Republican Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) just passed a bill through the Senate that sold out the American worker.
President Trump won the election promising to curb the outsourcing of American jobs. Mike Lee is doing the exact opposite.
“They’re going to turn millions of white-collar people into blue-collar people,” said Jay Palmer, a civil-rights activist working against human trafficking and the corporate displacement of Americans.
The bill will affect “doctors, accounting, insurance people, teachers, graphics designers, pharmacists … [denies] college students from ever having an opportunity to get meaningful jobs, it floods the market, draws down wages, and makes people dependent on big government,” he said.
Lee’s S.386 bill helps Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 firms annually trade green cards to 140,000 mid-skilled foreign workers.
The bill is designed to help Fortune 500 companies reward their imported workforce of roughly 400,000 foreign workers who are waiting for green cards in exchange for taking jobs from Americans years ago.
Current rules only permit 70,000 green cards to foreign workers per year. But, Lee has bumped that up to a maximum of 140,000 cards a year.
The ten-fold increase will allow US companies to hire lower-wage graduates from countries like India by using the uncapped Occupation Practical Training work permit program.
During a pandemic causing record unemployed, Senator Lee squeaks a bill through that lower wages and take jobs from Americans.
What’s even a harder pill to swallow is how he got it through.
Lee used a tactic known as the “Unanimous Consent” process to pass the bill without any hearing or floor debate. It’s usually used for bills that are uncontroversial and it allows a bill to pass if no other Senator objects.
Earlier this year Lee’s bill was blocked by Senator David Perdue who is running for reelection in the Georgia runoff, Rand Paul, and Senator Rick Scott. Each time, Lee negotiated a deal to appease the objecting senator.
Not one Senator object from either party objected.
Ironically, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was giving a floor speech blaming the Trump administrant for not protecting American workers in meatpacking plants during the pandemic. Brown could have protected the American worker from Lee’s bill, instead, he stayed silent.
There is hope that McConnell will very quietly suspend the procedure altogether. However, most feel if that happens the bill will be hidden in the new coronavirus relief package.
Written by – December 3, 2020
