Guest views are now limited to 12 pages. If you get an "Error" message, just sign in! If you need to create an account, click here.

Jump to content
  • CRYPTO REWARDS!

    Full endorsement on this opportunity - but it's limited, so get in while you can!

Did you know Obama just took new executive action on immigration?


Recommended Posts

Did you know Obama just took new executive action on immigration?

 

BY BYRON YORK MARCH 25, 2015 | 6:56 PM

 

This week President Obama took unilateral executive action — again — to change the nation's immigration laws. Almost no one noticed.

 

Obama intends to make it easier to bring more foreign guest workers to the United States — likely at significant cost to workers already here — by loosening the rules governing something known as the L-1B visa program. Under the program, a multinational company with offices in the United States can move workers from abroad to live and work in the U.S. for as long as five years in what is known as an intra-company transfer. There are almost no rules concerning what those workers can be paid, so there is no barrier to a company firing American employees and bringing in workers from foreign facilities to replace them at much lower pay.

 

Companies who transfer workers to the U.S. through an L-1B visa have to show that those workers bring some sort of "specialized knowledge" to the job — that is, they have particular knowledge that would be hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere in the United States. Obama plans to broaden the definition of "specialized knowledge" so much that it could conceivably used to cover just about any foreign worker a company wants to bring here.

 

Companies transferring foreign workers to the U.S. have to make the case to an "adjudicator" from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It's not a terribly tough job; the definition of "specialized knowledge" was already pretty loose. In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigated L-1Bs and found that "the program allows for the transfer of workers with 'specialized knowledge,' but the term is so broadly defined that adjudicators believe they have little choice but to approve almost all petitions." Standards were tightened somewhat after the study, but now Obama wants to loosen them again.

 

Also, under Obama's new rules, Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicators will not be able to consider whether or not there are American workers available to do the job when determining whether to grant an L-1B visa. "A petitioner is not required to demonstrate the lack of readily available workers to perform the relevant duties in the United States," according to Obama's proposal.

 

In addition, the president seeks to lower the bar by which Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicators make an overall judgment on L-1B applications. An applicant, or petitioner, does not have to prove that there is a need for an L-1B worker. Instead, he just has to make a case that an adjudicator can decide is "probably" true. From the Obama rules: "Even if an officer has some doubt about a claim, the petitioner will have satisfied the standard of proof if it submits relevant, probative, and credible evidence…that leads to the conclusion that the claim is 'more likely than not' or 'probably' true."

 

Some experts believe the new Obama rules — promised when the president announced his unilateral immigration overhaul last November — will lead to more abuse of a program that is already being abused. The few Americans who follow such topics have probably heard of the H-1B visa program that brings foreign workers to the United States, but even fewer have heard of the L-1B. "The L-1B is much worse than the H-1B program in terms of its impacts on American workers and the American economy," says Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies the immigration system. "There are no wage standards — foreign workers can be paid home country wages, which is $6,000 a year for an IT worker in India. American workers can be displaced by L-1B workers. There are no recruitment requirements and no educational requirements (the L-1B worker doesn't even need a degree)."

 

That's not hyperbole; terrible abuses have actually taken place. This is from the opening statement by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at a hearing last week on immigration reform:

 

Just last year, a Fremont, California tech company, Electronics for Imaging, Inc., was found by the Department of Labor to have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act for having grossly underpaid a group of Indian nationals who the company had transferred on L-1 visas from its office in India to install a new computer system at the headquarters facility in Fremont. Specifically, the company flew eight L-1B workers from Bangalore, India to California and paid them only $1.21 per hour to work 120-hour weeks. The $1.21 hourly rate was equivalent to what the employees made in Indian rupees at their workplace in India. Importantly, though the company was found by the Department of Labor to have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act for paying the workers below [California's] minimum wage, it did not apparently violate any of the terms or conditions of the visa program because there is no prevailing wage requirement.

 

Hira points out that Electronics for Imaging "isn't some obscure company. It is a Silicon Valley-based publicly traded firm with more than half a billion dollars in revenue."

 

L-1B enforcements are pretty rare, Hira says, because the visa program is "subject to virtually no federal scrutiny or oversight. We have no idea how many L-1 visa holders are here at any time. The only reason the L-1B hasn't received any scrutiny from the press is because the government collects virtually no data on who is awarded an L-1B and who they work for."

 

Now, the president proposes to make L-1Bs easier to obtain. "I'm pleased to announce a new action I'm also taking to make it easier for global companies who are present here today to launch and invest in the U.S.," Obama said Monday at a gathering called the "SelectUSA Investment Summit" near Washington. "My administration is going to reform the L-1B visa category, which allows corporations to temporarily move workers from a foreign office to a U.S. office in a faster, simpler way."

 

By "reform," Obama means more L-1B visas, more easily obtained. To the scholars who have found that such visa programs lead to American workers being pushed out of their jobs in favor of cheaper foreign replacements, that's precisely the wrong thing to do. "The president has said explicitly that the goal of this policy is to make it easier for employers to get L-1Bs," says Ron Hira. "He should be tightening the standards, not loosening them."

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Markinsa...This aint right...It's just wrong...We need a leader that'll think more of American investor than foreign...We need to relies the world wants us out of their lives and we should oblige them hold heartily...Bring all our resources home and rebuild our country on an entirely new outlook on foreign aid...The USA has the worlds greatest economy and it's runnin' on a third of the cylinders...We need a Commander in Chief that's not afraid to make a line in the sand...The derogatory remark made toward our country on a consistent daily bases in my interaction show the animosity toward our country...I'll agree with anybody that our government aint worth two cense in a goat's a$$ but don't think I'll idly stand by and let anyone run down our country....      

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Waitresses in Saskatchewan lose jobs to foreign workers

Long-term employees fired and heartbroken
By Geoff Leo, CBC News Posted: Apr 18, 2014 3:17 PM CT Last Updated: Apr 22, 2014 8:58 AM CT

 

Sandy Nelson can't fight back the tears as she talks about losing her long-term serving job to temporary foreign workers.

"How can that be right, that they're not Canadians? I'm a Canadian," said Nelson, 58, who worked at Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza [previously called El Rancho] in Weyburn, Sask., for 28 years.

"How can it be that I'm the one out looking for a job and they're the ones that are still employed?"

In March, she and all the staff received letters from the three brothers who own the restaurant.

She says about half of the workers are Canadians. The other half are temporary foreign workers.

"Due to changes in operations we are currently discharging all of our staff," the letter says.

Some of them were subsequently hired back, including two waitresses who are temporary foreign workers.

But Nelson was permanently dismissed.

Since 2002, the federal government has allowed companies to hire temporary foreign workers for jobs they can't fill with Canadians.

Employers are supposed to advertise available positions in hopes of finding Canadian candidates. If no Canadians want the job, they can hire temporary foreign workers after applying for a Labour Market Opinion, a process intended to demonstrate there are no Canadian workers available to do the job.

In recent years, Brothers has brought in workers, including waitresses, through this process.

Now those government-approved temporary foreign workers have jobs, while Nelson continues to look for one.

Nelson says she was planning to retire at Brothers and had every reason to believe that would happen.

She says that at a meeting a few years back, "the three of them [brothers personnel] were sitting there and they all said as long as we own this place, you'll always have a job with us."

'It's hurtful to be put aside'

Shaunna Jennison-Yung said she was given the same promise.

She worked at the restaurant for 14 years, before she lost her job to temporary foreign workers.

"The jobs they have aren't jobs that nobody wanted. We wanted them," Jennison-Yung explained.

She said to make matters worse, as a supervisor, she was unwittingly training her replacements.

"It's hurtful to be put aside and have people that you trained to do your job now doing your job. It's heartbreaking is what it is."

Brothers restaurant responds

In a written statement to CBC's iTeam, the owners of Brothers acknowledged that the company participates in the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

"To the best of our information and belief the business is compliant with the program and any changes to operations will be structured to ensure compliance."

And they pointed out "employees are a valuable asset to any business."

 

"All obligations to any employee are taken seriously. This includes the protection of personal information."

Chris Worswick, a labour economist with Carleton University in Ottawa, said there is increasing anecdotal evidence employers prefer to hire temporary foreign workers.

"I don't see how they can legally choose to not hire Canadian workers who are qualified, who want to work at the advertised wage, and then turn around and ask the government for a temporary foreign worker. My understanding is they should be refused in that situation."

Worswick said temporary foreign workers are tied to the employer who brought them into the country and would have to leave Canada if they lost their jobs.

He said this gives Canadian employers confidence that foreign workers will be hard working and won't take days off.

"I have genuine concern that Canadian employers are distorting the program, sort of breaking the rules, I think explicit rules of the program, to their own advantage."

Brothers situation raises questions, expert says

The chair of Queen's University's School of Policy Studies in Kingston, Ont., said while she doesn't know the specifics of the Brothers situation, on the surface it raises some questions.

"It would certainly be against the spirit, the intent of the program and likely it would be against the letter of the regulations to bring people in and then subsequently displace people as a result of bringing those folks in," said Naomi Alboim.

She worries that Canadian companies are using the temporary foreign worker program before they've done their due diligence and thoroughly examined the Canadian labour market.

"We should only be using temporary foreign workers as the very, very, very last resort." Alboim explained.

She said Canadian companies should do some self-reflection and examine their own wages, working conditions and training programs before looking outside the country.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/waitresses-in-saskatchewan-lose-jobs-to-foreign-workers-1.2615157 

 

There is a video in this article I couldn't copy the link to bring it here.

 

Its bad enough when companies out source jobs to other countries now they bring them here and shove it in our faces. 

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.


  • Testing the Rocker Badge!

  • Live Exchange Rate

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.