The Obama administration awarded 2.3 million work permits to foreign workers in 2016 according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security. This number does not include new legal immigrants and those granted visas through guest-worker programs such as H-1B visas. This means that around 4 million legal foreign workers were added the U.S. economy and job market in FY16 alone.
The report shows the number of recipients for each category of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) or federal work permits from FY12-FY16. There are 58 EAD categories with varying lengths of years or months the work permit will last.
For example, the DHS report shows that 186,902 illegal aliens were granted a two-year work permit under DACA in 2016 while 514,678 illegal aliens were granted the two-year DACA work permit in 2015. So, in total 701,580 illegal aliens were granted an EAD under the DACA category in FY16.
This means that the 1,268,370 FY16 total on the DHS report is misleading since it doesn’t include the EADs that were granted in previous years but were still valid in FY16. According to the report the number of EADs granted increased 73% from 1.3 million in 2012 to 2.3 million by 2016.
The Obama administration significantly increased the number of worker permits by accepting more asylum applications since they receive a work permit while their case is going through the immigration courts.
The Obama administration also increased the number of migrants that were “paroled” from 28,402 in 2012 to 78,713 in 2016. Pres. Obama additionally allowed 76,000 spouses of foreign workers who were in the U.S. on worker visas such as H-1B, J-1, and L-1 visas to receive a work permit even though under their spouse’s work visa they were not eligible.
The spike in migrant labor shows that Obama’s deputies “raised the art of bypassing Congress and abusing executive authority to a new level,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies. “Most members of Congress ….. [and] people are completely unaware of this third pipeline of [foreign] labor,” she added.
Vaughan continued saying, “It is no wonder that there is such abysmal labor force participation rates among Americans because a lot of these people are working in jobs that Americans and legal immigrants don’t have access to.”
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