National security is becoming a part of the lobbying effort of Fortune 500 business groups to recruit more foreign tech professionals to fill a variety of jobs.
The organizations claim they require foreign workers to manage an upcoming generation of chip-making factories that are funded by the government in the face of increasing threats from China. Their immigration legislation is as part of the House's America COMPETES Act, which is being merged with an Senate legislation that does not contain a provision for migration.
“Immigration is becoming a national security issue,” Remco Zwetsloot from the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies spoke at an audience on June 1.
“One of the central lessons of the Cold War was that [migration] is an advantage,” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) told Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin. “I just hope we choose the same strategy that won the Cold War,” declared Malinoskwi. The congressman is seeking to speed up the flow of Hong Kong residents.
“It's offensive for someone to say that Americans cannot defend our own nation,” replied Rosemary Jenks, government relations director at NumbersUSA. “We have always had plenty of hardworking patriotic men and women serve in our military.” She added:
“There are ongoing prosecutions of Chinese citizens who stole our technology. Should we put anyone from outside the country in positions where they could do this? …It's the reason people aren't able to trust Zoom. We've seen Chinese cut into Zoom calls.”
“The “underpinnings of [national security] are individuals and communities that are healthy, accumulating wealth, and are contributing to society — that's the virtuous circle,” replied Kevin Lynn, “founder of U.S. Tech Workers. He also said:
The vicious cycle begins the moment we cease investing into American residents … and we're now seeing the decline of national security as Americans are being replaced by foreigners who don't understand their obligations to the nation.”
“National security” is a theme that is being promoted in the context of the growing GOP resistance to Fortune 500 giveaways, from lawmakers like Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Todd Young (R-IN).
The GOP legislators oppose the migration program in part due to the fact that it allows investors to hire foreign workers to fill white collar jobs, which would otherwise be available to Midwest professionals and their families.
The section 80303 in the House bill will permit an array of foreign students to obtain green cards and be employed in a wide assortment of white-collar jobs across America.
The gateway will open U.S. jobs for anyone who has a standard master's degree that is one year old, states the House bill, “in a program of study involving science, technology, engineering, or mathematics … from a foreign institution if such degree is the equivalent to a degree issued by a qualified United States research institution.”
Acceptable “program of study” includes:
…agricultural sciences, natural resources, and conservation computers and other information science and support services engineering, biology and biomedical sciences, math and statistics, physical sciences, military technology, and related health and medical professions programs, medical residency and fellowship programs, or the general group subsets in accounting, related service as well as taxation.
The huge flow of immigrants would allow executives of Fortune 500 companies and smaller firms to fill job openings with affluent, low-wage foreign graduates — much the same way farms today employ illegal immigrants on street corners to do field work.
Numerous reports highlight the increasing corporate favoritism towards foreign tech workers as well as the continuing cuts to U.S. professionals. The New York Post reported on May 31, 2022:
Sixty-six tech companies handed out an astounding 16,800 pink slips during the month. That's more than 13600 layoffs in 52 companies in the initial four months in 2022 — and also the largest number of employees to be axed within a single month, in the month of May, as per the tech jobs monitoring site layoffs.
“Large tech firms including Facebook parent Meta and Twitter have both frozen hiring altogether for some departments, while other companies including Microsoft, Snap, Uber, Salesforce, Instacart, and Coinbase have slowed hiring,” the New York Post added.
Many of the tech companies that are owned by investors are currently dominated by Indian-born management and executives. Google, for instance, it is managed by an Indian ex-visa worker and has an estimated 8,000 “South Asians” — mostly Indians, employed by the company, as per the article in June about the industry's discrimination against Indians of origin.
The replacement of free-speech American professionals by indentured foreign workers allows executives to ignore crucial civic concerns including privacy, security, and longevity of high-tech infrastructure to focus on lower costs and increased price of stock. The resultant damage was revealed through losses at Intel, Boeing, and Theranos.
The replacement process has been ongoing for many years, and a 2021 report from the Census Bureau showed that a majority of the trained American professionals are not employed in tech-related jobs. “We have tech workers and software programmers who are delivering pizza — which is crazy,” Jenks said.
The accessibility to foreign labor also eases the pressure on the federal government and companies to educate millions of young Americans. The report published on May 26 in Politico reported that “the U.S. spent just 0.03 percent of its GDP on worker training … That's less than a third of what OECD nations spent on average, or 0.10 percent.”
While the deputies of President Joe Biden are quietly expanding the infamous federal pipeline of low-cost and legal visa workers.
GOP, as well as Democratic legislators, are aware of this sly replacement of the American professional class, as said by Jenks:
“They're aware, and they believe it's okay … They're happy about it since the harm isn't being made clear to them. What's being pushed in their faces are the demands of employers. If the demands of employers are fulfilled and the money is being made, that's the only thing that matters to our political class.”
“Some of the [legislators] definitely are malevolent,” he said.
I am of the opinion that there are way more elites and wealthy elites who are completely disdainful of the majority of America and even actual disdain … These people believe that Americans are not worth anything, and regardless of what happens, they are entitled to the consequences … It's a shame. I do not believe they plan the outcome — I simply believe that they are indifferent about what happens to Americans.
Republicans and Democrats “choose to turn a blind eye because the tech lobbyists, all the industries — whether they're finance or health care — have become reliant on a pipeline of cheap and exploitable foreign labor,” Lynn said.
However, the lobbyists and investors are also aware that their migration demands are extremely unpopular. “I think it's very hard politically to imagine a standalone bill like this,” Zwetsloot spoke at a conference on June 1 which was hosted by the American Action Forum. He said:
That's why I think that people are trying to include it as a part of larger bills [that might be] more appealing to legislators who may privately think “I actually support these provision, I think they're very important, but politically, it is very hard for me to support something like this … but it was part of a broader package, I think I can.”
The technique of sneaking around has for a long time been employed by investors who inform Congress that they require only the help of a few “top tier” specialists, however, they then utilize the rules for migration to bring in thousands of ordinary foreigners to fill entry-level positions through companies like the Fortune 500 and their subcontractors.
For instance, former Google Chief Eric Schmidt is pushing for the House legislation that allows for the easy admission of holders of master's degrees from other countries. However, in a June editorial published in Barron's publication, Schmidt said it was the “ability to attract and retain top-tier talent from around the world is the backbone of a trifecta where the best talent comes to the U.S., to work at the best institutions on the most cutting-edge intellectual property.”
Other advocates for migration are working to raise the stakes.
“It's a debate between those who think our openness as a democratic society is an advantage in the struggle with autocracies or a disadvantage,” Malinowski stated to the Post.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising cyberattacks have increased concerns over high-tech threats to U.S. national security, especially cybersecurity,” stated the statement issued on June 1, by the American Action Forum, a business-focused advocacy D.C. group. The provision for migration of the COMPETES Act “could provide [the Department of Defense] with enough highly-skilled [foreign] workers to support current STEM hiring rates for the next three years,” stated the report, that was written by the American Action Forum's president, Douglas Hootz-Eakin.
Lobbyists' message of national security is being promoted through Jeff Bezos' Washington Post.
The House legislation will “expand visas for applicants with advanced STEM degrees from any country [but] the Senate version has none of these provisions,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported on June 2. “Republicans' excessive fear of immigration should not waste a strategic opportunity for the United States to strengthen itself and weaken its rivals at the same time.”
Foreigners are needed by the military in the foxholes of battlefields, according to an op-ed published on May 25 from the Washington Post, written by Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer and Democrat:
As per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even if they were interested in joining, 70 percent of the American youths are unable to meet the military standards. One in four is overweight. Some people do not fulfill the requirements for education to be a part of a 21st-century military or have mental health issues or criminal or drug-related history.
She added:
Our lawmakers can boldly tackle the need to reform the U.S. immigration system, from asylum procedures to refugee vetting to the legalization of dreamers and agricultural workers in order to make it simpler for immigrants to receive green cards.
The decline in the number of recruits eligible pose a threat to national security within our own borders in a period of instability across the globe, a national labor shortage, and numerous crises affecting the typical army recruits who are younger. Our leaders must respond with the urgency this issue of demographics requires.
Immigration has made it possible to turn the United States into a superpower, Tim Kane, an economist at the Hoover Institution, told a podcast in February. Kane added, “why don't you allow entry to electrical engineers who have no criminal record who wish to become American? There shouldn't be any restriction on that.”
In May, President Joe Biden echoed that claim in a speech, saying”that “Each generation of immigrants has made our Nation stronger and reaffirmed that diversity is — and always has been — our greatest strength.”
In actuality, the time with the most U.S. relative power came in the period of 41 years, during which immigration was reduced between 1924 and the year 1965.
In 1990, just one year after the U.S. won the Cold War, D.C. doubled numbers of immigrants to produce roughly one person per four births. The rapid increase in immigration has turned a bi-racial United States into a multi-ethnic society characterized by a growing diversity of identity groups competing for.
“We're trying to become the first multiracial, multi-ethnic superpower in the world,” Rep. Rohit Khanna (D-CA) said in the New York Times on March 21. “It will be an extraordinary achievement … we will ultimately triumph,” he declared.
