'Never-Ending Flow of Cheap Labour': JD Vance Reiterates US Stand on Barring Tech Majors from Green Card Program

Washington DC: US Vice President JD Vance has continued to champion his government's move to suspend leading Tech majors from the green card program. On Friday Vance in a stinging reply to Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal reiterated the stance of the US government, "Socialism" apparently means fighting like hell to ensure mega-corporations have a never-ending flow of cheap labour,"

Congresswoman Jaypal, a democrat who sits on the Immigration Subcommittee and once held an H1B visa, said the move from the Trump administration weakens legal immigration and the US ability to continue innovating. "This is a crucial issue for me as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, the only member of Congress to have actually had an H-1B visa, and the Representative for tens of thousands of Microsoft workers. The administration has been consistently working to take away legal pathways for immigrants to contribute their talents to our country, and this is yet another of those attacks. The PERM program is the first step toward an employment-based green card for countless workers who want to contribute to this country, and it lays out a clear process with steps to ensure that this is a net benefit to our economy and does not harm American jobs," she posted on X.

"Our economy, our communities, and our families depend on immigrants in many sectors, including the tech sector, and heavy-handed attacks like this only hurt efforts to build a strong, stable, and diverse base of workers who have legal pathways to come and be in the United States while also protecting U.S. workers from unscrupulous employers. You don’t fix a broken immigration system by taking a hammer to legal immigration. Microsoft has been a leader in advocating for comprehensive immigration reforms that modernize an antiquated immigration system and provide more — not fewer — legal pathways for immigrants from all over the world to work here and be with their families. Targeting Microsoft or the PERM program in this way simply undermines legal immigration and weakens America’s ability to innovate," she further said.

Earlier while addressing the News conference on Visa frauds JD Vance described workers coming in on H1B visas as 'indentured servants'. “If you are working as an H-1B visa in the United States of America, you’re earning $20,000 less than an American citizen hired in the same position. If you were brought in by one of these foreign outsourcing firms, you’re making $48,000 less than an American citizen in a similar position. So, I’m sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played. You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by under cutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with.”

In a far-reaching move US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling earlier announced that the US Government is suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world which include Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini. The US Labour department attributed the suspension to multiple active federal investigations even as it also suspended US tech majors Microsoft and Adobe from the program.

Sonderling said the companies named had collectively sought millions of foreign workers and received hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa approvals and permanent labour certifications. "Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They received over 230,000 H1B Visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications that's hundred and thousands of jobs that were taken from a American workers," the Labor Secretary said.

The announcement came a day after the US Department of Homeland Security proposed new fees for F-1 non-immigrant students seeking to participate in Optional Practical Training (OPT), describing the measure as an effort to protect American workers and strengthen the integrity of the immigration system. 

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