Saturday, May 23, 2020
Now We Know WHO You Are...
Trump right to attack WHO on coronavirus – UN agency deserves even harsher criticism
Google, Facebook, Microsoft Lobbying Trump to Keep H1B Cheap Labor Visa Program
The Masters of the Universe want to import visa workers amid record unemployment.
300 of America’s most powerful corporations have signed onto a lobbying effort to pressure the Trump administration not to cut the H1B cheap labor visa program. Silicon Valley megacorporations Facebook and Google have signed onto a letter urging for visas to be maintained, and Microsoft has as well.
The companies claim that their hiring needs reflect the ‘national interest’ and that they need to import hundreds of thousands of foreign college graduates to work for them.
“The undersigned represent employers that rely on a highly skilled, college-educated, science and engineering workforce, including non-immigrant professionals, to innovate, produce, research, develop, and lead.”
The abuse of the H1B visa system to replace American workers with cheaper and more compliant foreign visa workers is both extensive and well documented within the technology industry. The visa structure keeps its recipients dependent on their employer for legal status within the country, creating a form of de facto indentured servitude in which employers have near-complete control over the workers they sponsor for the visas.
The visa system also enables major employers to depress wages within the American workforce, allowing companies to import workers from countries with vastly lower labor and living standards. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering suspending the program on an indefinite basis in the midst of the coronavirus recession to place American workers first again, lining up the nation’s professionals to reap the gains of economic recovery. Leading immigration patriot senators are pushing for the President to place the program on ice.
First-Time Gun Buyers Explain How Coronavirus Changed Their Politics
Scott Kane went 38 years without ever touching a gun. That streak would have continued had it not been for the coronavirus. In March, fearful of the harassment his wife and child experienced over their Asian ancestry, Kane found himself in a California gun shop. His March 11 purchase of a 9mm would have been the end of the story, were it not for a political standoff over shutdown orders and background checks. Now Kane, a former supporter of gun-control measures and AR-15 bans, is frustrated by the arduous process that has denied his family a sense of security. The pandemic has made the soft-spoken software engineer an unlikely Second Amendment supporter.
"This has taken me, a law-abiding citizen with nary an unpaid parking ticket to my name, over a month," he told the Washington Free Beacon. "Meanwhile Joe Bad Guy has probably purchased several fully automatic AK-47s out of the back of an El Camino in a shady part of town with zero background checks."
Receipts reviewed by the Free Beacon show Kane first purchased a firearm on March 11 from Sportsman's Warehouse in Milpitas, Calif. Santa Clara County shut down the shop before Kane's 10-day waiting period was complete. No end date was given for the order, but a California law giving buyers just 30 days to pick up a gun remained in effect. Kane was stuck in a legal limbo that only grew worse.
Unable to do business, the store went belly-up in May. Kane had no way to pick up his gun. He started the process over again at another store in a neighboring county. He returned home with a Springfield XD 9mm and a biometric safe on April 29, 50 days after he first passed a background check and paid for a gun.
"I'm seriously thinking of running for office or something," Kane said. "This state's gun laws are insane."
Kane is not alone. An influx of new gun owners has the potential to permanently alter the politics surrounding guns in the United States. If industry estimates are correct, millions of Americans across the country have become first-time gun buyers since March. If the experience changes their minds about the ongoing debate over gun control it could tip the balance of political power toward pro-gun activists and politicians.
It is not that the new buyers were unaware of the politics of gun control. Several new gun owners who spoke to the Free Beacon—some of whom requested anonymity citing safety concerns—generally leaned toward enhanced restrictions, their positions informed mostly by major news stories. But as they have become more personally invested in the debate, they find themselves more skeptical of gun control. Brian, a 40-year-old Floridian, used his savings to buy a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield in March after being laid off—the experience changed his entire approach to Second Amendment issues.
"In the past, I wasn't against owning a gun. However, I did think that we had suffered enough as a country from school shootings, and something needed to be done. I was for stricter gun laws—no ARs, close the gun-show loophole, better mental health regulations, etc.," he said. "I would now oppose stricter gun laws."
While all of the first-time buyers who spoke to the Free Beacon cited safety concerns stemming from the pandemic as their top reason for buying a gun, some said the politics of the moment played a significant role in their decision. But they held differing and even opposing viewpoints on which politicians concerned them the most—suggesting the group of new owners represents a fairly diverse political spectrum.
Aaron Eaton, a former Army MP and current sewer company technician in Alabama, said the increasingly hostile stance many in the Democratic Party have taken toward gun ownership helped push him to make his first purchase.
"I figured now's the time to buy before, God help us, a Democrat becomes president again," he said. "Then I would probably never get that chance again. The only view that has changed, and solely because I got into politics because of Donald Trump, is [what I think of] the stance Democrats have regarding guns. I do not find it funny how Democrats are trying to interpret the Second Amendment."
Andrew, a federal contractor who, along with his wife, bought a Heckler & Koch VP9 on March 21 in Virginia, said the state's Democrat-controlled legislature pursuing a package of gun-control laws this winter in the face of unprecedented opposition directly contributed to...
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