Thread: Giving Away American Jobs Part 3

http://cbs4.com/iteam/investigation.job ... 39028.html

DeFede: Giving Away American Jobs, Part Three Reporting
Jim DeFede
E-mail MIAMI (CBS4) ―


U.S. Judiciary Committee Hearings On H2B Visa Program
Last year, Congress held hearings on the H2B visa program and what they heard surprised even the most jaded among them.

"What we found is that there is a need for some very serious reform of this program," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the H2B visa program. "Everything from abuses in recruitment to abuses in what people are paid, in some cases even close to slavery situations."

Since first reporting on the St. Regis construction site where foreign workers were being brought in to replace American sheet metal workers, the one question viewers ask: Is anyone in power listening?

"There is no way that we should be undercutting the American workforce by importing foreign workers who are being paid less than Americans," said Lofgren. "That's just ridiculous and we need to put a stop to that. If there is an American available to do a job then you shouldn't be giving a visa to a foreign worker."

But the victims of this program are not only the American workers who lost out on the job, but the foreign workers who are being exploited.

In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a study on the H2B visa program. They called their report: Close to Slavery.

"The employer decides if the worker gets to come to the United States in the first place," notes Mary Bauer, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project. "The employer decides if he gets to stay. The employer decides where he lives, what he earns, whether he is going to work at all, whether he is going to get paid. And the employee really has no way to assert his rights."

Bauer was among those who testified last year before Congress.

"This is a program that is really systemically flawed," she said. "It is not a question of a program that attracts a few bad apple employers. It is really a question that the structure of the program itself lends itself to abuse."

Our investigation of CYVSA, the company hiring the Mexican workers at the St. Regis, found signs of that as well. During interviews with six of the Mexican workers, we discovered that in addition to being paid less than half what an American would make they were also working longer hours.

The workers we spoke to also say the company was holding onto their passports and visas.

And most amazingly, they told us they signed contracts they couldn't read because they were written in English. The company, they said, simply told them where to sign.

We asked CYVSA to provide copies of those contracts as well as proof of what they were paying the workers and the company refused.

"For many years it was a tiny program that brought in small numbers of workers," Recalled Bauer. "Then in the late Nineties it really exploded as employers found out about it and began bringing in large number of workers and at one point the program grew to around 125,000 workers."

Today it is capped at 66,000.

CBS4 News asked the Labor Department for any information regarding audits or reviews of the program, but they were unable to produce any. Bauer said she is not surprised.

"Well what we've found is the Department of Labor has done almost nothing," she said. "They don't appear to keep statistics about this program separate from other types of wage and hour enforcement, but our experience in the field is that they have done really an appalling job of even enforcing the minimum wage for H2B workers."

Representative Lofgren said the Labor Department was more worried about protecting the interests of companies than workers

"To say it is a disappointment is to understate it," the congresswoman said. "They just completely dropped the ball and undercut the American workforce. I think it is quite shameful and I think it is going to change under the Obama Administration.

Bauer said the program needs to be overhauled and avoid pressure by some groups to expand it under the guise of immigration reform.

"This is not the model for comprehensive immigration reform," she said. "We heard that a lot during the Bush Administration, `O well, the current immigration system is broken we need a large scale guest worker program.' And what we have said is that that is not the answer. Look at the guest worker programs we already have in existence and what we see should give us pause."

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose district includes the St. Regis project, however, believes the visa program is necessary; it just needs to be reigned in.

"What we don't want is that we get so much examination into the program that they totally do away with it," Ros-Lehtinen said. "Because we do need some crucial workers under this visa to come. But this program was never intended to go around labor laws, to go around regulations, to go around wages and benefit packages and then give jobs to somebody else when an American can do the job."

Lofgren said she wanted to introduce a bill last year overhauling the program, but held it because she did not think she could get it through the Senate. Now she believes the time is right and she is expected to introduce legislation regarding H2B visas in the next few weeks. She believes it will make it through both the House and the Senate and be signed by the President.

In the meantime, the Southern Poverty Law Center is headed to court. It seems that on January 18, in one of his last acts in office, President Bush instituted new rules for the H2B visa program which actually make it easier for employers to bring in foreign workers.

And in that same order, the Bush Administration also redefined what a "temporary" worker means under the H2B program. Temporary used to be defined as any job that lasts ten months or less. The Bush Administration changed it to any job lasting three years or less.

We'll keep you posted.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Representative Lofgren said the Labor Department was more worried about protecting the interests of companies than workers

"To say it is a disappointment is to understate it," the congresswoman said. "They just completely dropped the ball and undercut the American workforce. I think it is quite shameful and I think it is going to change under the Obama Administration.


WHAT?

Zoe Lofgren is pro-illegal alien as they come and she has the brazen gall to sit there and talk about anyone undercutting the American workforce?

Or by "American workforce" is she just concerned that her beloved illegal aliens, already present in the US, are being cheated out of jobs?

God knows she is not speaking in defense of actual American citizens.



Lofgren said she wanted to introduce a bill last year overhauling the program, but held it because she did not think she could get it through the Senate. Now she believes the time is right and she is expected to introduce legislation regarding H2B visas in the next few weeks. She believes it will make it through both the House and the Senate and be signed by the President.


Well then.....we can count on even more jobs going to illegal aliens over American citizens.

Isn't obama wonderful, just the thing this country needs, when all of the special interests, and those acting on their behalf, are certain of success now that he's in the WH

Sooooo.....how much more of a chance are we supposed to give mr. messiah before it finally sinks in where he's taking this country?

Their should be a stoppage of all visa programs for two years at least to allow us to fix our unemployment then if we need more workers we come up with a plan to bring in what we need and keep track of everything to do with it.

There should be a Moratorium on Immigration until the last illegal alien leaves our country and the last unemployed American has a job.