No GOP or Democrat members of the House voted against a rushed bill, approved August 22, that would help Fortune 500 companies quickly outsource jobs to foreign workers instead of Americans.
The outsourcing bill is titled H.R. 8089, “the Emergency Stopgap USCIS Stabilization Act,” and it was unveiled the day before the vote. It is being portrayed as an emergency bill to prevent imminent furloughs by the underfunded U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency. The agency is funded with fees paid by employers and migrants, but the fee revenue crashed during the coronavirus crash, likely forcing a cost-saving agency furlough this month.
The bill seeks to prevent an agency furlough by expanding the agency’s income from the little-known “Premium Processing” fast-track process.
The process is normally used by companies to quickly import foreign H-1B visa workers for jobs needed by U.S. graduates. The bill would allow companies to get Premium Processing for a wider range of migrant workers, so reducing the unpredictability and delays that sometimes pressure companies to hire Americans.
Companies use the processing fees to rush their foreign workers through routine USCIS fraud checks, said John Miano, a lawyer with Immigration Reform Law Insitute. The pending bill “is essentially a pro-fraud measure,” he said.
Premium processing should be reserved for short-stay visitors, not for long-term outsourcing or legal immigrants, he said. For example,” ‘The first violinist has broken her arm, and I need to fly in a new violinist from Kazakhastan by this weekend!’ — that’s where Premium Processing makes sense,” he said.
Roughly 1.3 million visa workers are employed in long-term jobs needed by U.S. graduates, alongside several hundred thousand blue-collar workers who are hired for summer jobs…
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