Op-Ed: Administration scheming to keep U.S. tech workers unemployed
By Joe Guzzardi, Project for Immigration Reform
Within less than 72-hours, President Joe Biden bailed out the Silicon Valley Bank and the equally insolvent Signature Bank. The banks’ abrupt failures caused a withdrawal rush on other banks across the nation that Social Science Research Network analysts fear could force nearly 200 depositories to shut their doors. Even insured depositors – those with $250,000 or less in the bank – could have problems withdrawing their cash if these institutions faced the same run-on cash that Silicon Valley experienced a week ago.
The hastily contrived plan included providing SVB’s depositors with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty and the threat of heavy losses for thousands of venture-backed startups. Signature Bank, which had followed SVB into insolvency, received the same guarantee.
More important, the Federal Reserve will provide a massive lifeline to the nation’s banks that would assure that similarly reckless lenders have access to funds that would keep them afloat and, hopefully, subdue any growing nationwide panic. Biden has since called for Congress to impose stiff penalties on executives at mid-sized banks whose ineptitude leads to bank collapse.
In short, the administration’s bailout plan handed SVB a blank check to cover all its depositors who not coincidentally are mainly Bay Area venture capitalists, Biden’s donor and voter base. All accounts are now covered with FDIC insurance, even those above the $250,000 limit. S&P Global, which provides intelligence and assessments to worldwide corporations, found that tech companies had $151.6 billion in uninsured deposits at SVB, or 93.9 percent of the company’s total holdings.
The SVB fallout has been headlines since Day One; the story is evolving. But, behind the scenes, the Biden administration is working feverishly to grant more favors to his tech pals. The tech industry, led by Lyft, Meta, Twitter and Amazon, has fired at least 150,000 workers. Among those laid off were foreign workers in the U.S. on temporary H-1B visas. The visa allows for a grace period of up to 60 days for those laid off to find another employer sponsor or they must return home. Before coming to the U.S., each H-1B visa employee knew and agreed to the guidelines which included the possibility that, if laid off and unable to find another job, they would have to leave.
Suddenly, however, the H-1B visa’s reasonable conditions are unfair and unacceptable. Led by Biden’s 25-member Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, lobbying to extend the job search period from 60 to 180 days has intensified. The Immigration and Citizenship Status Subcommittee’s final recommendations included not only extending the 60-day time allotment, but also granting the foreign nationals employment authorization documents (EAD), and travel permits to those who have approved I-40 employment documents in the E-1, E-2 and E-3 categories, and have waited in the immigrant visa backlog for five years, regardless of whether they’re able to file for adjustment of status applications.
To have meaning, immigration laws must be adhered to, enforced and not changed to satisfy the whims of special interests. Distributing EADs, mostly to Indians, before green cards become available would incentivize more foreign nationals to flood the immigration sponsorship program and increase the years-long backlog.
The tech layoff – with more to come – should provide employment opportunities for U.S. workers, displaced or denied opportunities for more than three decades since Congress created the H-1B visa in the Immigration Act of 1990. Instead, U.S. tech jobseekers will have to compete with the recent 85,000 H-1B visa winners in the just-completed 2023 lottery, and the recipients of the administration’s pending green card giveaway largess.
Consistent with its open border policy that puts migrants first, the Biden administration ignores U.S. tech workers’ needs and protects legally deportable aliens even though settled immigration law calls for their removal.
Big tech’s insistence that it needs an ever-higher H-1B total has always been suspect. But this year, with massive industry layoffs, the lottery should have been canceled. Furthermore, circumventing immigration laws to create more loopholes for fired H-1Bs, as the expansion lobby is doing, is indefensible.
ABOUT JOE GUZZARDI
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Project for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania.
