Congress Launches New Assault on U.S. Workers

Joe Guzzardi on Feb 9, 2022

4. Create a five-year program that creates 5,000 Special Immigrant Visas yearly for Hong Kong residents, amounting to an additional 25,000 Green Cards over the five-year period.

5. Authorize an unlimited refugee/asylee program for certain Hong Kong residents.

6. Change existing law to treat Hong Kong as a separate state from China in determining per-country limits for existing Green Card categories.

7. Grant Temporary Protected Status with work permission for Hong Kong residents currently in the U.S., regardless of their existing immigration status which may include unlawfully present status.

Under the guise of promoting American innovation, the act’s hodgepodge of vague language makes almost anything possible. One thing is certain – the America COMPETES Act will massively increase legal immigration, flood the labor market, make job searches for Americans in all sectors more difficult, and have an adverse effect on recent U.S. college graduates hoping to begin their careers.

The bill intentionally harms U.S. citizens, but will be a bonanza for arriving foreign nationals, employers addicted to cheap labor and Silicon Valley multimillionaires. No greater gap exists between voters and Congress than on immigration policy.

The thoroughly awful, destructive America COMPETES Act is one of the most powerful examples of why the immigration chasm is so wide.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org. Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.