Koch Network Lobbies White House to Keep Work Visas for Foreigners During Economic Recession
Shane Trejo
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Organizations funded by the Koch Network are lobbying the Trump administration to keep “temporary” work visas that will allow corporations to hire foreigners for low wages during a time when millions of Americans need jobs.
Representatives from Koch-backed fronts Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Libre Initiative wrote a letter to senior White House advisor Jared Kushner and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow requesting “that this administration refrain from imposing additional barriers on non-immigrant visas.”
AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner and Libre Initiative President Daniel Garza signed the letter, which claims that economic recovery depends on third-world immigrants taking jobs from U.S. workers.
“Research has shown that most of America’s economic gains after the 2008 financial collapse would have been largely eliminated if not for the shared contributions of U.S. citizens and immigrants seeking new opportunities,” wrote Gardner and Garza.
“Additional research has also concluded that from 2006 to 2016, immigrants were responsible for nearly half of the U.S. labor force growth, a key component of economic growth,” they claimed.
In their letter, they cited a dubious report sanctioned by the George W. Bush Presidential Library earlier this year meant to justify increased immigration as being necessary for economic growth.
“For example, research has found that immigrants account for about a quarter of U.S. invention and entrepreneurship, and since 1972 immigrants have accounted for about 25% of the patents in technology, medical research and development, electronics, and chemical technologies,” Gardner and Garza claimed.
“Meanwhile, companies who applied for new H-1B workers created new products and replaced outdated ones at a 17 percent higher rate than other firms,” they added.
Gardner and Garza pointed to tech start-ups like Uber and Zoom to make their case. Uber is a corporation that is pushing for draconian censorship of conservatives, showing their hostility toward American values. Zoom, on the other hand, has deep ties to China and may be used for the purposes of surveillance by an enemy nation. These examples, if anything, prove the opposite of the point that the Koch-funded hacks were trying to make.
Big League Politics has reported on how RINOs in the Senate and Big Tech giants are also lobbying President Trump to keep the flood of foreigners into the country despite tumultuous economic conditions. Meanwhile, grassroots chapters of the College Republicans signed onto a letter urging Trump to freeze visas and end certain foreign worker programs.
“Specifically, we ask you to immediately take action to rescind the work authorization of hundreds of thousands of foreign, nonimmigrant skilled guest workers in order to ease the economic suffering of American college students and recent graduates looking for meaningful employment in these trying times,” the grassroots coalition wrote in their letter to the President.
“Made worse by the coronavirus economic crisis are the hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant guest workers in the United States. These guest workers – and especially those in the OPT and H1B programs – take jobs temporarily at wages far below the average for their positions. This is because employers can easily pay these guest workers less than they pay Americans. This is not right,” they added.
President Trump needs to listen to his base, rather than RINOs and corporate lobbyists, and advance economic policy that puts America first.
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