In the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is announcing a jobs giveaway for newly arrived migrants with work permits.
On Tuesday, Mayorkas announced a final rule from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that will allow millions of migrants, many of whom have been released into the U.S. interior by the Biden administration, to keep their work permits for up to 540 days when they seek a renewal.
Migrants previously could renew their work permits for 180 days. For years, Democratic mayors had lobbied DHS to extend such automatic employment authorization for migrants. The rule will go into effect on Jan. 13, 2025.
Mayorkas said in a statement the move is meant to help “businesses fill” American jobs with more migrants:
Increasing the automatic extension period for certain employment authorization documents will help eliminate red tape that burdens employers, ensure hundreds of thousands of individuals eligible for employment can continue to contribute to our communities, and further strengthen our nation’s robust economy. [Emphasis added]
Likewise, USCIS Director Ur Jaddou said the rule will “help U.S. employers better retain their workers and help prevent workers with timely-filed [work permit] renewal applications from experiencing lapses in their employment authorization and employment authorization documentation through no fault of their own.”
At a hearing last week, Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-CA) scolded Jaddou for the rule — noting that inflation has continuously outpaced U.S. wages and foreign workers have netted nearly all of the nation’s job growth.
“Now we learn that the agency intends to increase temporary work permits from 180 days to 540 days,” McClintock said. “If anyone wonders why real wages for working families have declined under this administration, look no further than the agency before us today.”
Indeed, in the last year, more than a million foreign-born workers have secured American jobs while nearly 800,000 native-born Americans have dropped out of the workforce.
In July of this year, a Pew Research Center study found that as of 2022, more than 30 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens were holding American jobs — a 20-percent increase over the last 15 years.
During the same period, the number of native-born Americans who have been added to the workforce has increased by less than 10 percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
