Thread: Bill Hagerty Urges Bernie Sanders: Stand Against Democrats’ ‘Corporate Carve-Out for

Bill Hagerty Urges Bernie Sanders: Stand Against Democrats’ ‘Corporate Carve-Out for Unlimited’ Immigration



by JOHN BINDER 25 Oct 2021

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) is urging Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to oppose a “corporate carve-out for unlimited foreign labor” that Democrats have slipped into a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package.

As Breitbart News reported, provisions in Democrats’ reconciliation package would allow companies to import a limitless number of legal immigrants on employment-based green cards for at least a decade. Eventually, the green card-holders can apply for naturalized American citizenship.

Hagerty, in a letter obtained by Breitbart News, writes to Sanders urging him to stand against the “breathtaking immigration provisions that have long been the crown jewel of corporate lobbying.”

“While we obviously hold wildly different perspectives on the proposed reconciliation legislation and, more broadly, on economic, domestic, and foreign policy, there is one area in which we may be in agreement,” Hagerty writes:

For most of your career, you have been an outspoken critic of large-scale migration that displaces American workers — especially corporate-driven immigration policies — citing the substantial harm they inflict upon Americans’ job opportunities, wages, and employment conditions. [Emphasis added]

For example, in 2007, you said: “I think at a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring, over a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers.” I couldn’t agree more. [Emphasis added]

Therefore, you could imagine my shock in discovering that the “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill, which has been passed out of the applicable House committees, contains several breathtaking immigration provisions that have long been the crown jewel of corporate lobbying. [Emphasis added]

As Hagerty notes, the provisions providing limitless immigration for corporations are in addition to amnesty plans slipped into the reconciliation package, though the Senate Parliamentarian has twice said such provisions should not be included.

The nation’s “largest and most powerful corporations” would see the biggest boon from the limitless immigration provisions of the reconciliation package, Hagerty writes, allowing them to accumulate even more wealth and concentrated corporate power against a dwindling middle class.

Hagerty writes:

No corporate lobby has more consistently and vociferously lobbied for these uncapped foreign worker programs than the technology giants in Silicon Valley. These provisions are of, by, and for Big Tech, and the multi-multi-billionaires of Big Tech stand to benefit from them the most. [Emphasis added]

Their effect will be to make Big Tech more powerful and unaccountable and to concentrate even more power in hands of fewer people. [Emphasis added]

There’s already been considerable bipartisan consternation about the growing influence of Big Tech over every facet of American life, as well as the extraordinary financial power accumulated in recent years by a few Big Tech titans, relative to the gains enjoyed by middle-class workers. I find it astonishing, therefore, that the “Build Back Better” plan includes a provision that would so sever America’s working and middle class from the economic gains reaped by Big Tech CEOs. [Emphasis added]

These provisions will allow Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and numerous other technology companies across America to employ a functionally limitless supply of cheaper foreign labor in place of willing, able, and qualified American workers. It will also mean American workers currently employed by these companies will be far less likely to see wage gains or increased compensation because employers will have the leverage to easily replace them at less cost with workers imported from overseas. [Emphasis added]

Mentioned by Hagerty is Facebook’s recent settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) where the multi-billion-dollar corporation has been asked to pay a small fine for discriminating against qualified Americans by importing foreign visa workers to take high-earning tech jobs in the United States.

Facebook, for years, has imported thousands of foreign visa workers to take coveted U.S. tech jobs rather than hiring American graduates and professionals.

“Here we are with a bill that includes the foreign labor provisions that Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying arm, FWD.us, has aggressively pushed Congress to enact,” Hagerty writes:

I can think of nothing more dispiriting than telling an entire generation of young Americans, who are set to graduate from school and have had to endure the travails of the pandemic, that some of America’s best and highest-paying jobs aren’t available to them because Big Tech secured a corporate carve-out for unlimited foreign labor in the reconciliation bill. [Emphasis added]

Indeed, among those most disadvantaged by these overseas labor provisions are African-American, Hispanic, and female workers seeking to enter Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. While recently home in Tennessee, I spoke with a group in Memphis about the need to lift up our students into good-paying STEM jobs—jobs that create the opportunity to transform their lives and set them on a pathway for family-sustaining careers. It’s shameful that this legislation threatens to foreclose those opportunities to them. [Emphasis added]

The fact that this provision is never explained, justified, promoted, or mentioned in any of Democrats’ material designed to “sell” the bill to the American public strongly suggests the guilty conscience of those who crafted it — understanding that it is designed to benefit only the wealthiest Americans. [Emphasis added]

Hagerty asks Sanders to oppose the “enormous corporate-special-interest giveaway.”

“I am sure you must agree that the key to America’s greatness is the strength of its middle class and that a provision that will allow America’s richest billionaires to profit while blocking our most vulnerable citizens’ pathway to the American middle class must be rejected,” Hagerty writes.

“Therefore, I hope that you will join me in publicly opposing these unlimited green card provisions and demanding they be stripped out of the legislation before it comes to a vote in the House,” he continues.

Already, hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates are brought to the U.S. by corporations and businesses each year to take middle class American jobs. The massive inflow of foreign competition against middle class Americans comes as about 800,000 Americans graduate every year with four-year degrees in STEM fields.

American graduates’ odds of landing STEM jobs are dismal, mostly due to corporate offshoring and the nation’s allowing companies to import foreign visa workers to do the same work for less. Recent Census Bureau data, for example, found that although 37 percent of the college-educated U.S. workforce held STEM degrees, just 14 percent worked in STEM jobs.

Federal data shows that current legal immigration levels will drive the nation’s foreign-born population to an unprecedented 69 million by 2060. The data indicates that about 1-in-6 U.S. residents in less than four decades will have been born outside the U.S. if legal immigration levels are not reduced.

The nation’s foreign-born population stands at 44.5 million — a 108-year record high.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...d-immigration/

Ten year moratorium on ALL immigration and deport 30 million. Clean this mess up.

Illegal aliens, asylum liars, refugees, TPS have RUINED it for those waiting to come legally, paying the fees, get vetted, medical exams and will contribute to our country.

Now we want NO ONE to come here anymore!