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New Report on H-1B: Low Wages for Low Skills "There is much discussion of reorienting the legal immigration flow Legal Immigrants Offended by Senate Plan "Congress' new immigration plan was bad news for tens of thousands If We Have a Low-Skill Labor Shortage, Why Are Wages Falling? "Someone should ask the Post's editorial board that question. . A Travesty Of A Mockery Of A Sham(nesty) Updates throughout the day "An amnesty is an amnesty, no matter how it is packaged and spun. More reactions: "I strongly oppose today's bill going through the Senate. It is the wrong approach. Any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country indefinitely, as the new 'Z-Visa' does, is a form of amnesty. That is unfair to the millions of people who have applied to legally immigrate to the U.S." -- Mitt Romney "In short order, the system will be overwhelmed. Whatever minimal fraud detection and prevention safeguards might be erected won’t last long in the face of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of applications and petitions to be adjudicated." -- Bill West, former INS official. "We're doing everything else in this bill that's cockamamie and out of the world, so let's just excuse the fraud that exists here. We're already excusing the illegal status. It's like I said yesterday, the thing about this that just doesn't make any sense is that we're treating the illegals as though we are doing something wrong, as though we've been bad and we're guilty of something. We want them to forgive us! " -- Rush Limbaugh "Don’t be fooled. Prerequisites to citizenship or permanent residency status are irrelevant to whether this bill rewards law-breaking or will encourage more in the future. Its key feature is rather that illegal aliens, according to press reports, can immediately have their illegal status wiped away with a temporary-residency permit, available virtually upon demand. That’s it. The rest is noise." Heather MacDonald, Manhattan Institute "According to Bloomberg, Democrats expressed doubts over provisions to create a temporary-worker program and to reduce the emphasis on uniting families when deciding which legal immigrants are admitted to the U.S." -- Redstate "The reaction to the immigration announcement was swift. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and perhaps future presidential candidate, denounced it on Sean Hannity's radio show as 'a sellout of every conservative principle.' The Heritage Foundation agreed. Congressman Mike Pence issued a statement calling the bill an amnesty." -- James Antle, American Spectator. "We should scrap this 'comprehensive' immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders — or at least made great headway. That would give proponents of the bill a chance to explain why putting illegals in a more favorable position than those who play by the rules is not really amnesty." -- Sen. Fred Thompson. "That conservatives would be upset with the immigration deal was predictable. But the degree of the indignation has been remarkable. Even before there was any deal announced, Slate’s Mickey Kaus was calling the immigration debacle 'Bush’s domestic version of Iraq.'" -- National Review roundup of conservative reaction. John McCain decreed yesterday that his immigration bill would be the law and that there would be no dissent. My new Townhall.com column, 'Damning The Jam-Down,' deals with the extraordinary repulsiveness of such a stance, but in practical terms, the only way to respond is by contributing to a serious opponent of McCain, either Mayor Giuliani or Governor Romney. Or both. If you don't like being treated like a political serf, fund the opponent of the candidate who embodies contempt for the Republican base . . . Simply put, Senator McCain's contempt for you is complete. React accordingly. The Senate's GOP leadership has not yet followed Senator McCain over the cliff. I hope they wake up in time to realize the party-splitting peril they are in with the proposed jam down on the table." -- Hugh Hewitt. "Next week, I'd suggest you make sure to pack an umbrella because you're going to be hearing from a lot of Republican senators who are going to be peeing all over your leg and trying to tell you that it's raining. That's because the Senate GOP is about to betray America by voting for Ted Kennedy's amnesty bill." -- John Hawkins, Right Wing News. "Does this empty promise of the amnesty/deportation trade-off sound familiar? Why, yes, yes it does. Let me boil it down to fundamentals: Bush-Kennedy amnesty is the J. Wellington Wimpy plan: 'I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.' Amnesty is the hamburger. Enforcement is the payment that will never come. I've reported this reality over and over and over and over and over again . . . It was true in 1986. It's as true as ever in 2007. Wimpy will get his amnesty burgers and the Beltway fools who keep deluding themselves about the false promise of immigration enforcement will be left empty-handed. Again." -- Michelle Malkin. "Without modifications the proposed bill could devalue the importance of family reunification, replace the current group of undocumented immigrants with a new undocumented population consisting of guestworkers who will overstay their visas, and potentially drive down wages of American workers." -- Sen. Barack Obama |
toward ''highly skilled' workers, the kind of workers admitted by the H-1B visa program. That visa, which is theoretically temporary but often serves as a stepping-stone to permanent residency, is widely used by high-tech employers and is the frequent subject of debate as available slots are snapped up within hours and lawmakers call for higher limits," says CIS (Center for Immigration Studies). "A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies shows how, far from the being a source of highly skilled labor, the H-1B program now operates mainly to supply U.S. employers with cheap workers. Analysis of data from the Department of Labor shows that very few H-1B workers are 'highly skilled,' and that their wages are well below those of comparable U.S. workers."
of poor Mexicans who depend on a U.S. guestworker program for temporary jobs in agriculture and other seasonal work, such as landscaping and construction. Millions of would-be migrants have been holding tight to President Bush's promise that they could one day apply for temporary visas to get a glimpse of the American dream . . . Edmundo Bermudez, a 36-year-old from the northern city of Durango, said the plan rewards those who have already entered the United States illegally, while shutting out those who stayed home hoping to gain legal passage. He was especially offended by the plan to give preference to migrants with degrees and skills," the AP reports. 
The Post's editorial on the new immigration bill comments on the 'annual flow of 400,000 to 600,000 low-skilled workers needed to satisfy the demand for labor.' Wages in the jobs typically filled by these immigrants (custodians, restaurant workers, nannies) have been stagnant or declining over the last quarter century. To those who believe in markets (which in other circumstances includes the Post's editorial board), this implies that a large flow of immigrants is not needed to fill the demand for labor," says Dean Baker with the American Prospect.
The guest worker program will surely enrich employers, but will exacerbate the downward trajectory in the economic status of poorer workers . . . The bill neatly summarizes the intellectual flimsiness of the Bush administration --- a flimsiness that has cost us dearly in so many other areas. Perhaps they can convince themselves otherwise; that legalizing the status of illegal immigrants is not an amnesty; that the laws of supply and demand can be repealed when it comes to immigration; that we will trust them to secure our borders in the next two years when they haven’t done so in the previous six. But we all know that, in the end, their promises are a sham, a travesty, and a mockery of what immigration policy should be about," says Prof. George Borjas of Harvard of the Senate amnesty bill.