Do not dare challenge the Masters of the Universe, the Party of Davos, or the Permanent Political Class with facts

After Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), in a thunderous Wednesday speech on the Senate floor, denounced Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for pushing amnesty on foreign soil and high-tech executives for demanding more guest-worker permits while laying off American workers, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen maligned the Alabama Senator in a series of incensed Tweets.

...Andreessen Tweeted on Thursday evening... "Mark has directly&indirectly created 10s, maybe 100s, of thousands of US jobs." He implied that Sessions was "clinically insane"...

If only the facts, politics, and the American people were on Andreessen's side. ...

A Sessions aide told Breitbart News that "it’s clear that a few mega-millionaire and mega-billionaire activists are calling the shots for Democrats on immigration."

"The question at hand is pretty straightforward: who should get preference for American IT work – the 11.4 million Americans with STEM degrees but no STEM jobs, or the citizens of foreign countries now living overseas?" the aide told Breitbart News. "It appears that Democrat politicos and their super-elite patrons believe the answer is the latter.”

After criticizing "young Mr. Zuckerberg" for blasting America's laws in a foreign capital, Sessions singled out Zuckerberg's FWD.us, largely because the pro-amnesty lobby has spent millions of dollars trying to ram through a comprehensive amnesty bill that would give the tech lobby massive increases in guest-worker visas at a time when there is a surplus of American high-tech workers and a record number of Americans out of work. 

In fact, as Sessions noted, the comprehensive amnesty bill that the tech industry wants and pro-amnesty advocates have spent $1.5 billion over the last decade pushing would "double the supply of low-wage foreign workers brought into the United States." Sillicon Valley companies, which have even been notoriously accused of trying to keep wages down with "no-hire" agreements, believe they will get a good return on their investment if Congress grants them massive increases in guest-worker visas.

After pointing out that Microsoft is laying of 18,000 workers, Sessions posed "a question to Mr. Zuckerberg" if he wanted to expand Facebook's workforce by 10 percent. 

"Why doesn't Mr. Zuckerberg call his friend Mr. Gates and say, 'I have to hire a few hundred people, do you have any resumes you could send over here? Maybe I wouldn't have to bring in somebody from a foreign country to take a job that an unemployed american might take,'" Sessions said. 

The broader point Sessions was making while using Zuckerberg and his pro-amnesty lobbying group as examples was that massive increases in guest-worker visas at this time will only hurt American IT and STEM workers trying to climb into the middle class. Sessions said "the central sales pitch used by those making demands for massive increases in foreign-worker programs across the board" has been disproven by the "nation’s leading academics, people who studied this issue and are professionals in it."

Citing a USA Today op-ed by a group of five nonpartisan scholars that noted that wages for STEM and IT workers have not increased since 1999, Sessions asked, "If you have a shortage of workers in a field such as information technology or science and mathematics, wages go up, do they not? If wages are not up, we don’t have a shortage." Sessions called out "rich high-tech companies" for "using the H-1B visa program to keep wages down and to hire less expensive workers from abroad."

"Indeed, the same companies demanding more guest workers are laying off American workers in droves," he said. 

The USA Today scholars declared that "none of us have been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages." They have yet to be disproven. 

According to a recent Census report, "74% of those with a bachelor's degree in these subjects don't work in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) jobs." A Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report also found that, from 2007-2012, "the number of new immigrants with STEM degrees admitted each year [was] by itself higher than the total growth in STEM employment." As Breitbart News reported, the CIS report was "consistent with research from" institutes across the ideological spectrum. For instance,  Georgetown University, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the Rand Corporation, the Urban Institute, and the National Research Council "also found no evidence that America has a shortage of high-tech workers."...

The July 16-20 Polling Company survey of likely voters revealed that Americans not only want more immigration enforcement, but also want "employers to give preference to U.S. citizens over legal and illegal immigrants when hiring." An overwhelming 90% of likely voters felt that "U.S.- born workers and legal immigrants already here should get first preference for jobs." Even among likely voters who, like Andreessen, favor giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, 61% felt "that Americans should be employed in jobs that illegals currently have." ...

Scholars have wondered how those like Zuckerberg, Andreessen and the gilded high-tech elite have received a free pass on the issue for so long, but CBS News's declaration that the notion that America has a massive shortage of high-tech workers "is largely a myth" perhaps ushered in an era in which claims made by tech lobbies will be scrutinized more. After reading Sessions' speech, Andreessen may have blown a gasket on Twitter because he realized that the tech industry's free pass is being revoked.

Related article

Jeff Sessions Blasts Mark Zuckerberg for Pushing Amnesty in Mexico, Breitbart, September 11, 2014.

In a thunderous Wednesday speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Sessions (R-AL) blasted Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for criticizing America and pushing for amnesty legislation on Mexican soil at fellow billionaire Carlos Slim's charity event. ...

Sessions mentioned that as high-tech executives keep pushing the debunked notion that there is a shortage of American high-tech workers, many tech companies are laying off American workers even as they push for more guest-worker visas for foreigners. Sessions noted that Microsoft announced it would lay off 18,000 workers and posed "a question to Mr. Zuckerberg."

"Why doesn't Mr. Zuckerberg call his friend Mr. Gates and say, 'I have to hire a few hundred people, do you have any resumes you could send over here? Maybe I wouldn't have to bring in somebody from a foreign country to take a job that an unemployed american might take.'...