Doubling down on its rhetoric, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki again called Trump administration immigration policies “immoral” last week. Psaki leveled her latest verbal broadside as President Joe Biden’s team explores ways for more foreign nationals to take U.S. jobs.
Last year, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Trump signed an executive order halting the admission of H-1B, H-4, H-2B, L, and J-1 foreign visa workers to protect the U.S. labor market. The order sought to free up at least 600,000 positions for jobless and underemployed Americans.
Psaki branded the action “immoral,” repeating the haughty pejorative she trotted out in January. (She apparently borrowed the buzzword from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, in December, proclaimed that funding the border wall was “immoral.”)
While Psaki publicly questioned the morality of enforcing immigration law, Team Biden is working to undermine U.S. workers. According to Crain’s Cleveland Business, ideas under consideration include:
- Eliminating per-country caps for employment-based green cards, which would especially benefit the backlog of Indian tech workers seeking entry to the U.S.
- Exempting spouses and children of green-card holders from annual quotas.
These two moves could more than double the number of employment-based cards issued annually. The left-leaning Brookings Institution is recommending four additional strategies to expand employment-based immigration, which would not require congressional approval.
Meantime, Biden’s Labor Department has delayed a rule designed to protect the jobs and wages of American workers. “The abuse of guest worker programs, resulting in harm to American workers, has been widely acknowledged by Republicans and Democrats alike,” FAIR stated last week in objecting to the delay.
U.S. Tech Workers, which supports lower levels of U.S. immigration, said the administration is “espousing the tired talking points of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others who benefit from a wellspring of inexpensive sources of labor.” Executive Director Kevin Lynn told Crain’s he was “befuddled why they would push expansionist immigration policies at a time of so much job insecurity.”
It’s time Biden and his spokeswoman got down from their moral high horse, and side with American workers.
