With 11.6 million Americans out of work and another 3.7 million underemployed, President Joe Biden plans to import roughly 65,000 foreign workers on H-2B visas to fill blue-collar positions.
Secretary of Homeland Security under Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in October that the government would be enabling corporations to import up to 65,000 extra H-2B foreign visa workers to fill nonagricultural positions in construction, meatpacking, landscaping, and other sectors.
Mayorkas announced the plan’s completion on Tuesday.
To help American businesses prepare for their peak season labor demands, the Department is making additional H-2B visas accessible sooner than before, as said by Mayorkas in a statement. These visas will “offer a secure and lawful access to the United States for noncitizens prepared to assume positions that are not filled by American workers at a period of record job growth,” the authors write.
Expressly, 20,000 citizens of Haiti and northern Central American countries and 45,000 already awarded foreign employees will be granted H-2B visas.
The Biden administration’s intention to hire foreign employees to replace empty American positions was previously outlined by Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.
There are not enough individuals in the United States to fill the 11 million jobs that need to be filled tomorrow. “Immigration is the only viable option for solving the workforce shortage,” Walsh said.
Given that 11.6 million Americans are still without work, this is a necessary step. Also, another 3.7 million Americans are working part-time when they would prefer full-time hours.
In the current system, companies are permitted to yearly bring in 66,000 foreign employees on H-2B visas to fill blue-collar, nonagricultural jobs in the United States. Trump and Biden continue Trump’s practice of regularly approving thousands of new H-2B visas to allow businesses to recruit more foreign workers.
Mayorkas declared that firms could bring in an additional 40,000 foreign employees using H-2B visas in December 2021 and January 2022.
According to a 2019 report by the Center for Immigration Studies, employers have utilized the H-2B visa program to drive down wages for American employees in a variety of industries, including gardening, conservation work, the meatpacking sector, the construction industry, and the fishing industry.
About 21 out of the 25 blue-collar industries paid lower compensation to foreign employees under the H-2B program compared to the national wage average for Americans.
Roughly 1.2 million people are granted lawful permanent residency each year, and another 1.4 million foreign workers are accepted to compete for employment in the United States. But each year, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enter the labor force, many with government-issued work permits.