Trumped Again: Interim Spending Bill Could Double Foreign Workers

The bipartisan budget bill aimed at averting a government shutdown not only ignores key parts of President Donald Trump’s plan to slash immigration, it also potentially doubles the number of migrant workers allowed in the country under a certain type of seasonal visa.

"If Trump signs the bill and doesn't speak out against this, that will contradict everything he has said about 'Hire American,'" Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Council, told the Washington Post. "This appropriations bill gives companies incentive to hire underpaid indentured workers."

Provision Adds Insult To Injury

Congressional negotiators who hammered out the spending plan did not provide any money for Trump's promised border wall with Mexico or cut funds to so-called sanctuary cities that supposedly harbor undocumented workers. There are also no cuts to funding for Planned Parenthood or other reductions that Trump had requested.

Ironically, the bill allows for doubling the 66,000 guest worker visas under the H-2B program, which grants temporary residency to migrants who work a variety of jobs in such industries as landscaping, construction, trucking, boating, packaging, refrigeration and seafood. Restaurants and grocery stores also employ such workers.

Trump himself uses 64 of those visas this year to employ low-wage dishwashers, cooks, cleaners, and gardeners at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

A separate visa, the H-2A, covers agricultural workers. A Trump winery uses that visa to employ grape harvesters.

The draft bill allows the Homeland Security director, after consulting the Labor secretary, to increase H-2B workers "upon determination that the needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal-year 2017 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary nonagricultural labor."

Related links:

Trump to Sign Order Directing Tighter Enforcement of Foreign Work Visas

Trump Officials Threaten Changes In Work Visas For Foreigners

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Image Credit: By DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons