New immigration war: Cheap foreign labor replacing Americans
By Paul Bedard | May 8, 2015 | 1:21 pm
The Labor Department is being urged to investigate a California utility company's use of imported cheap labor to replace higher-paid U.S. workers, a possible abuse of a visa program aimed at filling jobs Americans don't want or can't do.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers charged that Southern California Edison is using the H-1B Visa program to replace American IT workers making between $80,000-$160,000 with workers from India paid a top rate of $71,000.
The utility recently shifted to using outsourcing firms that hire the foreigners, claiming it would help it provide customers with better service.
That and other so-called visa abuse has caught the attention of Senate Republican and Democrat leaders. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recently slapped the practice in a joint statement.
"Congress has a responsibility to ensure that the law does not permit employers to abuse our visa programs to undercut domestic wages and workers," said Durbin and Sessions in a joint statement.
It is just another immigration issue being pushed into the political arena stirred this week by Hillary Clinton when she demanded a path to citizenship for some 12 million illegals.
It also adds to the problem President Obama is facing from labor unions, already upset with his planned trade deals in Asia.
"The H-1B Visa program was designed with one thing in mind," said IBEW President Edwin D. Hill. "To bring in foreign workers to do jobs Americans could not, not to slash wages and kill good-paying American jobs. This is a clear and blatant abuse of the system."
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