The Hill News

The Department of Labor (DOL) just issued new rules for the H-2B guest worker program, a temporary foreign worker program for jobs outside of agriculture that don’t require a college degree. The new rules will help put unemployed Americans back to work. This is especially true for those hardest hit by the recession: young workers and those with a high school diploma or less. The rules help prevent corporate greed from trumping the needs of the unemployed and simultaneously protect the most vulnerable immigrants in our workforce.

Unfortunately, employers that hire H-2B guest workers are lobbying Congress to kill or suspend the new rules, and they’re likely to challenge them in the courts, too. Rodney Alexander, a House Republican from Louisiana, has already proposed a joint resolution that would nullify them. Why? Because employers claim it is too difficult to fill job openings with U.S. workers, and that the new H-2B rules are so burdensome they will devas! tate entire industries. These are bogus claims: there are millions of available U.S. workers and the new rule’s requirements are modest.

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