Technology and engineering jobs are Obama immigration policy’s next victims

As thousands of American-born college grads unable to find good jobs are drowning in student loan debt, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding a program designed to award businesses for hiring immigrants with college degrees.

The expansion comes as part of President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration last November. Under the DHS plan, the Optional Practical Training program (OPT), which awards alien college graduates a work permit to stay in the United States for 12 months, will be expanded to allow foreign-born graduates in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields to stay and work in the U.S. for up to 36 months.

DHS announced in a press release Friday: “By increasing access to OPT for STEM students, the proposed regulations will help U.S. colleges and universities remain globally competitive in attracting international students in STEM fields. It also reforms the program to better ensure that practical training opportunities are designed to meet student needs, while requiring greater accountability of employers and students.”

According to the Center for Immigration studies’ David North, the program helps foreign-born graduates to the detriment of American citizens.

He explained:

U.S. employers are given a substantial bonus for hiring an alien college grad rather than an American college grad with the same skills and the same salary; I figure it can be above $10,000 in many cases involving STEM workers.

Why does the 10 grand bonus go along with the decision to hire the foreign worker?

DHS, by defining a recent college grad as a student, takes both the worker and the employer out from under payroll taxes — thus penalizing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds directly, and our elders indirectly. Congress did not make this decision, at least not directly; but since foreign students and their employers have privileges denied to citizens and green card holders alike, the bonus has been created.

So not only does the DHS’s plan ensure that foreign-born graduates will be taking jobs that American college students desperately need, it also categorizes the foreign-born employees in such a way that exempts them from payroll taxes.

Meanwhile, Obama officials claim that the move is necessary because U.S. born students simply aren’t showing enough interest in highly valuable STEM fields. Of course, there’s plenty of evidence that they’re being dishonest.

For instance, a 2013 study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that there are plenty of American workers with and without degrees who are qualified to fill STEM jobs in IT sectors.

Encouraging foreign-born STEM graduates to spend more time in the U.S. has one major impact, the EPI study found: wage suppression in tech-related fields.

“The immigration debate is complicated and polarizing, but the implications of the data for enacting high-skill guestworker policy are clear: Immigration policies that facilitate large flows of guestworkers will supply labor at wages that are too low to induce significant increases in supply from the domestic workforce,” EPI reported.

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