Tilli$ Thime Machine: Thom worked with Dems against Trump to import MORE foreigners

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Yessirreee.  Our senior senator knows how hated he is. He knows the GOP base is on to him and his traitorous ways.  Right now, Thom Tillis is caught in a challenging dance — trying to please his DC pals and big donors while fooling the folks back home into giving him six more years of grifting on the taxpayer dime.

A huge debate among Republicans right now involves expanding the America First ideal to employment.  Quite a few folks are serious about trying to fill jobs with Americans FIRST before importing foreigners.

Back in 2017 – while he was also fighting Trump’s border wall – Tillis joined with Richard Burr and the Democrats to fight efforts to limit H-2B visas and the flow of foreign workers into the country:

[…] On March 6, North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis announced a bipartisan Senate effort to increase the supply of H-2B visas, saying;

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Mark Warner (D-VA) and a bipartisan group of 29 other senators sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, outlining concerns that the H-2B visa statutory cap will be reached soon. The Senators requested the Department of Homeland Security to conduct an audit to determine the number of unused visas during the first half of the fiscal year, and also requested that any unused visas be provided to eligible businesses that have been unable to secure an adequate number of workers due to the cap.

According to the statement:

In 2015, after previously announcing that the statutory cap had been reached, [the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency] determined that more than 5,000 unused visas were available. Soon thereafter, the agency began accepting applications from businesses still hoping to hire workers through the program. With that in mind, we respectfully request that your office conduct an immediate audit of the number of unused visas from the first half of the fiscal year and project the likely usage rate for the second half of the fiscal year … As with prior practice, any unused visas should be provided to eligible businesses that have been unable to secure an adequate number of workers due to the cap.

The estimate of 5,000 unused visas is based on the number of approved-but-unused 2015 visas. According to the letter:

We understand that when USCIS deems the cap to be reached, it accounts for a certain number of withdrawals, denials, and revocations. It is very important, however, that as soon as it has information on the actual number of visas issued, USCIS immediately makes any unused visas available to seasonal businesses. 

The political request to recycle 5,000 allocated-but-unused visas is a long fall from the industry’s successful push in 2015 to effectively quadruple the H-2B visa program from 66,000 visas to 274,000 visas. House Speaker Paul Ryan backed the expansion in December 2015. Growing public and media criticism prompted Ryan to withdrew his support in 2016, so allowing the program to drop back down to 66,000 visas per year level.

The H-2B program is the blue-collar version of the H-1B visa outsourcing program, which allows a population of roughly 650,000 lower-wage foreign university graduates to take jobs sought by young American college grads. The H-1B program gets a lot of bad publicity, partly because it threatens the peers and children of influential middle-class professionals in the computer, academic, healthcare and business sectors, who also have ready access to sympathetic journalists.

Thirty-one Senators signed the letter to outsource the extra jobs. They include 10 Democrats and 21 Republicans:

Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Chris Coons (D-DE), John Barrasso (R-WY), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Tom Carper (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Angus King (I-ME), Tim Scott (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Richard Burr (R-NC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), James Lankford (R-OK), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Bob Casey (D-PA).

The signers include Sen. Graham, who has a long history of aiding H-2B employers.

Tillis is also a long-standing supporter of cheap-labor visas. When serving as Speaker of the North Carolina House in 2013, he helped employers hire illegal immigrants by overriding a veto from GOP Gov. Pat McCrory. In 2017, Tillis is also pushing business-backed plans to increase the annual inflow of foreign contract-workers and to deliver an amnesty to at least 750,000 younger illegals. 

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