Joe Biden was briefly infamous for telling coal miners they should “learn to code” after Obama administration global warming punishment rendered them jobless. What he didn’t tell the miners was going to school in pursuit of a STEM degree wouldn’t guarantee a job either.
But the former miners would have the distinction of being forced out of two careers by government policy.
Here are the facts regarding US citizens who graduate with ‘cutting-edge’ STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). U.S. News and World Report found, “Overall, US colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields [and] only about one in four STEM bachelor’s degree holders has a STEM job.”
Instead, foreign workers imported into the U.S. on H1-B visas by so-called American tech companies comprise two-thirds of all new STEM employees. These human imports are willing to trade lower wages now for the chance to gain a Green card and become a U.S. citizen in the future.
As a result, average wage rates in the tech sector are unchanged from Bill Clinton’s presidency. Even citizens who manage to land a STEM job are often working on borrowed time. Companies like Disney, Eversource Energy, and Southern California Edison contract with a turnkey outsourcing firm frequently based in India. The firm hires the workers, pays them in local currency - sheep, goats, whatever - and then delivers the brand new, entirely untrained staff to their new U.S. jobs.
And to prove how soulless these tech HR departments really are, the citizens being fired are required to train their replacements if they want to receive severance pay. This is like requiring ISIS captives to sharpen swords.
One of the few times these career walking dead were able to fight back was when 200 citizens working for the Tennessee Valley Authority - a federally-chartered corporation created by FDR - decided to go public when TVA CEO Jeff Lyash decided he was tired of creating jobs in Tennessee and wanted to start growing careers in Thiruvananthapuram.
This is cruel corporate arrogance at its most corrupt. An organization created by Congress to aid Americans has no more business importing foreign serfs to replace citizens than the USPS has hiring drug mules to deliver the mail.
Instead of meekly training their Indian H1-B replacements, these brave patriots met with President Trump, who promptly fired two TVA board members and said he would continue firing board members until the imports were returned to sender.
The response of Republicans in the Senate to this small ripple in the avalanche of foreigners taking jobs from citizens was telling. Instead of supporting the American citizens who elect them and mistakenly thought the GOP had their best interests at heart, every last Republican senator agreed unanimously this week that the US economy needs even more low-wage STEM workers.
Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Google) legislation passed without a formal vote because not a single Republican had a problem with making it harder for citizens to get a job and depressing the wages of those who do.
And to add contempt to callous, Lee called the bill the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.
These cocktail conservatives had a choice between supporting the citizens who vote for them and the tech companies who gave all their political donations to Biden. They chose Big Tech and betrayed Big Tex.
They listened to paid liars like Mile Hansen - a Lee lackey - who claims, “many business leaders share a common challenge in realizing their global potential. The problem isn’t a lack of innovative ideas. It’s a lack of high-skilled labor.”
Yeah, these fat, lazy, hillbilly elegy-looking Trump voters just can’t cut it in Big Tech America, in spite of the fact there are two U.S. graduates every year for each open STEM job.
“In Utah,” Hansen whines, “like many places around the country, tech CEOs have maxed out their local talent pool.” So instead of flying in applicants from Pennsylvania these cheap-labor plutocrats prefer flying in serfs from Punjab.
As Breitbart said, “Every Republican and Democratic senator has let Lee pass a bill through the Senate that will supercharge the outsourcing of the white-collar jobs needed by America’s professional class and its college-educated children.”
And the Republicans conservatives foolishly elect are just fine with that.
Remember that stab-in-the-back the next time any of them ask you for a contribution. Ask you to volunteer for their campaign. And worst of all, ask you for your vote.
The only job these wretches care about is their own.
Trump has threatened to veto the defense appropriation bill if it doesn’t include a provision to remove Section 230 protections from Big Tech. Trump should remember the TVA workers and add Lee’s legislation to his veto list.
Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr@gmail.com.
