Posted on 02/20/2006 11:40:52 AM PST by Theodore R.
Republicans, H-1B Work Visas, Immigration and Charlie Brown Diane Alden Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006
Of course, hope springs eternal. Pinning my hopes on future Republicans, younger guys, I came away feeling like Charlie Brown recently. Remember Charlie getting the football yanked from under him by Lucy? I discovered that immigration reformist and concealed-carry proponent Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is promoting the H-1B work visa. This benefits the corporations, not all of them American owned, whether they be in Minnesota or Michigan or California.
Once again, power corrupts. For Tim Pawlenty, the support of the Republican Establishment in a future bid for the White House is just too much temptation. In the case of Pawlenty, support for increases of H-1B visas must have been the price. If he is uneducated enough to want them for no other reason than that 3M or Microsoft is asking for them, then he doesn't deserve to be president.
This particular visa does nothing for out-of-work American computer engineers and programmers. Nor does it encourage our younger citizens to take up computers or engineering when they can count on being replaced by a cheaper, more compliant worker from abroad.
In a field where unemployment hovers between 7 and 11 percent, depending on who you talk to, cheaper labor will come at the cost of our future scientists and engineers. Many other American technical people have simply left the field. Others work bereft of benefits, as self-employed consultants. Others are driving trucks for companies where they used to work as computer engineers and programmers. The jobs ARE going to foreign computer workers and scientists.
These international companies are not giving first bid to American workers. Why should they? Foreign workers make $13,000 less per year than an average American computer worker. But the spin continues and so do increases in H-1B visas. Unless Americans rebel, Congress is about to increase them again.
Each year Congress happily hands out more visas at the request of plutocrats like Bill Gates or the emperors at Intel or Cisco Systems or even German companies like Siemens. Americans must remember that many "American" companies are not owned by Americans but rather by international financial interests, what I call "Davos Men."
For the Davos Men, Congress will increase visa numbers because Bill Gates and the plutocracy have asked for them. Globalization, you say? Not a good enough reason to sell out American interests. It is not the 11th Commandment, nor is it a good idea if America suffers from "globalization."
Then, of course, there is President Bush recently asking for more H-1B visas for foreign workers. The White House Web site says it all:
The last piece of the puzzle is in immigration. The President's proposal calls for being able to recruit the world's best and brightest to come to America to work alongside America's best and brightest in terms of science, engineering and high skilled laborers to come in under this proposal. And so we will be working to work with Congress the H1B program, which is the high skilled labor visas, which right now is about 65,000 visas a year. They are consumed very quickly at the first of the year, and we need to look at increasing that to do that. We're looking also at other visa initiatives, working with Congress to address that, as well, for skilled laborers, high skilled laborers to come into the country."
This is a scam, folks. Many companies and corporations purposely set up road blocks to make sure it is difficult to hire U.S. computer engineers and technicians. There is NO shortage, there are only people who want cheap at any price. That price includes American past, present and future engineers and scientists. Our elite white collar working class is being replaced as easily as the blue collar men and women who have lost their high-paying manufacturing jobs by the millions. Lower-paying jobs in the service sector for one and all seems to be the end game for those running U.S. economic policy.
Many of these transnational companies President Bush appears so anxious to assist have this con game down to an art. Part of the con is to narrow job demands and descriptions to such a degree that they can claim no American is available to do the job. These companies aren't after better engineers as much as they want cheap and malleable worker drones.
Frankly, I think it is one of the biggest black marks on U.S. history since the era of Reconstruction and carpetbaggers. It is certainly not the "free" market at work in any way, shape or form – unless you consider the "free" in free market nothing but a way to shut people up when they demand to know what is happening to their jobs. If this is what capitalism has become, then capitalism is in deep effluence.
Meanwhile, being the good corporate globalist he is, George W. Bush is going to keep the scam going. What Congress doesn't do to destroy our engineering and computer self-reliance, our president is willing to do.
To add insult to injury, last year the U.S. Senate got into the act and decided to sell the work visas to companies for $750 each. Their excuse for selling these tickets to the U.S. is that it will "help" assuage our huge deficit. Better they should stop pork barrel spending like the recent King Kong highway spending bill or more throwing money at bad programs that show few results. Those programs are legion, and they include misuse of money for the war in Iraq. Every single American can name at least one program or agency that could be cut and no one would miss it.
Is it any wonder many of us believe we do indeed have the best government money can buy? The Davos Men march on in and out of government. They are killing our ability to be self-reliant, innovative and prosperous.
In any event, too bad about Tim Pawlenty. For some few conservatives he presented the "great white hope" in Republican politics. Obviously the support of the corporate Republican Establishment has more meaning to him, and to most other presidential wannabes, than doing what is right by American workers and citizens.
Predictions and Reality
I am not anti-capitalist. I understand the economic pedulum had swung too far the other way with such monstrosities as Americans with Disabilities, etc., a 8,000-pound gorilla called the U.S. tax code and the bazillions of ridiculous outdated regulation imposed by an overzealous Congress and bureaucracies run amok.
BUT the solution is not to dump on the American working class, nor is it to destroy our economic strength and future for the sake of the investor or corporate class. Nor is it a good enough reason to kill U.S. economic health for the benefit of a few corrupt Beltway politicians and lobbyists.
Other countries don't have to totally sell out their workers and taxpayers. Why do we? Have you ever heard of a guy named Demming???? The U.S. sent him to Japan after WWII to give them economic advice and a game plan. What the Japanese have created is a system where there are MORE winners than losers. There isn't a 500 percent gap between what the CEOs of Mitsubishi make and what the guy on the plant floor takes home. The BRUNT of economic "market" does not invariably fall on the working class.
When guys in the Heritage/Cato coterie or Secretary Snowe or Robert Zoellick and others in the unfree-market crowd are finished with us, American economic strength will be history and so will the middle class.
Japan has a trade surplus with China, in their favor. It has not cost them politically or economically. So, what's wrong with the morons we have runnnig our economic policy? So stuck in the 18th century they can't recognize it is now the 21st century perhaps?
Therefore, contrary to what MSNBC's Larry Kudlow or the Wall Street Journal business writers tell you, Japan is better off economically than we are. Its mercantilist policies work for them. Meanwhile, U.S. workers, regardless of our ability to innovate, are tied to engineering and ultimately to manufacturing. This drives economic growth. The information society that can't produce its own clothing, cars and computers is a society in decline, fed a load of bull hockey by its political and economic elite.
Meantime, I was appalled to discover, jobs for returning U.S. military personnel are increasingly hard to find. Obviously the young guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan haven't heard that most jobs these days are in fields that Americans no longer will do. The Web site www.military.com reports:
During a recent U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing it was announced that 20 to 24 year old veterans now have an unemployment rate of over 15 percent – nearly twice the rate of their non-veteran peers. The numbers of young unemployed veterans has grown dramatically since the start of military operations in Afghanistan. In response the Senate Committee has called for an urgent and improved effort to help veterans returning from the war on terror find work. Witnesses at the Senate hearing pointed to a wide variety of changes in government policies that might help. The Department of Labor plans to provide $162 million in federal grants to state agencies this to help veterans find work. To help support our returning veterans, let your public officials know how you feel! Let your public officials know how you feel! I have personal knowledge that advisers to the Bush administration often refer to the U.S. military as our "security commodity." How about calling them indentured servants to advance the wet dreams of the oligarchy currently in power? When people or the U.S. military are considered "commodities," something is truly rotten in the seats of power in D.C. [Read "The New Pentagon Map" or anything written by Tom Barnett, Rumsfeld adviser and former member of Clinton's cabal.] That is where George W. Bush and his advisers' heads are.
It would seem that American memories in regard to our oligarchy are very short. People seem to have forgotten that during World War II, large corporations Ford, GE and GM were able to produce a formidable war machine because they had the tools and talent in place. That is, once they got stopped providing the Third Reich with the economic and industrial wherewithall to rise to power as quickly as it did.
Frankly, regarding retooling in the event of a major war with China or whomever, I am not at all sure we could do it again.
Meanwhile, China steals us blind and we say "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" We are asking for our own demise and we are selling or allowing a potential enemy to take it from us in order to make the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft and Cisco Systems happy in the short run.
Part III next week: Brain Dead in D.C.
The last piece of the puzzle is in immigration. The President's proposal calls for being able to recruit the world's best and brightest to come to America to work alongside America's best and brightest in terms of science, engineering and high skilled laborers to come in under this proposal. And so we will be working to work with Congress the H1B program, which is the high skilled labor visas, which right now is about 65,000 visas a year. They are consumed very quickly at the first of the year, and we need to look at increasing that to do that. We're looking also at other visa initiatives, working with Congress to address that, as well, for skilled laborers, high skilled laborers to come into the country."
I am personally offended by this crap from the whitehouse.
Compared to the third world countries where visa applicants are coming from, the U.S. is a welfare state. I am not sure how much the author appriciates that fact.
What the corporations will do is to try and get around that. Lower cost employees is one way. Another way is to reduce some of the legal and bureaucratic costs of doing business.
Many Americans are in favor of these hurdles, but don't like the unintended consequences. What can you do?
Check out diversity visas. 50,000 green cards by lottery to make our population more diverse. So, now we have Bengalis in our c stroes.
That paragraph needs to be repeated over and over again. And, contrary to popular opinion, H1Bs do not bring ingenuity into the field. They only bring lower-paid employees trained here by Americans. While there's nothing wrong with a company hiring lower-paid employees, there are plenty of American citizens able to do the job and willing to work for a lower salary, too.
"Frankly, I think it is one of the biggest black marks on U.S. history since the era of Reconstruction and carpetbaggers."
Uh-oh, echos of turn of the 20th century Democrats. Their cries of "Robber Barrons!" paved the way for socialists to give us the "New Deal."
"It is certainly not the 'free' market at work in any way, shape or form – unless you consider the 'free' in free market nothing but a way to shut people up when they demand to know what is happening to their jobs."
There is no free market. It's a mixed economy. Corporatism on the one hand, welfarism on the other. That appears to be the consensus, unfortunately. If it were free market, the corporations would have to take their hits, and not be shielded by the Feds. I wish these populists wouldn't claim this is the free market. I don't there has been one since the "hard scrabble" days of the McKinley administration.
I agree with your point that there's skilled labor available.
What I don't understand is why these non-owners have a "right" to jobs, and that the federal government "must" do something about it. If it were possible, this problem would have been worked about by now.
What's needed is for the corporations to fly it alone, with absolutely no bail outs, to fail when they can't go on, and secondly, to reduce the costs of doing business.
The author doesn't seem to like the fact that some of these skilled laborers would work for themselves as consultants, but that is a better trend. At least you are then your own boss and are in charge. If the shape of business were to go from the highly organized corporate structure, to a more informal collaboration of high skilled contractors, that would solve much of what troubles the protectionists. Liquidate the few owner/many worker concept, and level it.
Frankly, we have more than enough diversity around here.
Diane Alden ping.
Hmm...and just how many H-1B Visas will DP World need to get "the right people" in place for "the right price"?
I take anything written by Diane Alden very seriously.
Including this article.
As most of us are. And if the GOP doesn't get it soon they're going to be thrown out of power for another 40 years.
Bump
Me too,
No more work Visa's or legal immigration, until we control the Boarders! 100%
Then we will talk!, That should be the Republican policy, and American people will be 80% behind that plan.
No Compromise
With a GOP congress and a GOP p resident, did any conservative honestly think this diversity BS, this BS about immigration would not only be still going on, but get even worse? It seems that the role of the govrenment being on the left side of the culture wars hasnt changed, and in fact, has accelerated, it seems like the Clinton admin has simpily been extended another 8 years.
*Sigh*
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