Posted on 12/31/2015 8:29:03 AM PST by ConservingFreedom
Heads-up, America.
President Obama is dropping a New Year's Eve bomb on the nation's best and brightest workers.
It was top-headlined on the Drudge Report late Wednesday night with a link to Neil Munro's report at Breitbart.com:
New Year's Surprise: Obama Regulation To Give Work-Permits To Foreign College-Graduates
As the nation prepares to ring in the New Year, President Barack Obama is preparing a colossal new executive action that could print-up work permits for a huge number of foreign white-collar graduates every year, above and beyond the levels set by Congress.
This executive action, which directly bypasses Congressional lawmakers, is likely to reverberate across the presidential race, as GOP voters look to choose a nominee they believe will most effectively roll back the President's still-expanding agenda.And it will certainly raise new security concerns as it covers categories of immigration utilized by migrants from the Middle East and nearby regions.
President Barack Obama's Department of Homeland Security plans to publish the proposed rule tomorrow, the last day of 2015.
The 181-page rule focuses primarily on giving work-permits to foreign college-grads who will compete against Americans for white collar jobs, despite the large number of American graduates now stuck in lower-wage positions and struggling to pay off college debts. The rule will also make each foreign graduate much cheaper for U.S. employers to hire than many U.S.-born college grads.
"Obama has gone the Full Monty to bust the immigration system," says immigration lawyer John Miano. "What is going on is he is effectively giving Green Cards to people on H-1B visas who are unable to get Green Cards due to the [annual] quotas… it could be over 100,000."
The new rules to aid foreign college-graduates are an extension of his earlier efforts to bypass popular laws against illegal immigration, said Miano, the co-author of a new book about the painful impact of the white-collar guest-worker programs, titled "Sold Out."
My Sold Out co-author John Miano sounded the alarm earlier this week at the Center for Immigration Studies here:
DHS Files Last-Ditch Motion to Preserve Improper OPT Rules
At issue is the so-called Optional Practical Training program, which John is challenging in federal court and which we spotlighted in Sold Out. As we told you last month, President Obama's executive amnesty initiatives and this latest backdoor regulatory expansion of work permits are all cut from the same Big Business/open-borders cloth:
Under the Constitution, Congress defines the classes of immigrants eligible to work in the United States, and the executive branch has the broad authority to determine the individual immigrants within those classes who are authorized to work. Obama's Department of Homeland Security flipped this around and usurped the authority to allow any alien - legally or illegally in the country - to work unless Congress explicitly prohibits it.
The Obama administration first encroached upon congressional authority over immigration with the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed illegal immigrant children to remain in the United States.
Next, Obama created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, which granted illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States the right to remain in the United States and work.
After lower court judge Andrew Hanen issued his initial injunction this year, Obama bureaucrats defiantly violated it anyway and issued 2,000 more work permits to people here illegally. The 5th circuit ruling puts an exclamation point on Judge Hanen's order to stop the unlawful Obamnesty.
But if you thought these brazen usurpations of power were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama sneakily expanded the foreign worker supply by administrative fiat another way: executive expansion of the Optional Practical Training program, through which 560,000 foreign "students" have been authorized to work in the U.S. It may well be America's largest de facto guest-worker program, yet it has never been authorized by Congress. This backdoor H-1B visa increase allows foreign students to work with little monitoring, no wage protections, no payment of Social Security payroll taxes and no requirement for employers to demonstrate labor market shortages.
In addition, Obama this year unilaterally started allowing certain spouses of H-1B workers (H-4 visa holders) to work in the United States.
The good news is that software engineer-turned-lawyer John Miano, the co-author of our new book, "Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers," is challenging both schemes in court. Like the states that stopped executive expansion of illegal immigrant worker benefits, John and his clients aren't waiting for D.C. politicians to do the job of defending American sovereignty.
John's groundbreaking federal lawsuit on behalf of WashTech (a labor union of professional tech workers) against President Bush's regulatory expansion of the OPT program is, as National Review's John O'Sullivan called it, "the first step of a long battle." In April 2015, John and the Immigration Reform Law Institute filed another federal lawsuit in D.C. challenging President Obama's arbitrary and capricious regulatory expansion of work authorizations for H-1B workers' spouses (classified as H-4 visa holders). The plaintiff, Save Jobs USA, is a group of former Southern California Edison employees who were forced to train their foreign guest-worker replacements before being laid off.
"Under the Constitution, Congress is supposed to have control over immigration," John reminds our fellow citizens. At stake is a fundamental question for the republic:
Do we have an office of president or an office of Caesar?
What can be done to stop this?
As I noted on Twitter two weeks ago, a new bill co-sponsored by longtime reformer Sen. Jeff Sessions and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz would not only restore U.S. worker protections in the flawed H-1B program, but would also prevent "continued use of the non-statute-based Optional Practical Training (OPT) Program, and the creation and use of other similar programs, which have also been used to displace American workers under the guise of student training."
Good to know there are at least two Senators on Capitol Hill who aren't snoozing while President Obama tries to throw U.S. high-skilled workers and talented U.S. college grads under the bus in the dark of the last night of 2015.
What about the rest of the politicians in Washington on both sides of the aisle? Have they all hopelessly sold out?
And why aren't these issues being raised in the presidential debates on behalf of American workers by competent questioners who know what they are talking about for once?
Anyone?
Did Cruz ever renounce and apologize for his Senate Amendment to increase H-1B Visas by 500%?
Cruz is on You Tube in 2013 saying what I just wrote.
I will vote for Cruz if he is the nominee.
But in 2015, Cruz became a pathetic liar on the issue of immigration.
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHlGlNwsQb0
Cruz also told the Texas Tribune in 2013: “The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight," he said during a recent visit to El Paso.
Texas Tribune: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/us/cruz-tries-to-claim-the-middle-ground-on-immigration.html?_r=0
Unfortunately the donor class wouldn't get behind a shutdown. It appears they have directed the crony political class that there must never, ever be even a moderation of the federal money flow.
“Did Cruz ever renounce and apologize for his Senate Amendment to increase H-1B Visas by 500%?”
The bill he’s sponsoring goes in the opposite direction: http://www.cruz.senate.gov/files/documents/20151210_AmericanJobsFirstAct_Summary.pdf
The word “try” doesn’t appear in the article.
“We’ll try again”
“We’re gonna try to get er done”
Ever heard that or do the Republicans always get it done?
Yep.
I agree.
However, to my knowledge, Cruz has never acknowledged his 2013 You Tube videos or his 2013 statements to the Texas Tribune that flat out contradict what he is saying now.
If he has had a true change of heart, then he needs to explain how and when that happened. Otherwise, he is just one more GOP presidential candidate pandering to the Conservative base.
Several months ago, at the Fox News GOP Debate, Megyn Kelly asked Cruz if he still supported “work permits” for illegal immigrants.
Cruz refused to answer. He said her question was a “distraction” from more important immigration issues.
The Democrats and the MSM will rip Cruz to pieces on that sort of political duplicity if Cruz is our nominee in 2016.
We need results folks. Symbolic gestures are not going to cut it anymore.
Introducing and debating a bill is a good way to get on TV.
Yes of course. Not sure why precisionshootist doesn't see that.
We need results folks. Symbolic gestures are not going to cut it anymore.
Which has nothing to do with your previous point about being on TV.
“to my knowledge, Cruz has never acknowledged his 2013 You Tube videos or his 2013 statements to the Texas Tribune that flat out contradict what he is saying now.”
Ted Cruz Explains Why His Position on H1-B Visas Has Changed - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3375976/posts
He changed his mind because of “changed circumstances.”
That is so lame.
The only thing that has changed about the H-1B program in the last 16 years is that Cruz is running for president.
And he still won’t admit that he supported work permits for illegal immigrants in 2013.
He claims he was trying to trick the Democrats, or something - but he forgot to tell us about that part of his strategy until two years later.
The man is not credible on the issue of immigration
Yes it does. Being on TV talking about a bill among the thousand other bills is meaningless.
Get on TV and tell the American People Obama needs to be removed from office. Then START THE PROCESS.
Yes, that's much likelier to get results than an immigration bill.
9_9
True, the "abuses" he mentions go back for years - the most charitable interpretation is that before feeling the heat, he didn't give the issue the attention it deserved.
I wish there was a better option than Cruz or a fake conservative and egotistical buffoon.
I will vote for Cruz if he is the nominee.
Unfortunately, the fact that Cruz has never supported a reduction in legal immigration means the slow political suicide of the Republican Party will continue, even with Cruz in the White House.
I don't think I can ever vote for Trump. The man quit, joined, or re-joined three political parties six times in 20 years. I have no idea what his basic political principles are.
Your so right. The GOPers are so afraid of a veto, so afraid of a government shutdown, that there really is no need for republicans to even show up for work in DC.
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