in front of Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s San Jose office on July 11th. They chanted, carried banners, and spoke to the press thus reminding Lofgren, and other elected officials, that voters are not happy with the work they’re doing. ...

In a move consistent with the Biden administration’s walk back of former President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration actions and guidelines, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would not pursue time limits on student F-1 visas. Like virtually all of the dozens of visas available to foreign nationals through the federal government, the F-1 visa is ...

Dear All: I’ll begin by saying thank you to those who submitted statements to be read into the record for last week’s House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Immigration chaired by Silicon Valley’s sweetheart, Rep. Zoe Lofgren. The hearing titled “Oh, Canada! How Outdated US Immigration Policies Push Top Talent To Other Countries” was ultimately postponed to a ...

Dear All: I would like to begin by highlighting an article that was shared with me by one of our activists. The article revolves around an Indian IT staffing firm pleading guilty to H-1B fraud. Unsurprisingly, not a single American media outlet covered the story. You have to follow Indian media outlets to come across stories like ...

Dear All, The Biden administration continues to carry the water for the corporatocracy which is bad news for tech workers. Last week we reported on our Twitter feed that the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) will be delaying the implementation of the H-1B prevailing wage rule change until November 2022. The rule change crafted by the Trump ...

Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor announced an 18-month delay in the effective date of the final rule, “Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States,” mostly foreign nationals working on employment-based visas. The final rule, originally published in January 2021, will now become effective on November 14, ...

Dear All, Many of you may have learned that India has been hit quite hard with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. According to India’s health ministry data, the country’s tally has now surged past 21 million cases, boosted by a recent record 412,262 new infections. The number of people who have died due to COVID-19 in India ...

Dear All: Happy Friday! Well, not really, but a close friend cautioned me about what she sensed was a growing sense of pessimism on my part. I assured her that my pessimism was not only healthy, but a survival response in light of the reality that is the Biden administration and the globalist swarm of apparatchiks ...

Effective April 1, tech workers – most notably H-1Bs, F-1 visa holders that may be enrolled in Optional Practical Training work-study programs and seasonal hospitality workers – will once again be able to enter the U.S. to compete with, or displace, American workers.

Dear All: The information on this year’s H-1B visa lottery is beginning to trickle in. For the 2021 fiscal year, there were some 275,000 registrations, and it is rumored for the latest lottery that there have been more than 300,000. I say “rumored” because USCIS is mum on the numbers. At this time last year, we ...

Dear All: With so much attention focused on the U.S. southern border and the flood of migrants racing to get across before the music stops on the Biden administration’s immigration policy snafu, it was easy to overlook the news coming out of Intel Corporation. Earlier this week, Intel announced “significant manufacturing expansion plans, starting with an estimated ...

Dear All: Earlier this week, the deadline passed for filing comments on the H-1B visa rule that prioritizes selection based on HIGHEST wages. The rule change was slated to become effective on Jan. 8 but was delayed by the administration until December. DHS opened up the rule change to public comment. The rule would have eliminated the ...

As is too frequently the case, immigration, and specifically President Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, is the focal point of the ongoing lopsided battle of the elite versus the working classes.