Image: U.S. Tech Workers

Letter to the editor published in the Dalton Daily Citizen and News

October 8, 2019

Dear editor,

I wrote to you in July to criticize Rep. Tom Graves‘ yes vote on House Bill 1044, the “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.” H1044 eliminates the per-country caps on employment-based green cards, allowing India and China to dominate our guest worker system with 600,000 H1B visa holders every year for the next decade. The billionaires in Silicon Valley have long advocated for such an expansion, as they use those visa holders to lower the wages of American citizens who are computer programmers and software engineers. But all STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) career tracks would be flooded with low-wage foreign workers seeking to displace Americans.

As I write, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has twice introduced the Senate version, S386, and asked for a unanimous consent vote. Lee is attempting to force it through without a single hearing. He and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California (the bill’s co-sponsor), do not want to provide a public hearing of the many ways this bill would devastate the job prospects of American STEM-trained students, or to uncover the rampant discrimination against middle-aged Americans forced to train their own replacements.

Sen. David Perdue, R-Georgia, was the lone objection to voice vote passage, but he has pulled his objection amid massive lobbying for the measure by big tech.

Sen. Perdue’s role in allowing S386 to proceed without hearings is a bitter disappointment to Georgia families struggling to pay tuition bills in-state for a STEM degree.

I started following this legislation as the mother of an engineering student currently in his junior year and the wife of a software sales professional. As I’ve researched the whole bill, it has become clear to me that big tech intends to pass more laws that hollow out our middle class much like illegal immigration has taken away jobs from our lower-class, low-skilled neighbors and family. All while they hide conservative voices on social media platforms and censor websites as we look for alternatives to the approved corporate media messages.

I urge Sen. Perdue to reconsider his support of this bill so American citizens will be taken care of first. And I urge my neighbors to speak out.

Denise Burns

Ringgold

Here.