Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American”Townhall, Apr 19, Andy Schlafly
It is not enough to “buy American.” It is also important to “hire American,” which means curtailing corporate abuse of the H-1B visa program that gives our good jobs to foreigners.
President Donald Trump traveled to Wisconsin on Tuesday to deliver on his campaign pledge to limit the H-1B visa program that allows employers to bring in lower-cost foreign labor to fill American jobs. President Trump’s new Executive Order to “Buy American, Hire American” starts to roll back the failed policies of his predecessors, which has cost American workers attractive jobs and has driven down wages for everyone.
Despite unemployment rates at or below 5 percent for nearly two years, wages for Americans are actually declining when adjusted for inflation. The average American’s paycheck is less than what it was last year, after inflation is factored in, and many are choosing not to work due to a lack of good-paying jobs, particularly in engineering and manufacturing.
Many engineering jobs have been going to foreigners under the H-1B visa program, which allows corporations to bring in tens of thousands of foreign workers annually to work for less, thereby driving down the wages of all Americans. While there is an official cap to this program of “only” 85,000 workers per year, the law has loopholes that allow employers to ignore the cap and replace many tens of thousands of additional American workers with foreigners.
Phyllis Schlafly rightly criticized the H-1B program beginning more than 15 years ago. “Employers want aliens with H-1B visas not only because they can pay them less than U.S. technicians, but especially because the H-1B visas lock them into sticking with the sponsoring employer and prevent them from job-hopping for better pay as Americans do” she observed in 2001.
“Why is it taking you five years to get through college?” Phyllis asked a student attending one of her college speeches, of which she gave many hundreds. “Because I changed my major from computer science to accounting after I discovered there are almost no jobs available for computer majors,” the student responded.
The misuse of the H-1B visa program has extended even to Walt Disney World, which has reportedly used it to replace information technology American workers with foreign ones. To add insult to injury, often the laid-off American workers are even told to train their foreign replacements.
More:
https://townhall.com/columnists/andyschlafly/2017/04/19/trumps-buy-american-hire-american-n2314971?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
