The recent decision is a big labor win for American employees as it recognizes that a president can use thier authority under section 212(f) of federal law to block the inflow of foreign workers if they have a damaging impact on Americans’ economic circumstances, including the employment of U.S. citizens and already present immigrants.
“The court expands executive authority under 212(f) to previously unknown limits,” said a tweeted complaint from one of the lawyers who helps to import foreign workers for U.S. jobs, often leaving U.S. workers to train their foreign replacements in order to receive full severance or benefits.
The decision is an equally big setback for the multitude of Fortune 500 corperations objecting to Trump’s summer proclamation. The job-saving proclamation temporarily bars the entry of foreign workers via the huge H-1B, J-1, H-2B, and L-1 labor pipelines, which keep approximately two million compliant and cheap contracted workers in jobs needed by unemployed blue-collar and white-collar Americans.
The decision will likely be appealed, and tech sector business groups have filed an identical lawsuit in California.
“The court rejects the Plaintiffs’ statutory and constitutional challenges to the Proclamations … [and] the court concludes that the Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on their challenges to the Proclamations,” said the decision by Judge Amit Mehta, at the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.
According to Breitbart News: “The plaintiffs and business groups had argued Trump’s curbs on the hiring of foreign workers were not justified because they were “rational,” according to their studies and claims. The judge dismissed that argument, saying the business groups:
… insist that nonimmigrants like H-1B and H-2B visa applicants work in sectors where “unemployment is low, rather than in the high-unemployment areas that the entry suspension is supposedly meant to target.” Finally, they maintain that the exclusion of immigrant and nonimmigrant labor actually is counterproductive to the President’s stated goal of improving the economic prospects of American workers. They cite declarations from experts, economic studies, and even statements from federal agencies to make the point that the entry of aliens in fact creates jobs for American workers, and the idea that new arrivals take jobs from Americans is a fallacy. None of these arguments is ultimately persuasive.
The argument fails, the judge said, because the business lawyers “demand for a “rational justification” and a “rational investigation” far exceeds what the [Supreme] Court in Trump v. Hawaii required for a valid presidential “finding.””
The lawsuit was filed in the name of 169 Indian contract workers and their spouses. The Indians hold valid H-1B visas and are being denied entry to the United States to retake jobs that would otherwise go to well qualified Americans.
For the full story, please visit Breitbart News.
