Hardly a week goes by that we don’t see reports on American companies’ efforts to take advantage of cheap foreign labor — usually abroad but also in the United States. The U.S. government’s H-1B visa program provides 85,000 visas a year to foreigners with skills that American workers supposedly don’t have (but who work for a small fraction of the pay). Disney World just laid off a couple hundred American workers to make way for cheaper replacements from India. South California Edison, a power utility, did the same thing to 450 workers. Neither company even bothered to try to argue that the American workers lacked the necessary skills. The U.S. government has done nothing to investigate and stop such practices, while it spends billions to keep out and kick out low-wage workers. It just keeps issuing the visas.
No surprise that legislation to require companies importing this labor to demonstrate a good-faith effort to hire Americans first can’t pass.