We are living in a moment with unprecedented income and wealth inequality. At a time when the richest people in our country have never had it so good, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and inflation-adjusted income for the average American worker has been stagnant for 50 years. Why is that?
How did it happen that the three richest men in America own more wealth than the bottom half of our society while so many of our people struggle to afford the high cost of rent, groceries and other basic necessities of life?
It's time to take a hard look at some of the economic policies which have made the rich much richer while many Americans continue to fall further and further behind.
BERNIE SANDERS HITS OUT AT H-1B VISA PROGRAM FOR REPLACING AMERICAN JOBS WITH 'INDENTURED SERVANTS'
Thirty years ago, the leaders of corporate America, the political establishment in both major parties and the editorial boards of influential newspapers told us not to worry about the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR). They promised that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States. I never believed that and voted against those agreements.
Unfortunately, I, and the many others who opposed those trade deals, were proven correct. NAFTA and PNTR cost us millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs as large corporations shut down thousands of factories in America and fled to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries in search of cheap labor.
And what about all of the great high-tech jobs that would be created? Well, that didn't quite happen either. As a result of the H-1B guest worker program, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of low-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available. In other words, "Heads billionaires win. Tails American workers lose."
In recent weeks, the H-1B program has sparked intense debate. Billionaires like Elon Musk claim it is crucial to our economy, arguing that the United States faces a shortage of highly skilled engineers and technology professionals. They are dead wrong.
The primary purpose of H-1B and other guest worker programs is not to employ the "best and the brightest," but instead to replace American workers with lower-paid workers from abroad who often live as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multi-billionaire owners of large corporations make.
SEN BERNIE SANDERS: TWO AMERICAS, THE PEOPLE VS. THE BILLIONAIRES
Not only is this program disastrous for American workers, it can be very harmful to guest workers as well, who are often locked into lower-paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions.
Between 2022 and 2023, the top companies using the H-1B program laid off 85,000 American workers, while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from abroad. Meanwhile, millions of Americans with advanced degrees in STEM fields are unable to find work in their areas of expertise.
If there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, why did Tesla lay-off over 7,500 American workers last year – including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas – while applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers?
If these jobs are only going to "the best and brightest," why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year? Those don’t sound like highly specialized jobs that are for the top 0.1 percent, as Musk claimed last month. Musk has failed to address concerns about Tesla's use of H-1B visas for its employees.
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If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as lawyers, dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers? Can we really not find English teachers in America? Do we really believe that we are facing a dire shortage of lawyers in our country?
Let’s be clear. To the extent that there may be labor shortages in our country in some highly specialized areas that need to be filled by employees from abroad through the H-1B program, we need to make sure that this program is used as a short-term fix.
Long-term, if the United States is going to succeed in a highly competitive global economy, we must have the best-educated workforce in the world.
And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers. This is something that I have advocated from my first days as a U.S. senator.
Further, we must also significantly raise the minimum wage for guest workers, give them the freedom to easily switch jobs and require corporations to aggressively recruit American workers first before they can hire workers from overseas. The widespread corporate abuse of the H-1B program must be ended.
Multi-billionaire oligarchs in Big Tech should not be allowed to hire guest workers to fill entry-level and mid-level Information Technology jobs. Those jobs should be going to American workers who have the Constitutional right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker.
Mr. Musk, Mr. Ramaswamy, and others have argued that we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce. They are right. But the answer, however, is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad.
The answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future. And that’s not just engineering. We are in desperate need of more doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, electricians, plumbers, and a host of other professions.
Bottom line: We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one way we do that is to bring about major reforms in the H-1B program and other fatally flawed guest worker programs.
