Buy American & Hire American

We have lots of companies who hire legal and illegal foreign workers. Trump’s commitment to comply with current law should reduce the number of illegal aliens in the US, starting with criminal immigrants. Trump has said that all other illegal aliens would go “to the back of the line” to apply for citizenship. 

 

Beyond that, the 1980 Immigration law that opened up legal immigration to all sorts of options will probably be restricted. Articles are appearing with proposals to end “anchor baby, chain migration, lottery migration, foreign temp services, corporate L visas, foreign student work visas or other holes that prevent the US from pursuing what Trump calls “Immigration by Merit”.

 

Immigrants with Merit would be a return to the “brain drain” policies we used before we got sloppy in 1980.  We wanted the best of the best H1b engineers we could get.  We wanted a stable group of A2a seasonal agricultural workers. We would continue to allow F student visas to get the best H1b prospects we could get.

 

We want immigrants who can support themselves and don’t need more immigrants on the US welfare rolls getting welfare payments, free healthcare, free education, food stamps, housing subsidies or other benefits.

 

The catch is that some of the best foreign engineers we want might balk at just having their spouse and children with them in the US; they may want their parents and other as well.  We need to restrict this to spouse and children and let the others walk away.

 

We don’t need any more H2b visa holders, “anchor babies”, lottery winners, refugees or others with no needed skills. Companies like the meat packers who hire only refugees will need to stop hiring refugees.

 

We have lots of foreign “hospitality” employees working at hotels, resorts and restaurants, whose jobs could go back to US citizens.

 

Trump’s “Buy American & Hire American” suggests that our current Immigration policies will be tightened to exclude legal immigrants and others we don’t really need.

 

E-Verify would be used by all companies in the US.  This system confirms US citizenship or legal work permits as a requirement for employment. Illegal immigrants would not be eligible for US jobs at companies that are required to use E-Verify. E-Verify will expose lots of identity theft issues, like Obama’s Social Security card.

 

There are trade-offs in the changes Trump would make.  US citizens would benefit from these changes, because they would increase jobs available to US citizens including higher paying construction and manufacturing jobs.

 

Those businesses who would not benefit include businesses who import goods made overseas into the US. The “Buy American” refers to buying goods made in the US and buying services offered in the US.

 

As we shrink our foreign population and increase jobs for US citizens, we will reduce the number of welfare recipients and reduce our costs.  Anything short of this is suicide.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader