Sometimes, the collusion between big corporations and “our” government is so ridiculous, so rancid that is makes you laugh, cry, and gag – all at once – and then you pass out from the sheer stink of it.
That’s how I felt when I saw the “compromise” that Senators Chuck Schumer and Orrin Hatch reached on the big immigration overhaul that recently oozed out of the judiciary committee. Some people oppose this reform bill because they claim it provides “amnesty” for foreign workers who entered our country illegally. But, with the foul hash cooked up by Schumer and Hatch, what it really provides is amnesty for America’s avaricious, wage-busting, high-tech tycoons.
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Such plutocratic princes of Silicon Valley as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Ellison of Oracle, have glommed onto immigration reform as a way to punt more of their highly-skilled American engineers, programmers, and scientists out the door, replacing them with cheaper foreigners they want to import from India and other low-pay lands. These narcissistic billionaires are spending millions on campaign donations, lobbyists, and front groups to loosen immigration law so they can wave-in more than 110,000 foreign techies each year through a channel called the H-1B visa.
It’s no surprise that Schumer, a weak-kneed Democrat nicknamed “Corporate Chuck,” caved-in to the tycoons. Not only does the bill nearly double the number of H-1B workers coming to displace Americans, but Schumer meekly accepted Hatch’s amendments to let tech bosses give jobs to foreigners without first offering them to our homegrown professionals. Under another Hatch hatchet job, high-tech giants will even be able to fire Americans in order to bring-in H-1B employees.
This is Jim Hightower saying… To help fight this gross sledgehammering of America’s middle-class future, go to www.aflcio.org.
“Tech Industry Pushes to Amend Immigration Bill,” The New York Times, May 20, 2013.\
“Unions rip Schumer’s Deal on H-1B visas,” http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/301209-unions-rip-schumers-deal-on-visas, May 21, 2013.
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