Opinion

HUENNEKENS: Outsourcing And Foreign Labor Is A Double-Headed Monster

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Font Size:

Foreign guest worker programs and outsourcing are two heads of the same monster decimating  the working class and blue collar workers — the same people that propelled Donald Trump to victory in 2016. These policies harm Americans by robbing them of the opportunity to earn a fair wage at a decent job. This reality underscores the importance of President Trump’s recent executive order that protects these workers by mandating that all federal agencies focus on hiring citizens for federal contracts, among other measures.

The order is a direct reaction to the news that the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) planned to export as much as 20 percent of their work overseas while slashing 120 American jobs, with plans to cut another 100. This sort of action would be cause for uproar at a private company. At a government-owned corporation, it is outrageous. The TVA is a large employer across parts of the rural South, a region that lags behind the nation in economic development, where the company provides electricity and jobs for residents.

The Trump administration was right to crack down on the TVA for attempting to simultaneously outsource 20 percent of its work overseas while replacing some remaining domestic jobs with H-1B guest workers. Unfortunately, companies engage in this kind of behavior all of the time. For blue-collar workers there is no greater threat to their livelihood than the dual peril of outsourcing and foreign guest workers. In either case, employers are opting for  cheaper foreign labor, whether it be overseas or right here in the United States.

The rationale for outsourcing jobs is almost always to cut costs on labor, regardless of the impact on American workers. A number of things contributed to the growing trend of companies outsourcing certain parts of their operations, including high taxes, burdensome regulations, and  insatiable greed by corporate leaders who place profits and dividends over the lives of their employees. According to The Balance, outsourcing mostly impacts those employed in technology, call centers, human resources, and manufacturing.  This worsened with the adoption of disastrous trade policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Then-candidate Donald Trump made overturning NAFTA a key promise of his 2016 campaign, in an overture to the workers whose livelihoods NAFTA destroyed.

 President Trump addressed some of the incentive to outsource jobs by renegotiating trade agreements. But bringing jobs home means absolutely nothing if companies then turn around and fill those positions with foreign guest workers. Research shows that guest workers, especially in the H-2B non-skilled and H-1B skilled visa programs, are cheaper to hire than Americans performing the same jobs. The H-1B program is particularly egregious because Americans are often fired and then forced by their former employers to train their foreign replacements.

Many people believe that Americans are lazy and unmotivated workers. Forcing them to compete against H-1B and H-2B guest workers willing to work for significantly less reinforces this stereotype. The result of guest worker programs, inevitably, is that Americans miss out on opportunities right here in the United States.

How can someone expect to earn a living if the biggest employer in their area decides to move their job out of the country? And how can that same worker find a new job if they must compete against a foreign worker willing to work for significantly less money? Outsourcing and foreign guest worker programs jam American workers squarely between a rock and a hard place.

Fortunately, there are ways that our country can reverse these trends. President Trump took action to prioritize the hiring of American workers through the renegotiation of NAFTA, his Hire American, Buy American executive order and  last week’s directive “Aligning Federal Contracting and Hiring Practices. But these actions merely scratch the surface of what is possible. While eliminating guest worker programs requires an act of Congress, the president can direct federal agencies through rulemaking to raise the cost of participating in the H-1B and H-2B programs, eliminating the financial incentive to hire a foreign guest worker instead of an American. On the outsourcing front, the president signed a tax cut that lowered the cost of doing business in the US, hoping to lure back companies that sent jobs overseas.

If the president wants to win a second term, he needs to prove to the American working class that he is willing to continue fighting for them. Facing off against outsourcing and foreign guest worker programs would go a long way in showing American workers whose side he is on.

Preston Huennekens is a government relations associate at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel