Analysis of Tancredo's bill HR 3333

Date: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 6:16 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

by Rob Sanchez
September 29, 2005 No. 1339

Tancredo's guest-worker program, H.R. 3333, has undergone some small changes from the bill he sponsored in 2003, but the changes don't improve it. If passed it will serve to put millions of Americans into hopeless joblessness.

The fact that Tancredo reintroduced the bill for the 109th Congress is evidence that he has sided with the neo-cons who want to destroy the wages and benefits of middle-class America by using massive influxes of foreign labor to create labor arbitrage. If he was only playing political games he would have let the bill die in the 108th Congress.

Immigration lawyers think the bill is a good idea. In 2003 their editor said that Tancredo's bill, "may be as big a boon to immigration lawyers as the H1B boom was." After reading the bill I understand why they like it so much.

Use this link to read the rest of the editorial:
http://www.ilw.com/lawyers/immigdaily/digest/2003,0106.shtm

You can look at the full text of the bill at Thomas.gov. My analysis of some of its bad aspects are below.

Go to this link and enter H.R. 3333 and choose the bill number button:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c109:./temp/~c109TSCPtd

Effects of Tancredo's bill on high wage jobs
Sec 101
Tancredo proposes to get rid of H-1B, H-2B and other types of nonimmigrant visas and combine them into a generic "H" visa. Programmers and engineers from India will get the same visa as cabbage pickers from Mexico. He ignores the fact that the paradigms of low wage earners and high wage earners is different and that by combining all nonimmigrants into an H visa his bill will have unforeseeable and undesirable aftereffects. Since the two classes of employees are different, it's necessary to discuss them separately.

Effects of Tancredo's bill on low wage jobs

Low wage employers desire illegal aliens because they are under the thumb of their boss, and they are cheap. They have a de-facto indentured contracts because the boss can crack-the-whip by threatening to report the worker to the border patrol for deportation. This bill probably won't discourage the bottom feeders from using illegal aliens but it will give more respectable sweathouses such as Tyson Chicken a way to hire cheap labor legally. Tancredo's bill will be a net gain for low-wage employers.

SEC. 102. INTERNET-BASED JOB POSTING SYSTEM.
The database is a security and privacy problem of immense magnitude. Sham operations who want to get access to the database by posing as employers will be able to circumvent the security on these government run computers. Without doubt this enormous database will be open-season for hackers that want to get personal information. It could even be used by employers who want to see if their employees are looking for a job.

In General- The Secretary of Labor shall take
any steps necessary to ensure that all State
employment agencies and all employers in the United
States are able to acquire secure, password-protected
access to the Internet-based job database provided
jointly by the Department of Labor and State employment
security agencies and known as `America's Job Bank'
in order to permit the posting of job openings throughout
the United States.

The Secretary of Labor will issue reports on the database, but then what? Nobody has to do anything about abuses, they just have to report data. What a typical government solution!

REPORTS- The Secretary of Labor shall publish quarterly
reports, utilizing the data included in the job posting
system, indicating unemployment and real wage trends by
occupational category and geographic region. The
Secretary shall make such reports available to the public
on a timely basis.

Check how much money employers have to pay to use Monster or Dice and you will see that $10 is such a bargain that the government run Job Bank will put everyone else out of business. Tancredo wants the government to run all job searches. He will use the proceeds to investigate H visa fraud. We heard the same thing when the government was supposed to use the $1,000 H-1B fee to investigate fraud. Have you seen any fraud investigated?

Fee- Employers shall be required to pay a user fee of
$10 per worker sought through America's Job Bank.
Such fees shall be placed by the Secretary of Labor in
a fund to be used to maintain and improve America's Job
Bank. Any amounts from such fund not used for system
maintenance shall be used to investigate abuses of the
H nonimmigrant program.

My nomination for the most bone-headed portion of Tancredo's bill must go be this section, it's truly a #1 fiasco. Tancredo is using a socialistic method of regulating American wages by controlling the supply of foreign labor. The Secretary of Labor will became a wage czar that will be empowered to control and regulate all wages in the U.S. It's nothing less than labor price fixing.

CESSATION- If compensation, including real wages,
benefits, and working conditions, in a particular
occupational category in a geographic region has been
stagnant or in decline for the 6-month period
immediately preceding the filing of a petition for an
H nonimmigrant worker, the Secretary shall not approve
the petition until-

SEC. 103. REQUIREMENTS FOR PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYERS OF H NONIMMIGRANTS.

The "America's Job Bank" concept is the same requirement in the McKennedy bill and Bush's bill. Tancredo came first with this proposal, and then it appears that the other two adopted it. This is tangible evidence that Tancredo's bill is being incorporated into the others, and it is testimony to the damage that his bill has already done.

In General- An employer seeking to hire a nonimmigrant
described in section 101(a)(15)(H) of the Immigration
and Nationality Act (as amended by section 101 of this
Act) shall post an announcement of the job for which
the nonimmigrant is sought on America's Job Bank.

Employers will only have to wait 14 days before declaring that this is a job that no American wants. Mustn't keep the companies waiting when they want to hire cheap labor!

Minimum Posting Period- Each announcement shall be posted
for a minimum period of 14 days, including the 7 days
that end one week before the job begins, before an employer
may seek authorization to hire an H nonimmigrant.

SEC. 105. DATABASE OF APPROVED PROSPECTIVE H NONIMMIGRANTS.

The Secretary of Labor will now be an outplacement service that provides a list of foreign workers to all employers, but not a list of American workers. This will put Americans at a huge disadvantage since the Secretary will be actively helping these foreigners to get jobs.

The Secretary of Labor shall establish and maintain
a database of all aliens approved for status under
section 101(a)(15)(H). Such database shall include
all information regarding each alien's job skills,
education, and employment history.

Not only will the Secretary of Labor be the outplacement service, they will be the matchmakers for all the willing employers who want willing workers from foreign countries. The DOL however will not do matchmaking for Americans workers - perhaps because they aren't compatible with employers' demands for cheap labor.

Once an employer selects one or more workers in the
database, the Secretary shall provide the employer
with contact information for the worker so the employer
can make an offer of employment. If the alien accepts
the offer, the Secretary shall issue the alien an H
nonimmigrant visa within 3 days of such acceptance.

SEC. 111. CERTIFICATIONS

The bill isn't supposed to be implemented until it's certified that the government can track where these millions of aliens are and when they leave the U.S. H-1B and other nonimmigrant visa programs promised the same thing. Our government has proven they are incapable and unwilling to track these aliens. To make matters worse, Congress continues to remove funds for fraud investigations, so the laws we have are never enforced. All the biometric scans and high-tech equipment in the world won't help if Congress doesn't want enforcement. If our government can't track the 800,000 H-1Bs currently in the U.S. why does Tancredo think they can track millions more?

After all the biometric gizmos are installed, our government will do another study. Of course they won't have to do anything with the study, and if other studies are any example of what we can expect, they will only serve to justify the whims of employers.

STUDY- shall undertake a study examining the impacts
on U.S. infrastructure and quality of life of--
(A) current annual levels of immigrant and nonimmigrant admissions;
(B) illegal immigration; and
(C) implementation of the program established in subtitle A.

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