Houston Chronicle
TEXAS -- The request by Baystone Contractors was pretty simple. The company wanted visas to bring in 6,000 foreign unskilled workers to build and repair ships for four big oil refining companies in Southeast Texas.
The only problems were that the refiners didn't need the work, weren't in the market for unskilled foreign labor and never asked for Baystone's help. Besides, a Texas union chief says there would have been plenty of American applicants for the jobs — if they existed.
Yet the request appeared to be cruising past state and federal regulators until it was smothered in a union-backed avalanche of U.S. job applicants for the positions that Baystone hoped to fill with unskilled foreign workers.
Posted by tyne at December 3, 2007