The administration, which Joe Biden does not run, again gave working-class Americans the shaft.
Last week, LandLine Magazine stated that the Department of Homeland Security has made an additional 70,000 H-2B visas available for next year, doubling the previous year’s number. Transportation occupations received about 1,500 of these visas.
Given market conditions and the collapse of the trucking industry for US workers, these numbers are a very big deal.
FreightWaves listed the trucking company bankruptcies and truck driver layoffs. It was only recently a thriving industry. It takes up a huge amount of space on their website.
Newsweek did a quick scan through the most recent dozen of 82 articles. In October and November alone, over 4,000 truckers in the United States lost their jobs. Thousands more are at risk of being laid off. At the same time, the companies they work for seek bankruptcy protection.
This number doesn’t include many self-employed truckers whose business closures are much more difficult to track.
Given this fact, why would DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas push for more visas for foreign truckers?
Perhaps what he said in a November press release gives us a hint. “There are employers across the country that would suffer greatly without H-2B workers,” Mayorkas said. “Authorizing these supplemental visas helps U.S. employers fill those positions … It helps fuel our economy and reduce irregular migration while also providing a safe and lawful pathway to the United States for noncitizens who are prepared to work.”
So, he wants to enrich large employers, but it’s not helping anyone in small trucking companies. Small businesses are the backbone of capitalism.
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