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One thing you won`t have to worry about this Christmas is having to start the new year with a massive increase of H-1B visas.
Despite an intense lobbying campaign by the likes of Bill Gates, Congress didn`t pass an H-1B increase or any other escalation in immigration.
Bill Gates started lobbying for the Skil bill months ago. He personally went to Washington D.C. twice, and an army of his paid K-Streeters swarmed Capitol Hill to buy votes. Bill Gates was so salient that the Skil Bill was nicknamed “Bill`s Skil Bill”. In addition Gates spent untold millions of dollars to buy votes in Congress.
Gates wasn`t the only one to get slapped in the face. Hundreds of companies and cash-rich political action campaigns failed to open the flood gates to cheap labor.
Congress had one last chance to slip in an increase to the H-1B cap before the House and Senate voted in favor of the “United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act” (H.R. 5682) and (S. 3709) — more appropriately named “Nukes for Mangos” . John Boehner (R-OH) spearheaded a backdoor attempt to attach an H-1B increase to the bill but it was blocked by Sen. Biden (D-DE). At that point the clock ran out on the cheap labor lobby.
I wish I could have seen Bill Gates as the gavel closed on the 109th Congress! He was probably stomping his feet, clenching his fists, and having a temper tantrum.
Defeat of the Skil bill was a huge upset that wouldn’t have been possible without Roy Beck and his tireless team at NumbersUSA. They launched a full scale call-in campaign to stop increases to H-1B and another bill by Sen. Hutchison (R-TX) to increase visas for nurses by 100,000 per year. The uproar from NumbersUSA activists was too loud for the politicians to ignore.
It`s time to celebrate!
