On Wednesday, July 26th, 2023, Secretary Mayorkas, head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), testified before the House Judiciary Committee. The 24-page written testimony he submitted for the record says a great deal about his vision for the future of the immigration policy landscape. He wrote about backlogs blocking alien benefit applications, so-called DREAMers needing permanent status, and, curiously, he wrote about 10 million “open jobs” that need foreign workers to fill them (this despite the fact that Secretary Mayorkas is not a labor expert, nor is he the Secretary of the Department of Labor). What is missing from the sweeping written testimony (and not mentioned in his testimony before the Committee) was any concern for American workers. It is a telling admission by omission that American workers are that far from his mind, and it is clearly reflected in the policies he’s promulgated as Secretary.
Where is this labor shortage that requires the Secretary of DHS to intervene? Why is the head of a Department tasked with protecting the American homeland testifying about labor shortages and his need to fill them? Sadly, the border catastrophe and the Secretary’s obfuscations regarding his direct role in exacerbating it took the attention away from these pertinent questions at the hearing. However, since Secretary Mayorkas brought up labor shortages as a way to defend his illegal policies, it is educational to review what he left out of his own testimony that strongly implies there is no labor shortage at all.
First thing to note is that Secretary Mayorkas did not mention the H-1B visa at all in his testimony. The H-1B visa is the “high-skilled” visa depended upon by tech companies to import cheap labor. During the tenure of Secretary Mayorkas, H-1B applications have annually broken records, culminating in over 700K applications just this year. It was so bad that Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said this was an indication of fraud. This is going on at the same time as mass layoffs and shrinking job openings in the tech sector. It is also the same tech sector seeing many staffing agencies settle claims of discrimination against American workers. None of this is even mentioned by the Secretary as a priority in his testimony. His own subcomponent (USCIS) sees fraud indicators in foreign recruitment while the sector is laying off hundreds of thousands of American workers. It is remarkable that this received no attention from the Secretary, particularly given that he previously served as Director of USCIS in the Obama Administration.
Next, Secretary Mayorkas repeatedly bragged about expanding “legal” pathways to the United States. He says he expanded access to the H-2A visa for aliens from certain Central American countries. It’s not clear how he did that, given that the H-2A visa has no numerical cap. However, there was no mention of the widespread forced labor prevalent among H-2A employers. Multiple independent investigations by the media, lawsuits by agriculture employees, and workers rights groups reports have documented widespread forced labor, debt bondage, and wage theft of H-2A workers at the same time Mayorkas is bragging about expanding its use. Is there a labor shortage in the agriculture sector because Americans do not want to work or is there a labor shortage because Americans are unwilling to be exploited?
Finally, the Secretary also must have forgotten to mention the child labor trafficking his Department facilitated. Reports of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) trafficked into the workforce do not suggest employers are diligently looking for American employees. Rather, they are ceaselessly looking for the cheapest, and most vulnerable, employees to exploit. While Secretary Mayorkas is worried about expanding legal pathways to fill his mythical labor shortage, he makes no mention of the UAC child labor exploitation pipeline that begins at the border he’s left undefended. The Secretary did take time to mention his efforts to unify families separated during the Trump Administration, though. He said he reunited more than 745 children, which is great news as long as you ignore (as he did) the thousands of UACs trafficked into the labor market under his tenure.
It is somewhat understandable that Republican House Judiciary Committee members focused on the border catastrophe created by Secretary Mayorkas and his policies. The crisis at the border is affecting communities nationwide with no signs of stopping. However, the labor crisis cannot be ignored. Literal slavery is rising, and exploitation of vulnerable migrants and American workers alike is prevalent. The immigration system of this country is being used to enable and expand this exploitation economy. Secretary Mayorkas is a key architect of this travesty, just as he is fiddling while the border burns. It behooves Judiciary Committee members to pay more attention to this unreported crisis and bring it to light. Secretary Mayorkas is using the myth of labor shortages to defend his illegal policies at the border. Someone needs to make him acknowledge the human costs he’s exacting from foreign and American workers.
JARED CULVER is a Legal Analyst for NumbersUSA
