Professor Smartass: Lieberman bill backs H-1B import of slave labor

Friday, June 08, 2007

Lieberman bill backs H-1B import of slave labor

While everybody is worried about illegals coming from the south to pick our berries, clean our houses, and blow leaves off our driveways, few have noticed a more dangerous trend--corporations LEGALLY importing foreign workers for jobs like engineering and computer programming and paying them Third World wages while they work here.

The Chamber of Commerce sent a letter demanding that senators back this bill.

When Lieberman faced a primary challenger, some said we should back him because he was good on labor issues.

They were lying.

KEY EXCERPTS:

VOTE ALERT: Chamber of Commerce Pushes Lieberman Bill to Gut Sanders H-1B Bill

Here are a few excerpts of the [Chamber of Commerce] letter:
“On behalf of the United States Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation of more than three million businesses of every size, sector, and region, I urge you to oppose the Sanders-Grassley amendment ... Also, the Chamber urges you to support a side-by-side offered by Senator Lieberman. The Sanders-Grassley amendment is unnecessary…Further, this amendment sweeps too broadly, and is completely unworkable, as it would effectively bar an employer from using H-1B workers if it had a ‘mass layoff’ in the past year or anticipated one in the near future.”
It’s really unbelievable how shameless people are in Washington - it is a city where its just AOK to oppose legislation that would prevent abuse of the H-1B program by corporate executives who want to use it to lay off American workers and hire lower-paid foreign workers. And I’m still amazed (though I know I shouldn’t be) that Lieberman is carrying the bill to gut this commonsense proposal. His corruption is now just so out there for everyone to see, bringing him down to a new level of shamelessness. He’s pushing the poison pill as a pretty clear payback to the Chamber for the massive ad buy the organization did for him during his tough-fought re-election race. Here’s the New Haven Register’s details on that from 9/9/06:

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ran an ad from Sept. 1-7 for Lieberman, part of a $10 million national campaign to back candidates responsive to business interests who are in competitive races…Geoff O’Hara, executive director for the Eastern Region of the chamber, cited the senator’s votes on free trade legislation, transportation funding, bankruptcy reform and class-action legal reform as particularly important to them.”

FULL TEXT