THE FIASCO AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER ISN’T THE ONLY “NATIONAL EMERGENCY”

…Here are some of the new H-2B workers coming from Mexico & Central America

Income inequality in the US has become the other, “national emergency”.

Our dofus of a president has now said: [We] “Can’t take you anymore,” while standing at the southern border in California. “Our country is full.”  He was referring to allowing more immigrants from Mexico or Central America.

Trump, in his effort to satisfy his base supporters, he says there is a national emergency at the southern border because “too many people are trying to come to the United States illegally or to seek asylum”. On Friday, he implored the migrants to turn around and go home.

This is interesting in that our country is not too full for people like the president’s wife’s parents.  Nor is the US too full of any white Europeans or British citizens or those from Ireland or even Canada.

The H-2B visas are the visas that most foreign visiting workers in the country over stay their visas.  Those H-2B visas are now at their highest level of being granted since 2007.

As of last week, the US added 196,000 new jobs.  At the same time an additional 30,000 H-2B visas were granted on top of the 33,000 visas that had already been planned by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Oh, and by the way, 80% of those visas are going to people from Mexico and Central America.  These visitors will work for several months for companies such as landscapers, amusement parks or many vacation hotels, (Or some of those workers will disappear inside the US).

The president has fortunately backed-off of threatening to shut down the US-Mexico border.  Even he admitted that Mexico is the nation’s largest trading partner and his ridiculous threat would have stopped cold, the US automotive industry.  That’s because every US auto manufacturer obtains about half of their automotive component parts from Mexico alone.  It would also stop 80% of the fresh vegetables coming into the US.

“It’s ironic that Trump is demagoguing and railing against a so-called dangerous and scary flood of migrants and caravans from Mexico and Central America, and even threatening to shut down the border, while at the same time using his legal authority to grow a guest worker program,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.

A major theme of Trump’s presidential campaign was that foreign workers were stealing US jobs.  However, now he says it might be necessary to bring in more workers because the economy is doing so well that companies can’t find enough people to fill jobs.  The unemployment rate, at 3.8%, and that is a 50-year low.

There is bipartisan support in Congress pushing the administration to make this move.  A group of senators, including Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), sent a letter to the Trump administration urging it to let in more H-2B workers. The DHS decided at the end of March to increase the number of visas offered and is expected to publish details in the Federal Register soon.

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The H-2B program is supposed to grant 66,000 visas a year, with about half for the winter months and half for the summer, but Congress gave the Trump administration the authority to issue an additional 69,000 this fiscal year.

DHS ultimately decided to issue the extra 30,000 to people who have held H-2B visas before.

There is such a flood of interest in these visas that typically, they are all gone within minutes of the application process opening up.  As an example, Trump’s own hotels uses H-2B workers, and the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida applied for 78 of these visas just last year.

Advocates for US workers say Trump has been undermining domestic workers by granting so many H-2B visas.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which urges lower immigration, says that Trump “betrays all American workers” with so many H-2B visa increase.

But, GM has cut jobs in Ohio and that is one case that shows that the hot US economy is still leaving parts of mid-west America behind. Many of those GM jobs have gone from $22 an hour to $11 per hour.  The income inequality in the US is becoming the real national emergency, not just the Trump fiasco at the southern border.

The Economic Policy Institute, put out research this week showing that H-2B visa workers are typically paid less than most American workers who do the same jobs. For example, landscaping workers on the visa are paid an average of $12.94 an hour.  That’s more than a dollar less than the $14.28 average wage paid to US workers.  This is according to data from the US Labor Department and H-2B visa applications.  However, many businesses that employ these workers say they are paying whatever the going rates are in their regions.

“Trump seems to be perfectly fine with letting people migrate to the United States if they’re going to be the exploited workers, and especially if they’re going to work for one of his companies,” Daniel Costa said.

Many firms are saying they are in desperate need of workers and that they have no other options. The government says it received 30 times more H-2B visa applications this year compared with last year.  Even the crab companies on Maryland’s Eastern Shore are among those trying to get more of these legal guest workers.

A DHS spokeswoman said Congress “is in the best position” to know the right number of H-2B visas that are needed for the economy. She said the DHS is urging Congress to fix the immigration system and set appropriate visa levels.

Good luck on that issue!

Our country may be “too full of foreigners”, but Trump has now been saying that he might allow more Mexican and Central American workers because the economy is doing so well.

“I got all these companies moving in. They need workers. We have to bring people into our country to work these great plants that are opening up all over the place.

Trump made this statement at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference), just last month.

Yet, one month later he is saying, “We can’t take you anymore, our country is full.”

So, which is it? 

Once again, the president says whatever fits the moment and what is in his best interest, even if it’s the opposite of what he has said before.

Copyright G. Ater 2019