Jayapal criticizes suspension of green-card processing for Microsoft and other IT firms
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The Facts
- The Trump administration suspended eight IT firms from a green-card application program for foreign workers.
- The suspended firms include Microsoft, Tata, Infosys and Wipro.
- The action concerns the Labor Department's Permanent Labor Certification, or PERM, program.
- The administration said the firms' practices had shut Americans out of jobs.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal criticized the suspension as undermining legal immigration and U.S. innovation.
- The suspension is expected to affect thousands of Indian technology professionals pursuing employer-sponsored permanent residency.
Context
What is the PERM program?
PERM, or Permanent Labor Certification, is a Labor Department program used in employment-based green-card applications for foreign workers. Firstpost Telegraph
Who could be affected by the suspension?
Reports say thousands of Indian technology professionals who depend on employer-sponsored green cards after entering the United States on H-1B visas could be affected. News18 ETCFO.com Jammu Kashmir Lates… Connected to India …
What are the competing positions on the action?
The administration said the firms' practices had displaced American workers; Jayapal said restricting the pathway undermines legal immigration and the country's capacity to innovate. News18 ETCFO.com Economic Times Jammu Kashmir Lates…
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Both accept the administration's finding that these firms' hiring practices shut Americans out of jobs as the real trigger for the suspension, not merely an administration pretext.
- Where Left and Right split
- The left and the right split on whether the suspension burdens legal workers or protects American jobs.
- Why they won’t converge
- The divide is one of values, not facts: whether accountability for an employer's practices should fall on the American jobseekers the program was built to protect or on the foreign workers who followed its rules in good faith.
How left and right read it
People who followed the legal path should not be the ones made to pay for employers' conduct. Yet suspending eight firms from the PERM program lands hardest on thousands of Indian technology professionals pursuing employer-sponsored permanent residency, who had no say in the hiring practices the administration says shut Americans out. Punish the employer, not the worker.
A labor program built to certify that no American was available for the job owes its first loyalty to the American who wanted it. That is why the finding matters most here: the administration says these eight firms, Microsoft and Tata and Infosys and Wipro among them, used their practices to shut Americans out of work. Who proves compliance before access returns?
“It is a good thing that Microsoft and many other companies import Indians to take jobs that otherwise would go to American citizens, says senior Democratic leader and Indian immigrant Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).” — Breitbart
PERM was built to prove no American was passed over. Now the wait falls on firms still unproven — and the workers tied to them.
The receipts — 15 sources
Independent coverage (15)
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