GOP Senate Betrays Trump Voters, Passes “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act” By Unanimous Consent
The Senate totally controlled by the GOP just betrayed one of Trump’s main promises to his voters – to protect the American worker – and passed the “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act” by unanimous consent.
This is a tough one as we want and need immigrants, especially highly skilled ones, to come here but everyone still remembers the Disney horror story where American workers had to train their foreign replacements. Does this bill guarantee that that will never happen again?
Rick Scott took a bow for holding up the bill saying this before he caved today, “While I appreciate my colleagues’ work on the “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act” it is a piece-meal attempt to address the immigration crisis. The bill aims to fix the employment-based (EB) visa backlog by eliminating the numerical per-country caps. However, it would do so at the expense of American workers, highly skilled immigrants, workers from Latin America and Europe, as well as Florida’s most important industries.”
From Immigration Forum:
July 9, 2019: Senator Lee introduced S.386 in the Senate as an identical companion to H.R. 1044, which passed in the House convincingly the following day. The bill would:
Remove per-country caps for EB green card categories. This would equalize the green card backlog, which is faced almost exclusively by Indian and Chinese applicants, some of whom must wait decades after their petitions are accepted. The bill would also raise per country caps for family based petitions from 7% to 15%.
Establish a transition period of three years. The first year after enactment, 15% of EB-2 and EB-3 visas would be reserved for countries not affected by the backlog, or so-called “Rest of World” (ROW) applicants. In years two and three, 10% of EB-2 and EB-3 visas would be reserved for ROW applicants. After year four, USCIS would distribute all visas on a first come, first served basis.
Institute a “do no harm” provision, which would ensure that all applicants who have already petitioned for a green card will be able to obtain status as soon or sooner than they would have had the bill not gone into effect. An Emory University immigration law professor estimated that this provision would protect as many as 150,000 ROW applicants.
Did you know that @SenMikeLee's S. 386, which he is trying to sneak through today, is co-sponsored by Kamala Harris?
— Cerno (@Cernovich) December 2, 2020
And would be a huge giveaway to Big Tech as it allows them to import more labor, so they can lower wages?
Free money for Big Tech, that's what Mike Lee is about. https://t.co/zXbWFfNeH6
Breaking: Sen. Mike Lee has passed HR1044 w/Lee Amendments without any objections. pic.twitter.com/QchrXPicNp
— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) December 2, 2020