The Doctor of Common Sense
The pre-election giveaway is buried on page 1760 of the 2232-page 2018 omnibus bill, where language allows the Department of Homeland Security to greatly expand the size of the H-2B visa-worker program up to roughly 100,000 imported workers:
SEC. 205. Notwithstanding the [66,000] numerical limitation set forth in section 214(g)(1)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(1)(B)), the Secretary of Homeland Security, after consultation with the Secretary of Labor, and upon the determination that the needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal year 2018 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary nonagricultural labor, may increase the total number of aliens who may receive a visa under section 101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b) of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b)) in such fiscal year above such limitation by not more than the highest number of H–2B nonimmigrants who participated in the H–2B returning worker program in any fiscal year in which returning workers were exempt from such numerical limitation.
The jargon gives the green light to Senators and Representatives to pressure DHS leaders until unless they agree to hand out more H-2B visas to the politicians’ local employers.
Employers got their H-2B guestworker program expansion in the #omnibus – same as FY 2017, gives DHS discretion to increase the size of the program, up to approximately double the annual cap of 66,000. See page 1760: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000162-4b0d-de1c-abfe-6bbd26030001 …
The provision was pushed by Democratic and GOP politicians, led by North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.
Many thanks, @timkaine & @MarkWarner for signing the letter to our Senate leaders urging them to include language in the FY18 omnibus package requiring caps to be increased for temporary worker visas. #SaveH2B. Time is running out for many small businesses.
“This shows that Congress uses the budget process to grant special access to insider lobbyists,” said lawyer John Miano, who opposes visa-worker programs. “By granting the ability to slip special interest provisions into a bill that must pass Congress, it rewards those who supply donations,” he added.
The H-2B visa-workers are imported by landscapers, forestry companies, seafood processors, construction firms, resorts, hotels and restaurants to import foreign workers for seasonal work. The imported workers are not cheap — see the data here — but their arrival means that employers do not have to raise their wages to persuade Americans to take seasonal jobs.
Moreover, if they raised their wages high enough to attract Americans to the seasonal jobs, then the companies would also have to raise wages for their year-round and supervisory workers.
Those extra wages would reduce company profits, raise costs and reduce the number of customers, and shrink the number of companies. But the extra wages would also leave hundreds of thousands of American voters working in higher-wage jobs, and would also nudge many additional employers to raise wages.
That free-market outcome is anathema to many GOP leaders, including House Majority Leader Paul Ryan. He has repeatedly said that immigration rules should be tuned to help employers — not employees — and that CEOs should be allowed to hire “any willing worker,” even if those workers live far outside the United States.
In 2015, Ryan sharply increased the size of the H-2B program, but after Donald Trump’s shocking victory in 2016, he let the program return to the 66,000 level.
In 2017, Ryan against pushed to expand the program with a 2018-style rule that encouraged legislators to pressure DHS officials for additional visas. Under then-DHS chief John Kelly, the agency reluctantly granted some additional visas, but far fewer than sought by business groups.
In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security has started distributing the 66,000 regular H-2B visas via a lottery because so many companies asked for a share of the H-2B visas.
The H-2B program is dwarfed by the size of the white-collar guest worker programs, via the H-1B, L-1, J-1, H-4, TN, and OPT programs. Collectively, these white-collar outsourcing visas keep more than 1 million foreign university graduates in healthcare, computer, business, and design jobs sought by American graduates.
The existence of the H-2B visa program creates a “crony-capitalist” economy. Companies which win the government-provided workers get to reduce their payroll costs, win more customers and generate more profits. Companies which do not get H-2B workers shrink and lose business. This dynamic forces many companies and labor-brokers to compete for the H-2Bs and to lobby for even more H-2Bs, so generating business donations and endorsements for politicians — at the cost of cutting wages for many Americans.
The program also distorts local economies. For example, in forest towns, the program allows out-of-state forestry contractors to ignore local job-applicants in favor of foreign H-2B workers.
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/03/21/gop-leaders-expand-h-2b-visa-worker-program/
CHECK OUT THE SHOW FROM TUESDAY 3/20/2018
TOPICS:
Good Guy With A Gun Stops Maryland High School Shooter. Democrat Tells People To Take Up Guns Against Trump. Peter Schweizer Reveals: Fraud Mitch McConnell And His Wife Takes Millions From The Chinese. Mark Zuckerberg ‘Saved Tens of Millions of Dollars’ by Selling Facebook Stock Before Crash. Police Officer Who Shot and Killed Justine Damond Charged With Murder. Huge surge in people getting high on BUG SPRAY.
A British sniper has killed a senior ISIS fighter with a ‘one in a million’ night-time shot from nearly a mile away, it has been claimed.
The unnamed SAS marksman is said to have killed the terrorist with a ‘head shot’ close to the Syrian border having been given a window of just 15 seconds.
He is understood to be a sergeant with the SAS G-Squadron and a veteran of operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where he is said to have recorded as many as 100 kills.
According to the Daily Star Sunday, he is believed to have used a US-made McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle as he targeted the fanatic from more than 1,500m away as he arrived at a safe house in a village.
The trooper is reportedly part of a counterterrorism drive in Iraq and Syria, which has been operating since the beginning of the year.
A source told the newspaper that the village in question was under ISIS control making a more preferable ‘capture mission’ impossible. The exact location has not been revealed.
‘The SAS team had hoped that the ISIS commander would arrive during the day because a night shot was regarded as too dangerous,’ the source said.
‘But as evening approached the team realised that they were going to have to either abort or go for a night shot. The sniper said he wanted to take the shot and was given a “go order”.’
The sniper had 15 seconds to take his shot as the extremist pulled up in a car. The source said the extremist was killed instantly after being shot in the back of the head.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment when contacted by MailOnline this morning.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5517645/SAS-sniper-kills-senior-ISIS-fighter-one-million-shot.html
An American lawyer who served as a back channel between dossier author Christopher Steele and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is opening up about explosive testimony he gave to a Senate committee late last year.
Adam Waldman said that during an appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on Nov. 3, he relayed information about possible links between billionaire activist George Soros and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier.
Waldman said he received the information in a March 16 meeting he had with Daniel J. Jones, a consultant and former staffer to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Waldman told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Jones asserted that he was working with Fusion GPS and that the research firm was being funded by a “group of Silicon Valley billionaires and George Soros.” Jones also described Fusion as a “shadow media organization helping the government.”
“He was there as Fusion GPS. He brought up Fusion GPS,” Waldman told TheDCNF of his interaction with Jones.
“It was very, very clear.”
Waldman, 49, also said that Jones mentioned Glenn Simpson, one of Fusion’s co-founders and Steele’s main partner on the dossier project.
Waldman’s testimony about the meeting was first revealed in a Daily Caller op-ed published last week by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who is a client of Waldman’s.
In the op-ed, Deripaska, a former business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s, largely criticized the so-called “Deep State,” which he alleges has pushed a false narrative about the Russia investigation. But the piece also broke news about his lawyer’s Senate testimony and the claims about Fusion GPS and Soros funding.
Jones, Fusion GPS, and a representative for Soros did not return repeated requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Senate panel declined to discuss Waldman’s testimony.
Reached by phone, Fusion GPS attorney Josh Levy declined to comment on Waldman’s testimony about Jones and Soros connections to the firm, saying “I’m not commenting for your story.”
Waldman’s link to key players in the Russia investigation is one of the more intriguing wrinkles in the dossier saga. On one side is Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. On the other are Steele, Jones and Warner, all of who are involved in one way or another in investigating the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016
election.
How the two sides found a common link in Waldman remains a mystery, one that lawyer said he is presently unable to discuss in full.
Waldman, who runs Endeavor Law Firm and also represents actor Johnny Depp, entered the national spotlight last month after text messages that he exchanged last year with Warner were leaked to Fox News. The messages, which Waldman provided to SSCI in September, showed that he negotiated with Warner on behalf of the London-based Steele to set up an interview with the committee.
Warner sought the meeting in his capacity as the top Democrat on Senate Intel.
Steele, as is now widely known, was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016 to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid Fusion for the project.
Waldman’s texts to Warner mention Steele, Deripaska, and Jones, who was an SSCI staffer for Feinstein when she chaired the panel.
Encrypted text messages provided to SSCI and obtained by TheDCNF corroborate some of Waldman’s claims, particularly regarding his meeting with Jones and a suggestion from him that he helped with anti-Trump news stories.
A March 15 message shows Jones contacted Waldman and introduced himself as being with an upstart non-profit group called the Democracy Integrity Project.
Signal messages from Daniel Jones to Adam Waldman
“Dan Jones here from the Democracy Integrity Project. Chris wanted us to connect,” reads the intro message, referring to Steele and to a newly formed non-profit group of which little is known.
Corporate registration documents show that a group by that name was formed in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 31, 2017, several weeks before Jones’ outreach to Waldman and several weeks after BuzzFeed News published the dossier.
Waldman’s contact with Warner began in February 2017 and initially centered on Deripaska and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Waldman suggested in his initial texts that he was in communication with Assange, who is living under asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The lawyer first mentioned Steele to Warner on March 17, a day after he met with Jones, who now runs a consulting firm called the Penn Quarter Group.
“Chris Steele asked me to call you,” Waldman wrote to Warner.
The text messages show that Warner, a Democrat, sought to meet with Steele separately from other members of the Senate committee. But Waldman said that Steele first wanted a letter signed by Warner and North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the committee, formally seeking an interview with Steele.
Warner rebuffed the idea and pressed for a private meeting with Steele, going as far as offering to travel to England.
“We want to do this right private in London don’t want to send letter yet cuz if we can’t get agreement wud rather not have paper trail,” Warner wrote on March 30.
Waldman’s texts to Warner also refer to Jones.
“[Steele] said he will also speak w Dan Jones whom he says is talking to you,” Waldman wrote in an April 25 message. “I encouraged him to engage with you for the sake of the truth and of vindication of the dossier,” the text continued.
Later that day, he wrote that “[Steele] said Dan Jones is coming to see you.”
“I suggest you explain to Dan why a call is the necessary first step rather than a letter from your perspective.”
Waldman had only a few text exchanges with Jones, but the messages provide some insight into Jones’ investigative work on Trump.
“Our team helped with this,” Jones wrote in a March 17 message that included a link to a Reuters article about Russian nationals’ investments in Trump-owned buildings. The article focuses heavily on Russians’ investments in Trump real estate properties in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla.
Jones did not describe who was included on his team, but Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS co-founder, testified to two congressional committees last year that his firm conducted research into Trump’s real estate deals in Sunny Isles Beach.
“I spoke w Warner and he did mention you as discussed. He obliquely brought your org up so it was natural,” Waldman wrote on March 19.
Waldman and Warner’s leaked texts show that the two called each other multiple times around that date.
The two sets of text messages, and Waldman’s testimony, raises numerous questions about the dossier.
It remains unclear why Jones reached out to Waldman. Jones and Waldman’s relationships to Steele are also a mystery. Waldman declined to comment on that particular matter, and a request for comment from Steele’s lawyers in London was forwarded to a legal adviser who said they could not speak to the media on Steele’s behalf.
Little else is known about Jones’ work with Fusion GPS or on the dossier. The only reporting on those connections comes from The Federalist which recently reported that Jones was working with Fusion as part of a post-election effort to validate the dossier.
Republican lawmakers remain puzzled by the Warner-Waldman and the possible links between Deripaska and Steele.
Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently sent letters to Waldman and Deripaska’s London-based attorney, Paul Hauser, inquiring whether they or Deripaska have ever hired Steele or his private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
Grassley also sent letters in January to members of the Clinton campaign and DNC asking about any communications with more than 20 individuals, including Fusion GPS employees, Waldman and Jones.
Grassley appears interested in exploring what implications any links between Steele and Deripaska would have for the dossier, which BuzzFeed News published on Jan. 10, 2017. Waldman denies one lead that lawmakers appear to be chasing: that Deripaska was a source for the dossier.
Waldman has represented Deripaska since 2009, largely on visa issues. The oligarch has fought the State Department over its decision in 2006 to revoke his visa after the agency became concerned about the industrialist’s alleged ties to Russian organized crime.
The aluminum magnate pays Waldman $40,000 a month for the work, according to documents filed by under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Deripaska has also worked in the past with Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was recently indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on money laundering and bank fraud charges.
While Manafort was on the campaign, he and Deripaska were in a dispute over a failed business venture involving cable TV stations in Ukraine. Deripaska accused the Republican consultant of squandering $19 million from the deal.
“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote to an associate on July 7, 2016, while he was still with the Trump campaign.
And just before joining the campaign in April 2016, Manafort sent a cryptic message to his associate: “How do we use to get whole?”
The emails have fueled speculation that Manafort sought to use his position on the campaign to help settle his debts to Deripaska.
Back Channel To Christopher Steele Goes On The Record About Senate Testimony
* A new book claims former President Barack Obama hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Romney
* Obama used law firm Perkins Coie to hide payment to Fusion GPS
* The Clinton campaign would later do the same thing to investigate Trump
The Barack Obama presidential campaign hired Fusion GPS in 2012 to dig up dirt on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, according to a book released on Tuesday.
The Obama campaign hid its payments to Fusion GPS through its law firm, Perkins Coie. The arrangement is similar to the one that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee used to pay Fusion for its investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
That contract led to the creation of the infamous Steele dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele.
“In 2012, Fusion GPS was hired to do opposition research on Mitt Romney for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign,” reads “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and Donald Trump’s Election.”
The book is written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, two veteran reporters who met during the 2016 campaign with Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. (RELATED: New Book Raises Questions About Steele Dossier Source)
“As had become standard practice in the shadowy world of ‘oppo’ research, the Obama campaign’s payments to Fusion GPS were never publicly disclosed; the money paid to the investigative firm was reported on campaign disclosure reports as legal bills to the campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie,” the book reads.
The Obama for America committee paid Perkins Coie around $3 million during the 2012 election cycle, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission, A vast majority of the payments were earmarked for “Legal Services.”
It is not clear how the law firm paid Fusion GPS for its research on Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.
Perkins Coie received more than $12 million from the Clinton campaign and DNC during the 2016 election cycle. Fusion GPS was paid just over $1 million for its research on Trump. The oppo firm paid Steele just under $178,000 for his work on the dossier.
REVEALED: Obama Campaign Hired Fusion GPS To Investigate Romney