Page 613

• Congress must amend the law so that employers can again have the freedom to make hiring Americans a priority. Despite the significant advantages that preferring citizens over (work-authorized) aliens in hiring would provide to American workers, businesses, and the country at large, such a practice has been illegal since 1986.”° This makes no sense.

Alternative View Some conservatives believe that the government has a duty to limit its spending in order to limit how much it takes from American families. This means that when the government spends money, it must find the most economical and effective way to do so. Excessive government spending will be borne by American workers and families through reduced incomes and purchasing power. There may be good reasons to require a certain percentage of American workers on federal contracts, but those decisions should be based on economy and efficiency as opposed to arbitrary quotas.

Visa Fraud. American businesses that commit visa fraud and hire illegal immigrants should not be the beneficiaries of federal spending. But a 2020 report by the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) examined the department’s process for excluding employers who commit visa fraud and abuse from federal contracts and found much to be desired.

• To protect the American workforce from unscrupulous immigration lawyers, employers, and labor brokers, the department must follow the recommendations of the OIG and institute more robust investigations for suspected visa fraud and speedier debarments for those found guilty.

INTERNATIONAL LABOR POLICY

Leveling the International Playing Field for Workers. As recent decades of intense import competition and offshoring have made clear, American workers suffer when the U.S. opens its markets to foreign nations’ minimal labor standards and exploitative conditions. While federal law already prohibits the importation of goods produced with forced labor, the prohibitions are toothless without effective means of enforcement and cover only the most basic of workers’ rights. The Trump Administration and its United States Trade Representative (USTR) took unprecedented steps to redress the issue for workers. The U.S.-Mexico—Canada Agreement (USMCA) contained the strongest and most far-reaching labor provisions of any free trade agreement (FTA), with protections and commitments to reduce labor abuses and raise wages. It also established new modes of enforcement.

For future FTAs, the USTR should replicate the labor provisions of USMCA, especially the provisions to: