Free Republic

Every major presidential candidate, even those most beholden to Wall Street, says he or she opposes the offshoring of American jobs. Like vows to "defeat ISIS" and "repair our crumbling infrastructure," the nationalist cri de couer against "shipping jobs overseas" has become a bipartisan catchphrase of the 2016 race. But political rhetoric is one thing and economic reality is another. Offshoring has become an effective way for U.S. companies to build and manage their products and services. Look at Apple Computer. Except for the Mac Pro personal computer, possibly the best company in the history of American business doesn't produce...

House GOP Leadership: Foreign Worker Increase Needed Because of “Labor Shortage” by MARK KRIKORIAN December 17, 2015 House GOP Whip Steve Scalise sent an e-mail to his members this morning defending the immigration increase that the Republican leadership had secretly slipped into the omnibus funding bill. (It is shown below.) The provision would potentially quadruple the issuance of H-2B worker visas, which are for non-agricultural seasonal jobs. The visas are used to import cheap labor for ski resorts, hotels, factories, landscapers, and others. (See this 2010 paper on this racket by a former State department visa officer.) Most of the...

Another touching story from the American heartland crosses our desk this morning, dealing with the dedicated efforts of labor unions to care for their workers and ensure the prosperity of the working class. The United Auto Workers have been in a long series of negotiations with the nation’s auto manufacturers in the latest round of contract wrangling. The result was a deal which should make everyone happy, if by “everyone” you mean the people running the unions. At the heart of the debate was the issue of outsourcing, where American companies ship their facilities (and all of the associated jobs)...

Théo Négri, a young software engineer from France, had come up with so many novel ideas at his job at an Internet start-up in San Francisco that the American entrepreneur who hired him wanted to keep him on. So he helped Mr. Négri apply for a three-year work visa for foreign professionals with college degrees and specialized skills, mainly in technology and science. With his master’s degree from a French university and advanced computer abilities, Mr. Négri seemed to fit the bill. But his application for the H-1B visa was denied, and he had to leave the United States. Back...

As a result of China’s flooding the world market with cheap, state-subsidized aluminum and our president’s irrational aversion to fossil fuels, a 127-year-old American industry is in danger of disappearing. This week, the two largest primary aluminum producers in the United States announced curtailment of aluminum production at key smelters across the country. Alcoa announced that it was halting smelting operations at its Intalco Works (583 employees) and Wenatchee plants (428 employees) in Washington state, its Massena West plant in New York (500 employees) and that it was curtailing alumina refining capacity at its Point Comfort facility in Texas. Century...

When the Indian outsourcing upstarts came on strong five years ago, it looked as if some giants of the $600 billion tech services industry would fall like top-heavy palm trees in a Category 4 hurricane. The Indians' combination of high quality and super-low cost flattened the stock prices and revenues of companies such as EDS (EDS ), BearingPoint (BE ), and Capgemini. Even mighty ibm (IBM ), the No. 1 tech services player, has struggled to rebound. One Western company has come through stronger than ever, though—and it did so by motoring straight into the eye of the storm. Accenture...

The Shanghai-listed Yantai Xinchao Industry Co. filed a security filing over the weekend announcing it would purchase Texas oil properties for 8.3 billion yuan. AFP/AFP/Getty Images A Chinese investment holding company intends to put down stakes in the United States after signing a letter of intent to purchase oil properties in western Texas for $1.3 billion through a limited liability partnership. The Shanghai-listed Yantai Xinchao Industry Co., said in a securities filing over the weekend, it was a purchasing oil lands in the Texas counties of Howard and Borden as part of the proposed acquisition of Ningbo Dingliang Huitong Equity...

Some HR person at Atlanta's SunTrust Banks has come up with what they genuinely believe is a clever idea – after dumping 100 of its IT staff, the billion-dollar financial institution is requiring them to remain available to help out for free for two years.You can see how this makes sense; we’ve all had co-workers leave and then realised that they were the only one who understood some ancient REXX (ask your dad) or were the only actual F# programmer in the building (Visual F# and Visual C# are not even vaguely similar). As a new grad I found myself...

Nevada construction worker Paul Arnold will be standing out front of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Saturday with his 8-year-old son, leading a protest and calling for a boycott of the iconic American company for its anti-American hiring policies. But more than anything he said he’ll be protesting the policies of GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. It was Disney’s decision to fire 250 tech workers in its IT department and force them to train their foreign replacements. The Indian workers who will replace them will come to America on H1B “guest worker” visas and earn about $62,000 per year,...

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s spokesperson Sarah I. Flores sent out an email blasting GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s advisor for claiming Fiorina outsourced her campaign work to India, calling that claim bizarre. In an email, Flores linked to a post on Twitter by Daniel Scavino, Jr., Trump’s presidential campaign advisor, that stated, “Carly Fiorina outsources campaign work to 3 companies outside ‪#USA (in India.) Mumbai Phone Works, East-West Synergy, & American Voices LTD.” Carly Fiorina outsources campaign work to 3 companies outside #USA (in India.) Mumbai Phone Works, East-West Synergy, & American Voices LTD. — Daniel Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) September...

<p>Short columns must be excerpted to 50% at all times.</p>

<p>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.</p> <p>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?</p>

Presidential candidate Donald Trump hosted an event last night in Alabama that saw between 18,000 and 20,000-plus people in attendance. Roll tide, apparently. During his speech, “the Donald” mentioned how he is a big fan of Oreo cookies, but will refuse to ever eat them again since Nabisco plans on moving to Mexico. From The Blaze: “You know, Mexico is the new China,” Trump told the crowd, referencing the recent decision by Nabisco to move its factories there. “I love Oreos. I’ll never eat them again. Okay? I’ll never eat them again,” Trump said. “No, Nabisco closes the plant, they...

<p>INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.</p> <p>Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in March, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.</p>

For the third time in less than a decade, I find myself back in my adopted hometown of Cebu City, Philippines. While the specific purpose of my visit is business related, the timing of this venture was well-received as I found myself in need of a break from the divisive nature of the current political climate back in the States. My respite has been a busy one, one of professional demands mixed in with a bit of sightseeing and pleasure-seeking,  but what has struck me most about being back in the Philippines is a visual and emotional rediscovery of the...

A leftover from yesterday that shouldn’t be missed. As you read this, bear in mind that our leader continues to insist he has complete confidence in OPM and its director. Some of the contractors that have helped OPM with managing internal data have had security issues of their own—including potentially giving foreign governments direct access to data long before the recent reported breaches. A consultant who did some work with a company contracted by OPM to manage personnel records for a number of agencies told Ars that he found the Unix systems administrator for the project “was in Argentina...

Folks, there is exactly one way you're going to put a stop to this sort of nonsense: At the end of October, IT employees at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were called, one-by-one, into conference rooms to receive notice of their layoffs. Multiple conference rooms had been set aside for this purpose, and in each room an executive read from a script informing the worker that their last day would be Jan. 30, 2015. Some workers left the rooms crying; others appeared shocked. This went on all day. As each employee received a call to go to a conference room,...

AT&T settles with FCC over customer data that was stolen from data centers overseas and used to unlock stolen mobile phones. AT&T has reached a $25 million settlement with the Federal Communications Commission over stolen customer data from three international call centers. The data breaches took place at contracted call centers in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines, and involved the unauthorized disclosure of almost 280,000 U.S. customers' names, full or partial Social Security numbers and unauthorized access to protected account-related data. The FCC said the information obtained from these breaches was used to unlock codes for stolen phones. Workers at...

Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs...The H-1B program "was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill," this worker said. "But we're doing our job. It's not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill. "Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn't already performing," he said...SCE employees said that since August,...

Like the good people of Arizona, I despise speed cameras. But not because I want reckless driving. Instead, my disdain is based on the fact that governments set up cameras where speed limits are preposterously low in order to generate revenue. And I speak from personal experience.Like the good people of Houston, I also despise red-light cameras.But once again, this isn’t because I want jerks racing through red lights and endangering innocent people. Instead, my opposition is based on the fact that greedy governments – operating recklessly – use such cameras as tools to fleece drivers.Holman Jenkins has a column...