Once again, the United States Chamber of Commerce has proven to the American public that their loyalties lie solely with large corporations, the investor class, and a commitment to infinite GDP growth - no matter the cost.
This time, the Chamber of Commerce has started a lobbying campaign to massively increase legal immigration into the United States, specifically a momentous increase in foreign visa workers to further stagnate and even lower prevailing wages in the American job market.
Disingenuously labeled the “American Works Agenda,” the Chamber of Commerce intends to lobby federal lawmakers and state lawmakers to do what they can to greatly expand the rate of legal immigration.
For context, approximately 1.2 million legal immigrants are given green cards (legal permanent resident status) annually in the U.S. This is in addition to the roughly 1.4 million foreign nationals given visas to take U.S. jobs despite a U6 unemployment rate still over 10%.
The Chamber of Commerce, through their new lobbying effort, is demanding that lawmakers:
- At least double employment-based green cards to 280,000 admissions a year
- Eliminate per-country caps, allowing India and China to monopolize employment-based green card categories
- Double the annual number of H-1B visas awarded to foreign workers
- Double the annual number of H-2B visas awarded to foreign workers
- Expand the H-2A visa program to allow non-seasonal agricultural businesses to import foreign workers
- Allow foreign students to more easily secure employment-based green cards after graduation
- Provide amnesty to illegal aliens enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program
- Provide amnesty to foreign nationals enrolled in Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
- Allow local politicians to import foreign workers to take American jobs in their local economy and to drive up population growth
Truthfully, the lobbying campaign is nothing more than the usual attempt, this time by the Chamber of Commerce, to create a boon for Big Business by unnaturally inflating the U.S. labor market - allowing unscrupulous employers to cut Americans’ wages, reduce the cost of labor, and increase profit margins. For this reason, American wages have been effectively stagnant for over 40 years.
In what appears to be an emerging pattern, the Chamber of Commerce’s lobbying goals, like most of Washington’s current ideas, are vastly out of step with what a majority of Americans see as a positive direction for the nation.
Just this week, the most recent Rasmussen Reports survey “revealed that 72 percent of likely U.S. voters want to cut legal immigration levels, 62 percent want businesses to recruit jobless Americans for jobs over importing...
