Colorado voters must stand up for workers

Article author: 
Fred Elbel
Article publisher: 
Greeley Tribune
Article date: 
23 October 2020
Article category: 
Colorado News
Medium
Article Body: 
If Democrats sweep the White House and both chambers of Congress this fall, they’ll massively expand legal immigration. That’s bad news for Colorado’s white-collar workers.
 
Jobs are already in short supply thanks to COVID-19. Competition will become even fiercer if millions more foreigners join the workforce. Yet that’s exactly what will happen under Democrats’ proposed overhaul of America’s immigration system.
 
In an August call with Indian-American organizations, Joe Biden’s campaign declared its support for “first reforming the temporary visa system for high-skill, specialty jobs … then expanding the number of visas offered and eliminating the limits on employment-based green cards by country.”
 
The Democrat nominee also wants to lift any caps whatsoever on green cards for recent PhD graduates in STEM fields.
 
Democrats often rail against Big Business billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — yet the party plays right into those oligarchs’ hands by delivering hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to replace their more expensive American counterparts. Business lobbyists have long fought for higher levels of immigration because they know that immigrants and guest workers, even highly educated ones, will accept lower salaries than Americans.
 
In fact, as Harvard economist Georges Borjas notes, immigrant labor “saves” U.S. businesses $54 billion per year. Thus, American workers forfeit that same amount in lost or reduced wages.
 
“Those who compete with immigrants are effectively sending billions and billions of dollars annually to those who use immigrants,” writes Borjas.
 
The H-1B guestworker program, which Democrats want to expand, particularly harms workers in Colorado’s burgeoning tech sector. These guestworker visas depressed American computer programmers’ earnings up to 5.1% over the program’s first decade, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
 
And if not for the H-1B program, up to 10 percent more Americans would have found employment as computer scientists.
 
Colorado boasts one of the most highly educated workforces in the country. That’s why tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are expanding their presence here. In 2018, Colorado added 7,000 tech jobs, a 2.5 percent increase over the previous year.
 
But tech firms’ expansion does Coloradans little good if those firms predominantly hire foreign — rather than local — workers.
 
The Trump administration has stood up for those Coloradans by suspending most work visas and employment-based green cards until the end of the year. At a period of high unemployment, the White House recognizes now is not the time to force Americans to compete with cheaper immigrants over highly sought-after jobs. The administration’s actions will help keep 525,000 jobs open for Americans.
 
Colorado voters could determine who controls the Senate. John Hickenlooper would surely rubberstamp his party’s immigration agenda. Senator Cory Gardner, by contrast, could serve as an effective check on the far-left’s radical proposals.*
 
It’s up to us to protect workers here in the Centennial State and across the country.
 
— Fred Elbel is director of Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform in Lakewood
 
References

CAIRCO Notes

While it is abundantly clear that Democrat Hickenlooper is doing everything he can to grant amnesty and taxpayer-paid benefits to illegal aliens, Gandner is but a half-step behind. It is indeed sad to see our elected public servants compete for the immigrant / illegal alien vote. See the article Fact Check: Gardner and Hickenlooper on Immigration, Colorado Times Recorder, October 22, 2020.