National Populist Newsletter

December 11-18th

News:

United States

• Immigration

The EAGLE Act, a bill to end country caps for employment-based green cards, is dead this Congress and likely won’t be brought up during the next two years that the GOP controls the House. This bill was all but set to pass, but backlash among the conservative base caused Republicans to abandon the deal in droves. Almost none agreed to support it That alone wouldn’t have been enough to kill it but adding to the problems for open border Democrats was that the Congressional Black Caucus also stepped away from the legislation because it would have reduced overall immigration from black-majority countries. The EAGLE Act would have given a monopoly of employment-based visas to China and India. Democrats are blaming Pelosi for not working hard enough to pass the legislation. (Roll Call)

Open border advocates lost another chance to at passing an amnesty this week when it was announced the bipartisan amnesty legislation would not be brought up this Congress. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Sens. Sinema and Tillis that their amnesty legislation wouldn’t be included in the omnibus bill, which could have forced a lot of Senators on the fence to vote for the legislation or allow government funding to lapse. With Republicans taking over the House in January, Kevin McCarthy has promised the base that no immigration legislation that includes language on amnesty will be brought up for a vote. Behind the scenes, McCarthy has warmed up to some of the most vocal immigration hawks on the right. This is why I believe in his promise to kill any amnesty legislation going forward. I know it’s not popular on the right to praise either McCarthy or McConnell, but in a conversation with someone close to McConnell told me that the Senate Republicans have moved right on immigration post-Trump’s 2016 win. That appears to be right as there was almost no support among Senate Republicans for this amnesty legislation, according to The Washington Post.

Title 42 ended this week and the Biden Administration is backed into a corner on immigration as many as 12,000 to 14,000 migrants are expected to reach the border each day. After spending two years destroying any successful Trump Administration deterrents on illegal immigration, Biden is now considering implementing some of his own. Axios reported that several drafts of new rules on immigration are circulating inside the West Wing. Proposals include a rule that would ban asylum applications for five months, as well as a less strict version of Remain in Mexico. Either way, it is likely that we will see the White House move on the issue in the next couple of weeks. The White House could be waiting for the end of the year when the news cycle tends to get drowned out by the holidays and they run less of risk of blowback by their base.

The migrant surge has been crippling border towns big and small, even before Title 42 ended. A report from The Wall Street Journal found that 5,000 migrants are arriving daily to the city of El Paso, with 1,700 being released into the interior of the US this past Wednesday alone. El Paso’s shelters for the city’s homeless have been almost exclusively focused on migrants since August, and the city has spent nearly $10 million on migrant management since July, but only been reimbursed for $5.5 million. If the numbers double in the upcoming weeks, border towns could end up buckling under the deluge.

Breitbart News reported on a settlement between the Department of Justice and Secureapp Technologies; whose Fortune 500 clients include Pfizer, Comcast, Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase, FedEx, and Nike; after it was discovered that the outsourcing firm discriminated against qualified American professionals for IT jobs by seeking to hire foreign H-1B visa workers.

DHS and the Department of Labor announced they’re doubling the number of H-2B visas offered for foreign workers next year. H-2Bs are temporary non-agriculture work visas for foreigners without advanced degrees; often used for seasonal work in landscaping, food processing, and hospitality. The government reported they will issue 64,716 additional H-2B temporary nonagricultural worker visas for fiscal year (FY) 2023. These are jobs that would otherwise go to working-class Americans without a college degree, especially black and Hispanic Americans.

As the US government is increasing the number of foreign-born workers permitted to be in the country, tech companies are slashing their H-1B workforce. The New York Times reported that thousands of tech workers on visas have been fired from their job and are scrambling to find new jobs in the 60 days permitted before their visas expire. The most shocking statistics in the story are the radical transformation of our STEM workforce:

“Between 2000 and 2019, the number of tech workers in the United States jumped by 44 percent, to 10.8 million from 7.5 million… As of 2019, foreign-born workers made up almost a quarter of all STEM workers in the country, up from about 16 percent in the year 2000, according to an analysis of census data by the American Immigration Council.”

CNN reported that USCIS is going to craft a new citizenship test for foreigners working towards becoming naturalized citizens. The Biden Administration said they’re going to make the test more accessible, which probably means easier, even though critics say it’s too easy to begin with.