The politics of immigration

The Economist ^ | October 16, 2003

[sarcasm]

< SNIP >

Pleading for workers

Quietly, the business lobby is also pushing to change the rules for foreign workers inside America. The main target is the annual quota for H-1B visas (six-year work permits for white-collar employees, most famously Indian software engineers). In 1990 Congress introduced an annual H-1B quota of 65,000 people. This rose to 195,000 in 2000 as firms lobbied for more engineers. This month, the cap reverted to 65,000. Even in recession, this will not be enough to meet demand.

Until recently, lobbyists had given up any hope of a higher cap. America overflows with unemployed software engineers protesting about imported foreigners. One otherwise out-of-work engineer, Rob Sanchez, puts his energies into a website (zazona.com) that claims to lay bare a policy “designed by big business to replace American workers with cheap young blood”—even though a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) found that, when you allow for age, experience and education, employers actually pay foreigners more than Americans.

Yet the politics has begun to brighten a bit recently. According to Theodore Ruthizer of Bryan Cave, a law firm, lobbyists are hoping for progress on two fronts: getting more exceptions to the sorts of work and levels of experience that make a job count towards the annual H-1B quota, and persuading Congress to put the yearly cap back to 115,000 or so.

Business has also begun to fight on behalf of the 11m undocumented workers it surreptitiously employs. Here the main problem is not the hairy-armed brutes at the Department of Homeland Security, say lawyers, but a law passed in the 1990s that took full effect in 2001. Before then an employer could sponsor an undocumented employee for a work visa, creating a “path to citizenship”. Now anyone who has worked in America illegally for more than a year must go home for ten years before qualifying for sponsorship. Several bills (all deeply flawed, complain immigration lawyers) are trying to overturn this rule in both the House and the Senate.

These “victories” for business should not be exaggerated. Kathleen Newland of the MPI argues that the law demanding machine-readable passports was an example of “aspirational legislating”. Congress set a hopelessly optimistic goal, knowing full well that foreign bureaucrats would inevitably fail to meet it. But, for the moment, businessmen are having more effect on immigration policy than the ACLU can possibly claim.

[sarcasm]

ping

[gubamyster]

ping

[Fishing-guy]

Huh. They are asking for more foreign H1-B workers at a time when so many people in high tech are out of a job?

[NewRomeTacitus]

"...a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) found that, when you allow for age, experience and education, employers actually pay foreigners more than Americans."

If that is true then employers should stick with Americans. Keep the money flowing in our own economy and let India service Europe.
This continuing loss of jobs to foreign places, combined with the loss of manufacturing capability and the mass invasion of non-educated peasants, will soon put our nation's economy in a downward spiral if corrective measures are not taken soon.
This is not worth the short-term financial gains some businesses obtain from these damaging factors. It's like betting on how fast the cancer is going to kill you when some disciplined diet and exercise would have prevented it in the first place.

[junta]

Another anti-American media source, there never seems to be a shortage of that.

[JustPiper]

Ping!

[traditionalist]

Interesting read. Thanks for the ping.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

Pay no attention to The Economist,open borders mouthpiece.