Thank you Sara for the $250 and anonymous for the $500 donations as well as the many like IZ, CAV, Jee, Oh and others who donate between $5 and $55 each month. These are examples of the kind of support that keep us in the fight.

How about going after the low hanging fruit? Theoretically, @DHSgov can end the STEM OPT extension in 60 days with prudent rule making. That is in your purview. Then down the road and recognizing OPT was intended to be only “practical” training, shorten the program to only six months. Surely @StephenM has made the case for this? While we are on the subject of low hanging fruit, @USDOL needs to create a digital bulletin board and require all companies to post new PERM ads there for a minimum of 30 days and allow applicants to apply through a company’s online portal - no snail mail or email a resume allowed. Then audit the results. If you need help with this, surely the folks @JobsNowPR would be happy to assist.

Congratulations to @JobsNowPR for exposing Instacart’s discriminatory practices aimed at discouraging U.S. citizens from applying for these jobs. @TheJusticeDept has reached a settlement with the company that will compensate U.S. job applicants who were discriminated against.

Rubbish. Understand there are extremely low standards when it comes to where those degrees are obtained. In addition, H-1Bs are handed out by chance, in a lottery. It doesn't matter if the applicant had a B-Tech degree or a PhD from India Institute of Technology. Moreover, each year 20,000 H-1Bs are set aside for foreigners who attained a master's degree or higher from a U.S. institution. This has created a huge demand for foreigners (the largest population of foreign students in the U.S. come from India.) to enroll in advance degree programs in the U.S. Our universities love this because the foreign students pay out-of-state tuition and to accommodate them, these colleges have created poor quality master's programs - specifically for foreign students to get work permits. The knock on effects are proving to be catastrophic for our insitutions of higher learning. For instance: ✔️ Universites love this set up because they view foreign graduate students as cheap labor and prefer to hire them rather than Americans. ✔️ Science and math jobs have gotten worse over the last thirty-five years because of legal immigration and guest workers. ✔️ It has led to over-credentialization for jobs. In the workplace this has led to the replacement of competence with proxy. ✔️ It has hollowed out learning because curriculum is now optimized for the credential while practical, tacit and apprenticeship-style knowledge loses status. ✔️ Foreign students are 5X more likely to cheat than Americans. ✔️ American student classroom experience drops when foreign students reach 30 - 80% of the class. ✔️ U.S. colleges are now actively scouting abroad rather than for Americans. In the end, all these employment visas have done is depress the wages and deny employment opportunities for our college graduates.

Spot on. The $60,000 wage figure in H-1B is part of the definition of an “Exempt H-1B non-immigrant.” An Exempt H-1B Nonimmigrant is one who has a master’s degree or higher or earns more than $60,000. All other H-1B nonimmigrants are “Non-Exempt H-1B Nonimmigrants.” The exempt H-1B nonimmigrant classification appears to two places: 1. Displacement of Americans. 2. Recruitment of Americans It is unlawful to replace an American with an H-1B worker when: 1. The employer is H-1B dependent (has more than 15% of total employees on H-1B); AND 2. The replacement is a Non-exempt H-1B nonimmigrant; AND 3. The replacement takes place within 90 days of making the visa petition. Because #3 sets up an impossibility on its own, raising the $60,000 does nothing. Employers must check a box on the LCA form saying they recruited U.S. workers in good faith for and hired any more qualified Americans when: 1. The LCA specifies Non-Exempt H-1B Workers 2. The employer is H-1B dependent. The LCA is filed in a vacuum with no job or worker identified. Plus DOL is required to certify the LCA within 7 days as long as the form is filled out correctly. Even if DOL could check, there is no way to verify the anything because there is no worker identified to ensure he is exempt. There is no job, so there is no way to say a U.S. workers was not hired. Raising the $60,000 does nothing here either. Even if DOL has some means of checking, the rule only applies to H-1B dependent employers. And about 1/3 of the visas would be exempt anyway. Congress could raise the $60,000 to $60,000,000,000,000,000,000 and it would have no effect on H-1B.

Keep the pressure up. In this instance, the injured parties received the back pay that would have gone to them had they been hired. @Sonderling47 's DOL should require every PERM position to appear on a centralized, publicly accessible digital platform for at least 30 days, with standardized job information and electronic résumé submissions. Moreover, employers should maintain and disclose records on valid reasons explaining why each American applicant was rejected. Lastly, the 180-day six-month PERM freeze if a layoff does occur should be expanded to a year.