Why Did Sen. Cruz Give Obama Executive Action On Iran?

This primary season has been full of blunders. Some from being less than knowledgable about areas of expertise that they are still getting up to speed on. Others from pretending to be something they are not. Some from treating nearly every woman he speaks about as though she’s an ex-wife who just took him to court.

Some blunders have less historical significance.

Others are recorded in Senate history for posterity.

Sen. Cruz on Iran is a blunder so historical it leaves me scratching my head.

Cruz and Mr. Trump were the keynote speakers at last week’s “Stop Iran Rally.” And while the rally posted lower turnout than the numbers the original rally in New York City, they still received national attention and massive TV presence.

Cruz spoke powerfully, as have most of the GOP presidential candidates as to the reasons why the Iran deal should never have been agreed to. He listed the reasons why it is so morally objectionable. He articulated the very essence of why the American people know beyond any doubt that it is the single biggest foreign policy mistake made in our lifetimes. He properly communicated why it will be seen historically as worse than Neville Chamberlain upon his return from Munich.

So imagine most Americans' surprise when they learn that Cruz actually voted to do the opposite of what every American wanted done with the deal—make it a treaty, enforceable under real Congressional teeth. Americans did not want to let President Obama use his “pen and phone” style executive order to wield foreign policy insanity.

But that’s what the senator voted for in May of this year.

I found it incredulous to even comprehend. I read the senator’s quote attempting to defend the action—but at the end of the day, the facts were—Sen. Cruz voted in favor of giving President Obama the right to treat the “treaty” with Iran, as nothing more than an executive order, rendering Congress completely useless in the process.

My mind did return to the day I heard Josh Earnest snickering from the White House press room about how they didn’t have to even go to Congress, that Congress was more or less unimportant to the deliberation’s outcome.

Turns out he was right, and in an action so bizarre, Cruz not only voted in favor of it happening that way, but he actually co-authored the language of the legislation that made it all possible.

More American Cronyism: US Government Selling Visas To Fund Luxury Apartment Buildings

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Merging, on paper, the affluent midtown neighborhood and the struggling one uptown placed Hudson Yards in a community with an overall high unemployment rate, positioning developer Related Cos. to gain low-cost financing from foreigners seeking green cards.

The program through which that happens, known as EB-5, enables foreign nationals to obtain U.S. permanent-resident status by putting up money for new business ventures that create American jobs. It gives ventures in high-unemployment and rural areas a special status to encourage investment. But as the program’s popularity has soared in recent years, the bulk of immigrant investment is going to projects that are located, like $20 billion Hudson Yards, in prosperous urban neighborhoods.

At least 80% of EB-5 money is going to projects that wouldn’t qualify as being in Targeted Employment Areas without “some form of gerrymandering,” estimates Michael Gibson, managing director of USAdvisors.org, which evaluates projects for foreign investors.

Increasingly, the money appears to be flowing to the flashiest projects, which the investors often see as safest, EB-5 professionals say. Among those getting EB-5 money are an office building set to host Facebook Inc. near Amazon.com Inc.’s Seattle headquarters, a boutique hotel in high-end Miami Beach, and a slim Four Seasons condo-hotel in lower Manhattan that sports a penthouse with an asking price above $60 million. In all of them, geographic districts were crafted to include higher-unemployment areas.

– From the Wall Street Journal article: How a U.S. Visa-for-Cash Plan Funds Luxury Apartment Buildings

Another day, another story highlighting just how completely corrupt and sleazy the U.S. economy has become.

I’ve covered the issue of EB-5 visas before, and how a program that was initially supposed to help high unemployment neighborhoods attract investment, has become another scheme to further enrich America’s crony capitalist class.

Before we get into the meat of this post, here are a few excerpts from last year’s piece, How NYC’s Biggest Real Estate Project in a Generation is Being Financed by Selling Green Cards to the Chinese:

Developer Related Cos. says it has raised roughly $600 million from the families to build the foundation for three skyscrapers at the West Side project, a 17-million-square-foot colossus of office, retail and residential space set to open over the next decade.

To finance the concrete-steel platform, Related tapped a little-known and at times controversial federal visa program known as EB-5, which offers green cards to foreign families who invest at least $500,000 in U.S. projects that create at least 10 jobs per investor.

At times the program has invited scrutiny. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year warned of “fraudulent securities offerings” related to the EB-5 program, in which investors put money into nonexistent projects. The program also has come under fire because it can be difficult for investors overseas to discern safe investments from risky ones, and if the investment fails to create the required jobs, they don’t get a green card. In addition, claims of jobs created are difficult to verify and the program administrator has been criticized for not having an effective system for doing so.

Developers are embracing the program largely because it provides low-cost capital. Money borrowed through the EB-5 program carries much lower interest rates, sometimes half of what companies typically pay, executives said. That is because investors are primarily seeking green cards, not a profit, and generally are willing to accept low returns, EB-5 advisers said.

While that article explained the recent explosion in EB-5 visa popularity, it failed to highlight the fact that this money was supposed to disproportionately help struggling areas. In reality, it’s all being funneled to luxury construction. Here’s how.

Also from the Wall Street Journal:

NEW YORK—The cluster of luxury apartment buildings and office towers rising in a development west of midtown called Hudson Yards seems a world apart from the low-income housing projects of upper Manhattan.

But for purposes of an immigration program that helps finance Hudson Yards, it and Harlem’s Manhattanville public-housing towers are in the same district: a stringy one connected by three Census tracts that run along the Hudson River.

Merging, on paper, the affluent midtown neighborhood and the struggling one uptown placed Hudson Yards in a community with an overall high unemployment rate, positioning developer Related Cos. to gain low-cost financing from foreigners seeking green cards.

The program through which that happens, known as EB-5, enables foreign nationals to obtain U.S. permanent-resident status by putting up money for new business ventures that create American jobs. It gives ventures in high-unemployment and rural areas a special status to encourage investment. But as the program’s popularity has soared in recent years, the bulk of immigrant investment is going to projects that are located, like $20 billion Hudson Yards, in prosperous urban neighborhoods.

A primary concern is that the use of EB-5 financing for high-price condo and office towers sops up the program’s capacity and leaves poorer communities out in the cold. No more than 10,000 visas that lead to permanent-resident status can be given out each year under the program. It hit the limit in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2014.

Though statistics aren’t made public on individual projects, a recent paper by two New York University professors tracked 25 large business startups that have turned to the EB-5 program to raise a total of more than $4.5 billion in financing. Twenty-two were urban real-estate projects, including 14 in prime Manhattan neighborhoods and others in Seattle and on the Las Vegas Strip.

Related is the single largest user of EB-5 financing. By its own measure, it accounts for about 20% of the dollars being raised through the program today. The closely held company used the program to raise $600 million for a first phase of Hudson Yards last year and is in the process of raising another $600 million for a new office tower and a retail hub.

The coming debate in Congress stands to bring the program its greatest scrutiny since it was created in 1990.

Things began to change in 2009, amid two shifts. The agency overseeing the program—the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unit of the Department of Homeland Security—let the job-creation tally count more construction jobs if they last at least two years. And banks all but shut off credit for construction projects amid the economic slump.

Real-estate developers discovered EB-5. Money from foreign investors, primarily Chinese, began to pour into major developments around the U.S., typically supplementing more-senior debt. A hotel and apartment project in Washington raised more than $40 million through the program. A W hotel in Hollywood raised $20 million. A planned 16-tower apartment project connected to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center basketball arena took in $229 million.

Lenders have since returned to real estate, but developers are attracted by another aspect of EB-5 financing: low cost. Because the foreign investors are after a green card, they have been willing to accept very low interest rates on money they lend, typically for four or five years. Developers save even though they face other costs to use the program.

Many of such projects could easily have been financed on the private market, according to Gary Friedland, who wrote the NYU paper with fellow professor Jeanne Calderon. “It’s a profit enhancement,” he said. “The original argument was more of a ‘but for’ argument,” in which EB-5 was meant to spur projects that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. “That focus has been lost.”

At least 80% of EB-5 money is going to projects that wouldn’t qualify as being in Targeted Employment Areas without “some form of gerrymandering,” estimates Michael Gibson, managing director of USAdvisors.org, which evaluates projects for foreign investors.

Increasingly, the money appears to be flowing to the flashiest projects, which the investors often see as safest, EB-5 professionals say. Among those getting EB-5 money are an office building set to host Facebook Inc. near Amazon.com Inc.’s Seattle headquarters, a boutique hotel in high-end Miami Beach, and a slim Four Seasons condo-hotel in lower Manhattan that sports a penthouse with an asking price above $60 million. In all of them, geographic districts were crafted to include higher-unemployment areas.

Meanwhile, some wanting to raise money for projects in rural areas and low-income parts of cities say they find it increasingly hard to compete. Evan Daniels has been trying for four years to raise about $40 million through the EB-5 program for a door-manufacturing plant in the rural southwestern Missouri town of Lamar.

“The harder we worked on this, the more we found the money was going to L.A. and New York,” he said.

In China, one pitch is speed in obtaining green-card approvals from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Related’s main broker has advertised that EB-5 investors receive initial approvals 11 months faster than the standard wait. That would mark a big advantage, because the average wait is about 14 months. It is unclear how its applications would be processed so quickly. USCIS declined to comment on Related’s applications.

So the U.S. government is subsidizing the wealthiest developers to build projects for the wealthiest Americans. Someone must have taken a class taught by the Federal Reserve.

Recall the post from earlier this year: Number of NYC Apartments for Rent Above $50k/Month Triples Since ’08; 82% of U.S. Construction = Luxury Units. Now we know why.

Just another day in the imperial Banana Republic.

DISPLACED DISNEY CAST MEMBER: HOW THEY REPLACED ME, OTHER AMERICANS, WITH CHEAP FOREIGNERS ON H1B VISAS

As a patriotic and proud citizen of the United States, I have a story to share that has not only impacted my family, hundreds of colleagues, but also current and future United States workers.

I used to have a dream career at one of Americas most iconic and admired companies. Twenty years of hard work, technical skill building, the fostering of relationships and a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology guided me to a coveted position as an Information Technology Engineer for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

On a sunny Monday morning in late October of 2014 I drove down the interstate toward the huge 40 square mile Disney Orlando, Florida property to my office. Ten days earlier Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, had just announced that the company’s earnings were up well over 20 percent for the quarter and this was just one among a long series of record breaking financial results for the company. About six months earlier, a new CIO, Tilak Mandadi, was appointed for the Parks and Resorts Division of Disney, which would result in huge changes to our lives. Little did I know what was about to happen that very same day to me and hundreds of other fellow Disney Information Technology Cast Members.

Days later, as I drove to work, I ran into a bit of slow traffic and so I was able to glance at my company issued iPhone I noticed an early morning meeting invite from a prominent Disney Executive. This really sparked my interest since it is not very often that I have heard from him and even rarer when I would actually see him in person. Despite the heavy traffic I estimated that I would be on time for the important meeting. As I continued down the road I wondered what the executive meeting could be all about.

About ten minutes later in my commute the phone rang and it was a fellow Disney “Cast Member” as employees were called. We worked together the prior week when we solved a major outage situation for the application that we both helped to support. He reminded me about another meeting that we had later that same day. Since I knew that he was just about the highest level on his team, was well respected and also that he was very well connected within the Disney Parks & Resorts Organization, I asked him if he knew anything about this last minute early morning meeting being hosted by the Disney Executive. He told me that he was not sure about the subject of the meeting. However, he told me that since I had such a great reputation as a problem solver, had just cleared up a major outage situation the week prior and since I recently received the very highest possible performance review by management, that the meeting must be one to recognize my recent contributions to the company with perhaps a promotion or at the very least a bonus.

After arriving at the Orlando office, I walked into the conference room where the early morning meeting was to be held. As I entered about two dozen people were crowded into the room. Some were from same team; others were from different teams. As I glanced around the room I noticed that the people were all very highly regarded as extremely knowledgeable, experienced and top performers in the roles that they held. Some of the attendees also had a Blue Disney name badge instead of the typical white one proudly displayed on the shirts they wore. The Blue badge indicated that they were recognized by a new program known as “Partners in Excellence.” This meant that they had been nominated by numerous people as consistently going above and beyond to assist other Cast Members. I could sense that something was not quite right. There was a chill in the air and yet, oddly enough, I was in a room surrounded by employees of excellence.

As I watched the grim faced Disney Executive, it was obvious that bad news was going to be delivered. The dead silence was broken when the Disney Executive made a harsh announcement. All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days. Your last day of employment for this company will be January 30, 2015. Your jobs have been given over to a foreign workforce. In the meantime you will be training your replacements until your jobs are 100 percent transferred over to them and if you don’t cooperate you will not receive any severance pay. Also, if we don’t feel confident that we have captured everything that you do we can, at our discretion, keep you longer than the 90 days until we have captured everything that you do with this job. Don’t discuss this meeting with anybody else in the company. Everybody in the room was appalled at the message. I was completely silent thinking how this was going to affect my coworkers and how I was going to break the news to my wife and children back at home as I was the only person in my home with a steady job. How would I pay for all the expenses that go along with a home, a wife, and children?

As of January 31, 2015, I would be living on unemployment payments. Health care, along with other employee benefits, would be gone. The good life was soon to vanish as soon as the foreign workers took over my job. The sleepless nights were just starting for me as I felt the pressure of providing for my family with food, shelter, utilities, autos, health insurance, and child day care. My coworkers and I felt extremely betrayed by Walt Disney World, a company for which we had worked so hard.

After having worked grueling on call shifts, hundreds of middle of the night and weekends work sessions in addition to a barrage of problem phone calls around the clock for many years, they were going to simply throw us out for their financial benefit. One glimmer of hope from the Disney executive was that many new Disney jobs were going to be created and these jobs would not be as dull and repetitive as our current jobs were and that no net loss of jobs was going to happen. Disney Cast Members who had survived and were not invited to this doomful meeting wondered what happened inside the closed door meeting. Some of those in the meeting had tears streaming down their faces, others had completely broken down and were crying out loud and one was murmuring “no, this can’t be” as they were marched out of the room.

The very next week our office environment started to change dramatically. A huge influx of foreign workers from South Asia started to arrive at numerous buildings on the Disney Orlando campus in very large numbers. A foreign language was suddenly being spoken throughout the building hallways. Everywhere I went, including the company cafeteria, the composition of the company changed so much in the period of only a week.

The first 30 days was focused on capturing all that I did with my job. We started getting mandatory meeting invitations for “KT” or “Knowledge Transfer” sessions showing on our calendars. The daily sessions involved us training our foreign replacements for several hours. We all felt humiliated when the foreign workers sat next to us and watched everything that we did.

Presumably at the direction of the Disney Executives, the foreign workers insisted that they record all the audio as well as everything that we did on our computer screens with recorded video during the training meetings. We were then astonished as everything that we did on our job was documented and read right back to us for further critiquing. By then, it was a slow and methodical process that went on day in and day out. In hopes of landing a new Disney job we watched the Disney internal job postings and noticed a number of the vague job descriptions. Our frustration started to grow as we applied for the jobs yet none of us were contacted in any fashion. Those of us losing our jobs started to wonder if these new job postings really even existed.

The next 30 days had us working side by side with our replacement workers doing part of our job while the “KT” sessions continued. The daily disgrace continued when the foreign workers started assuming our responsibilities.  They referred constantly back to all the audio, video and documentation that they had previously captured from us and asked that we explain the same questions repeatedly. They were obviously much younger, less skilled and less experienced.

The last 30 days were the most disgraceful and demoralizing of this entire period as I had to watch a foreign worker completely take over my job. I had no work to do during the last 30 days other than watch a foreign worker completely take over everything that I did in my job. One ironic twist was that I actually received a significant pay raise during my last 30 days with the company because I had received the highest possible job rating in performance reviews. The new Disney job postings only resulted in three coworkers getting new positions from the over three hundred IT workers.  I was not one of them. The last day we turned in our mobile phones, laptops, ID badges along with our dignity and we were ushered out the door as temporary foreign workers took over our jobs.

Since leaving Disney we have also been informed by several large IT recruiting firms that Disney has a policy in place that states all displaced Disney IT Cast Members will not even be considered as contractor workers for 12 months.  Thus we have been essentially shut out and black listed by the largest employer in this very small Orlando job market.

I largely perceive a job loss as a loss of my own identity. The humiliation of accepting unemployment payments after working for the same company for over ten years in different capacities has been extremely demoralizing. I felt guilty and frequently wondered if I was being a faithful and good American by training these foreign workers to take over our American jobs just so that I could receive a small severance package and unemployment benefits for four months.

How do I explain to my young children to follow their dreams and find a job that they love? I followed my dream of having a career in technology which I loved at the time, studied technology in college earning a bachelors degree, received numerous continuing education technical certifications, built a large base of real world experience, had a tremendous work ethic and was recognized with the very highest possible performance review by my company to have my very same desk, chair and computer all taken over by a foreign worker who was just flown in to America weeks before.

I frequently question if the IT field holds much future for United States’ citizens or U.S. permanent residents.  Should I continue to dodge bullets or move into an entirely new field after having been outsourced on multiple occasions by the same company and then finally physical replaced by a foreign worker? I would never recommend the IT field to my own children or anybody else that I know for that matter, due to the lack of job opportunities even for someone passionate about the IT field. We now have American IT workers being displaced by both H1-B visa holders, who are physically being flown in from foreign countries, as well as the continued use of foreign remote offshore workers. We are seeing a massive drain on job opportunities here on our own soil. What does the future hold for United States’ workers?  This outsourcing must be stopped or America will certainly decline.

How can our lawmakers allow this to happen to our country? This abuse of the H1-B Visa is not about a lack of talent here in the U.S. If our own pool of IT professionals were so incompetent- then why would companies like Disney have us train our replacements and spend months teaching them? Albeit, the loss of my position and hundreds of other positions here in Orlando, Florida is personal and debilitating, the nationwide loss of opportunity for high wage technology professionals will have a far reaching impact on our country.

Is the answer really to displace American workers, thus lessening the taxable income and opportunity for these citizens to be productive assets to our society? It is very clear that the H1-B visa is about cutting wages and exploiting immigration guest workers programs at less pay.

I challenge policy makers to ask themselves- what is the ripple effect of this program to our country? The proposed new bill, “I-Squared”, introduced by Senators 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

80%

,

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

38%

,

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

52%

, will triple the number of foreign H1-B guest workers increasing this problem threefold.  I challenge them to read this story and think about the thousands or more workers just like us at Disney who will lose their jobs.

Finally, all employees who have been displaced by a foreign worker, whether the foreign worker is located in, or outside of, the United States territory, need to stand up for their rights and for the rights of all American citizen workers. Similarly, any American citizen or permanent resident who applied for a job but was denied the position because it was filled by an immigration visa employee should determine if that denial of the position was a violation of his/her rights. I implore displaced employees and employees denied positions to visit the following website for options in taking a stand and possibly recovering for the potential violation of his/her constitutional rights. If you feel that you are powerless in the face of this tsunami think again.