In a twist of logic so bizarre that it could only be hatched in Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a plan to increase revenues by selling over 368,000 American jobs to foreign workers and their families who will enter the United States and stay permanently. The proposal authored by Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA.) will be added to a larger deficit reduction bill the Senate will consider as early as next week. Under the plan, the fees employers pay for high tech, executive, and other employment-based permanent visas for foreign workers will rise, generating an estimated $120 million per year. The federal budget shortfall for the current fiscal year is projected to be in the neighborhood of $400 billion.

"Congress and the Bush Administration have taken this nation on an irresponsible spending spree that has created massive budget deficits as far as the eye can see," noted Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Now they are proposing to narrow the spending gap by less than three one-thousandths of one percent, by auctioning off some of the nation’s best jobs. Rather than curb their own spending habits, Congress has seemingly decided to punish middle class American workers."

The proposal, approved by an 11-2 vote, would increase the number of H-1B workers by 30,000 elevating the annual ceiling from 65,000 a year to 95,000 not including the 20,000 exempted from the cap last year. In addition, the number of permanent employment-based visas would increase by 90,000 each year. Even though these increases constitute a significant new threat to the wages and working conditions of American workers, the Specter plan goes even farther by exempting the families of these new workers from the 140,000 annual cap on employment-based immigration. This will add an estimated 278,000 family members-many of them will also find jobs in the United States-to the number of high tech and permanent new foreign workers allowed under the plan. .

If enacted, the Specter plan would constitute one of the largest immigration increases in American history under the guise of deficit reduction. "This massive immigration increase and jobs giveaway took place without so much as a hearing or any assessment of its impact on American workers," said Stein.

This unprecedented sell-off of American jobs comes at a time when high tech workers have seen opportunities dwindle and middle income Americans are already faced with stiff competition from illegal aliens and foreign labor.

"The amount of additional revenues projected to be generated by this sell-off of American jobs is so minimal as to be laughable, but the impact on the lives of thousands of American families and their communities will be massive," said Stein. "Under this measure, Congress gets away with spending irresponsibly, employers get a labor subsidy, while hard-working middle class Americans get shafted."