WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While many workers in the United States are struggling to avoid slipping into poverty, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has quietly added an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Appropriations bill that will further grease the skids for many workers. Mikulski's amendment, designed to benefit the Maryland seafood industry, would incrementally increase the number of unskilled foreign H-2B workers allowed to compete for jobs in the U.S.
Technically, the limit on H-2B visas is 66,000 per year. However, the Mikulski amendment extends an exemption from the cap for returning H-2B workers. Thus, in 2006, the actual number of H-2B visas issued was 122,536. If the amendment is included in the final version of the CJS funding bill, that figure is certain to rise again.
"Unfortunately, while every member of Congress pays lip service to the plight of middle class workers many are quietly selling out their interests," noted Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Big business has lobbyists and they have campaign dollars to throw around. Millions of lower skilled American workers have neither. Sadly, when these interests collide in Washington, the interests of ordinary workers lose out."
The "need" for additional unskilled foreign workers amounts to a self-fulfilling prophesy, asserts FAIR. "In H-2B workers, industries have a supply of workers who will work for the wages the companies wish to pay, and under working conditions that most Americans are unlikely to accept," said Stein. "A lack of workers prepared to work for substandard wages and conditions is not the same as an actual worker shortage. Nor should the government be perpetuating conditions that drive American workers out of certain sectors of the labor market."
FAIR is urging Congress to strip the Mikulski amendment from the final version of the CJS Appropriations when it reaches conference committee. "We need restraint in our immigration policies so that one group of workers after the next are not incrementally squeezed out of their jobs and their livelihoods. Sometimes the best program to help struggling American workers is no program at all -- just a chance to compete for an honest job and an honest wage," Stein concluded.
Federation for American Immigration Reform
