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Trump Administration Makes 15,000 Additional H-2B Visas available
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it would provide businesses another 15,000 H-2B visas to bring low-skilled foreign workers to the U.S. this summer, offering a modest infusion to the popular program.
The number of visas available each year for seasonal work is capped by statute at 66,000, evenly divided between the summer and winter seasons. Congress declined to lift that cap during negotiations this spring. It did, however, give the secretary of homeland security authority to issue up to 69,000 more this summer if she determines there is sufficient need.
A range of businesses—including fisheries, landscapers and those in summer tourist spots—have complained about worker shortages and have been waiting to see if Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will use that authority. But people who support restrictions on immigration, including some in the White House, argue that foreign workers drive down American wages and oppose additional visas.
Faced with a similar choice last summer, then-DHS Secretary John Kelly also provided an additional 15,000 visas but cast it as a one-time only move.
Also reported at:
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-makes-15-000-additional-h-2b-visas-available-1527279631
- https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/05/26/homeland-security-approves-15000-additional-h-2b-visas-to-bring-low-skilled-foreign-workers-to-us
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:27PM (11 children)
All the Republican railing about immigration is BS. It always has been. And you can tell that when they're perfectly fine with deporting lots of people with big fanfare and expense while at the same time quietly importing other people to replace the folks they've deported, all while the companies who recruit and hire people to come to the US illegally to work (e.g. Smithfield and Hilton) are never punished in any way. The problem, to a Republican politician, is not that immigrants exist, but that they are coming in not necessarily under the thumb of a corporate master who can get them deported at any time if they step out of line.
One potential response could be to make legal immigration much much easier. Something along the lines of an Ellis-Island-like facility in El Paso for people who want to become Americans. That would mean that employers would no longer have the deportation hammer to hang over these folks, and more importantly they'd have to be paid wages similar to what US-born workers make in whatever work they're doing. Which would in turn eliminates the advantages of hiring them over US citizens, which would de-motivate employers to recruit them in the way they do now.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:58PM (4 children)
Lots of bigots trying to convince themselves that race/culture isnt their problem. We keep trying to pretend racism is mostly just a shadowy past, but as the latest scandal with Roseanne Barr shows it is alive well.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:04PM (1 child)
It's not hard to explain why, either: Blatant public racism has only been socially frowned-upon for about 35-40 years, and lots of people are older than that. The people who spent part of the 1970's holding signs like We won't go to school with Negroes [ytimg.com] were somewhere around 14-18 years old then, and that would make them (barring injury or illness) around 55-60 years old now. And there are people 20 years older than them, in the 70-80-year-old range, who were in the mid-1950's spitting on and beating up black kids trying to go to school after Brown v Board of Education. Some of the folks in nursing homes now participated in lynchings back then, and the "racist grandma" is common enough to be a popular culture trope.
The past is not as far back as you might think, and any image of the history of the Civil Rights Movement that suggests that its goals were completely achieved, much less achieved shortly after the 1963 March on Washington and "I Have a Dream", is flat wrong.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ben_white on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:31PM
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
Are you saying that culture is not a problem. Or that culture and race are linked? Why do Asians do so well despite being discriminated against, personally, at least as late the 1990's?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @10:29PM
Because they were never slaves and the prejudice against them is MUCH less than towards black people. My guess is that it is because asians are much closer to being white. You are obviously willfully ignorant in the extreme, ignoring the massive subjugation that only recently has begun to lift. It isn't even gone now, no matter how much you pretend. In fact, your exact comment is the proof you bigoted piece of shit racist dirtbag. I am 100% intolerant of you and your ilk, every single time you racist fucks are the worst of the worst not only to minorities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:19PM
Globalists come in both flavors, R and D.
There are at least some republicans who oppose hoards of 3rd-worlders. Where are the democrats who do?
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:50PM (4 children)
Congratulations on broad-brushing your "enemy" and straw-manning at level 10. So you must believe that Republican = corporatist and Democrat = populist? They are very much both corporatists. Both parties. The R & D battle is an artificial one, and designed to divide us and pit us against each other while we are stripped of rights, our country, and our dignity. Don't fall for it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:55PM (3 children)
I re-read my post, and I don't see where I said a word about Democrats.
The reason I described only what Republicans were doing was that the Democrats don't (publicly at least) take up an anti-immigrant position. Therefor, they don't have to be considered hypocrites when they are publicly saying "we oppose immigration" while simultaneously implementing policies to make it easier to immigrate both legally and illegally.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @10:45PM (2 children)
Are Democrats for illegal immigration? Why don't they fix the immigration laws?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:46AM (1 child)
They are at least ambivalent about it, if DACA [wikipedia.org] was any indication.
Because nobody agrees on what the word "fix" means in that context. For example, some Americans think that "fix" means "ramp up ICE enforcement and basically ensure that as soon as ICE gets hold of you you're deported." Other Americans think that "fix" means "if you're in the US, you're a citizen, end of discussion". And lots of other variations in between.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:48AM
Is it any better than what it was twenty years when I helped a friend and foreign spouse get papers?