Domestic workers are being forsaken in the name of capitalist excess. In record numbers, we're losing our homes, health insurance, retirement funds, and jobs. Everything we have worked so hard to achieve (which in many cases isn't much at all) is being stripped from our possession by the very individuals and corporations that are responsible for creating this recession.
Every day unearths new corruption spawned from the first release of TARP funds last year. Today is no different.
Details over the fold.
NOTE Thanks for the recommend. Please do call your congresscritters. Moreover, raise hell with your local papers and blogs. Become the media!
From today's AP wire
Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
This should be no surprise. Corporations use offshoring and outsourcing as a means to combat organized labor and increase profits. Why stop there?
The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.
The socialists at the AP didn't let us know the previous average salary for the jobs in question, but my guess is that it was a bit higher than $90,721. BoA wouldn't go through all that trouble for nothing.
The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.
Bank CEOs had to cut payroll somewhere to fund bonuses for top performing employees, right?
As others have pointed out, the banks required the TARP money or they were going to fail. Why on EARTH do we allow them to continue running ramshod over the citizens they serve?
Please pick up the phone and call your representatives and demand this madness stop.
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