Senator Minority Whip John Thune, R-SD, joined Democrats and the big business lobby in asking President Joe Biden to allow more legal immigration to the United States in order to fill American jobs.
Thune claims that the Biden administration has not been able to import enough H-2B visa workers from foreign countries to fill seasonal blue-collar jobs in the U.S., even though the nation’s foreign-born population is at record levels.
Sinclair Broadcast Group reports:
John Thune (Republican Senate Minority Whip), said that he hears from employers all the time about their inability to find workers. He stated that he would welcome legal immigration. [Emphasis added]
“I believe there are H-2Bs at this time of year, for instance”. Thune stated that South Dakota needs many of them and cannot get enough from the administration. [Emphasis added]
H-2B visas allow American employers to temporarily bring in foreign nationals for non-agricultural, non-agricultural jobs. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said that his state also needs more. [Emphasis added]
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced in May that they would provide subsidies to businesses by importing 35,000 additional H-2B visa workers from abroad to fill blue-collar U.S. jobs.
Thune’s call for more foreign workers comes after the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the most recent research, reveals that more than 54 million Americans are not working.
Particularly, the percentage of American adults of working age who are not college-educated has fallen to 70% in the first quarter of 2022 — a drop from 74% in 2007 and 77% in 2000.
This is also true for American men of working age who were born in the United States.
Only 84 percent of American men aged 25-54 years were employed in the first quarter of 2022, compared to almost 90 percent in 2000.
Businesses are permitted to bring in 66,000 H-2B workers each year to fill blue-collar, nonagricultural American jobs. Biden is following the footsteps of former President Donald Trump, who routinely imported additional H-2B visa workers to help businesses hire.
Mayorkas announced in December 2021 and January 20,22 that businesses would be able to import 40,000 additional H-2B visa workers.
According to CIS’s 2019 study, H-2B visa programs have been used extensively by businesses to lower the wages of American workers in landscaping and conservation work.
Comparing the H-2B wages of foreign workers with the average national wage for each blue-collar sector, 21 of the 25 industries had lower wages than the Americans.
The U.S. grants green cards annually to approximately 1.2 million foreign citizens, while another 1.5 million receive temporary work visas. Every few years, millions more illegally arrive in the U.S.
