04/22/2013
H/T One Old Vet
If you have the stomach to contemplate the law making process, Pet Projects Sprinkled in Immigration Bill By Sara Murray The Wall Street Journal April 26 2013 is your meat.This lists some of the pork layered into the Bill by its perpetrators. Pork which amounts to a calculated effort to lower the living standards of certain specific groups of American workers.
Top prize seems to go to Lindsey Graham:
…the business community and labor unions hashed out a new work-visa program to allow up to 200,000 low-skill workers to come to the U.S. Adding extra visas for meat, poultry and fish cutters wasn’t part of that deal. Including it was the work of Mr. Graham …The Meat packers have a long, disgraceful history of selfishly irresponsible behavior on immigration (they have even got to Rand Paul). They and Graham are a good match.The final bill sets aside up to 20,000 additional visas for meat cutters and trimmers. The industry employed 158,480 Americans nationwide in May 2012, according to the Labor Department.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union isn’t pleased about the visas to bring in more foreign workers, saying there is no labor shortage in the industry.
"The way we view this is it’s an earmark for meat and poultry and we strongly, strongly oppose it," said Tim Schlittner, a spokesman for the labor union. "It appears to have been dropped in the bill at the 11th hour. Quite frankly, we're taken back by its inclusion."
Skilled construction workers are on the hit list too:
Mr. Rubio and Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz)…weren’t able to get a cap lifted that limits construction visas to 15,000. But they did include a provision, which many in the construction industry had feared dead, allowing foreigners to work in such higher-skilled jobs as electricians, plumbers and welders.Actually Rubio did get what is certain to become a massive loophole for construction-
Mr. Rubio, from hurricane-prone Florida, inserted an opportunity for foreigners to come to the U.S. for 90 days to work on relief operations after state or federal disastersin addition to attacking machinists
… with a provision allowing certain foreigners to repair cruise ships made abroad, as well as other transportation equipment.(No cruise ships are built in America.)
The oddest loophole is Colorado Senator Bennet’s who
…crafted a provision to make it easier to hire foreign ski instructors. Instead of using a visa program for temporary, low-skilled workers, ski instructors would be eligible to come to the U.S. under the same program that professional athletes use. Current law allows those athletes to stay in the U.S. for up to a decade.My observation is that ski instructing appears to be the default employment for young WASP graduates shut out of other work. I guess they are too uppity.
While retching over the stench of corruption wafting from this article, readers should bear in mind that, additionally, there is the flood of money coming from ideologically-driven immigration enthusiasts being soaked up.
Seeing the Wall Street Journal running this piece is reminiscent of the days when the labor-sympathizing Democrats controlling the news pages would occasionally dissent from the relentless animosity displayed to the American worker by the Neocons who rule the Op-ed page — when the latter think of their countrymen at all.
Congratulate Sara Murray. I hope she keeps her job.
Doubtless this is only the tip of the Iceberg
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.