No Santa for American Workers; Congress Drafting Legislation to Open Foreign-Born Floodgates

By Joe Guzzardi
December 19, 2011

Between now and Election Day 2012, candidates for every national, state and local office will preach about restoring jobs. The boldest will promise that if elected, he or she will create jobs for the beleaguered 22 million unemployed Americans. Even the most uninformed voter knows that these are empty words. The nation cannot even generate enough jobs to keep up with population growth, let alone get ahead.

California, for instance, would need to create 1.8 million jobs to stay even, according to figures crunched by CNN Money’s Economic Policy Institute. That’s 11.2 percent more positions to fill than there are available. Only North Dakota is spared from the inverse relationship between jobs and population growth. With the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, 3.2 percent, North Dakota generated 18,000 more jobs than required to meet the state’s expanding labor force.

Despite all the jobs rhetoric that we’ll hear during the next 11 months, Congress is aggressively pursuing a bipartisan American jobs destruction policy that is staggering in its magnitude.

Earlier this month the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed (389-15) the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act that would end per-country caps on worker-based immigration visas like the H-1B. H.R. 3012 would eliminate the current law that limits employment-based visas at any one country to 7 percent of the total number of such visas given out.

In its analysis of the bill, the Associated Press described the legislation as “beneficial to high-skilled Indian and Chinese residents seeking to stay in the United States.” No mention was made of the unemployed American workers it will displace.

To add insult to injury, Representative Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) will soon introduce the BRAIN Act, short for Bringing and Retaining Accomplished Innovators for the Nation. The bill would help secure green cards for foreigners who earn advanced degrees from accredited American universities and become employed in the fields of science, technology, engineering or math—what’s known as STEM positions.

Griffin’s legislation is problematic on several levels. In the first place, foreign-born enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities is at an all time high. As more enroll, more graduate. If a green card becomes a function of their diploma, then that means even fewer jobs for Americans.

Griffin, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, claims puzzlement about why anyone would want to send these graduates back to their native countries. The explanation is simple: America first. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics U-6 unemployment rate at 16 percent, adding more competition for the few jobs that might open up doesn’t make sense. As it already stands, corporations are hiring foreign-born workers at a record pace, according to Business Insider magazine.

Most important, despite loud cries from Capitol Hill and corporate America bemoaning alleged worker shortages, ample evidence exists that the reverse is true. Michael Teitelbaum, senior advisor to the Sloan Foundation which specializes in American science and technology education, has testified to the House Committee on Technology and Innovation that a surplus of American STEM workers is available.

Similarly another non-partisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Urban Institute, concluded in its report that the "United States’ education system produces a supply of qualified [science and engineering] graduates in much greater numbers than jobs available.”

Coming to grips with the harsh reality that Congress actively legislates against the best interests of American citizens is unpleasant. But the push for more foreign-born workers in this relentlessly bad economy proves that, sadly, Americans don’t count for much anymore.

Joe Guzzardi is a Senior Writing Fellow at Californians for Population Stabilization. His columns have been syndicated since 1986. Contact him at [email protected]