Posted on 02/26/2009 5:43:58 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Can you stimulate the economy by shutting out foreign workers? Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley think so. And for all his anti-protectionist rhetoric, President Obama has shown surprisingly little interest in stopping them.
The stimulus bill the president signed into law restricts the use of bank bailout funds (money banks get from the Financial Stability Plan, formerly known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program) to hire skilled foreign workers under the H-1B visa program.
This slap at open labor markets is downplayed as a dramatic but toothless gesture in favor of "Hire American," nice companion to the "Buy American" provisions of the same bill. Anyone who finds either of these two concepts a good idea in times of crisis has not learned anything from history. This superficially patriotic protectionism is a knee-jerk reaction, the politicians' equivalent of kids scratching a wound when they should really know better.
Even in its present form, this clause can do great damage. In this case, the Sanders-Grassley strictures mean nearly all major U.S. banks and financial institutions--all recipients of bailout cash--have to demonstrate that when they hire foreign worker, they tried to, but couldn't, hire American worker instead.
Aptitude, training and skill level become, at best, secondary concerns, and the door to lawsuits is opened wide. The restrictions don't bar foreign hires (who can legally work in America with H-1B visa), but makes them cost-ineffective in most cases and imposes prohibitive burdens on recruitment of needed talent. Banks are not the only targets: the Big Three automakers, for example, are all on the Financial Stability Plan's dole, too.
The real problem, though, is the underlying principle of the law. The idea that native Americans (or Poles, or Koreans, or Egyptians) deserve special status in hiring is deliberate slap in the face of globalization.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
My uncle closed the doors on his IT company a couple years back. He simply couldn’t compete honestly with competition that imported cheaper labor. He couldn’t in good conscience ask his employees to accept less money because of someone else’s lack of ethics.
In a sense it may be a good thing because now he’s teaching some sort of business ethics at UofM.
No, they want to pay American workers less.
This is about H-1B visas...you don't see such flouting of the law in that category, do you?
Once again - the H-1B visa is to be used when there is a SHORTAGE of workers. That is not the case now, unless you haven't quite realized that there are five million unemployed at the moment.
And beyond that, I saw plenty of nonsense firsthand by companies playing games with the requirements for hiring H-1B visa holders.
And my original point stands - when portions of American shrink to third-world status, will you show your committment to free labor markets by moving to one of those neighborhoods?
I didn't think so.
Some of us see there is more to this issue than finding the cheapest labor. We have a country to try and preserve.
LOL!
I'm not laughing at the pain...I'm laughing at the fact that you somehow think that propping up the costs to the business would have made you more competitive...?!?!
Bottom line, we in America are generally overpaid and it's costing us. Nobody wants to hear that...nobody wants to face it...but it's true. And don't think that "Gondring wants wages to drop"...I don't, other than wanting to face reality.
Don't you see from your own example, that ignoring these realities just makes it even harder for American companies to compete against foreign ones?!
Will you move to the slums when all American companies have gone to where workers are not too good to work for the market wages?
Exactly.
If that happens, the slums will come to us. But don't worry, a few folks can live safely in their gated communities, like in South America, while the rest of the country rots.
Seriously, you might be mentally ill. If you think IT is an easy cushy job.....
There never was a shortage of skilled workers. There was, and alway will be in the minds of the "globalists", a shortage of CHEAP workers.
The law was written that the imported workers had to be paid the same as U.S. workers. I saw how that was gamed. The guys that hired out H1Bs put them on salary, worked them 60 hours a week and charged the clients only for 40. Who is going to hire an American who expects to be paid for those extra hours when you can get a desperate foreigner who will deliver (in some cases) 50% more for the same money?
All the high-blown rhetoric about the evils of "protectionism" and the joys of "globalism" are just code words for a Third World standard of living. If skilled American workers could be hired at $100 a week, the "shortage" would dry up over night.
Those who sing these glories have never faced this type of competition. In some cases they remind me of that "Life of Brian" segment where the guy in the dungeon is so brianwashed that he sighs "Oh, to be spat upon by the Romans".
H-1B workers are low wage ,drug free, cleanbackgound employees.
Yes there is a shortage of those type of employees.
Yeah, sure. More like, a bunch of idiot bean-counters who only see next quarter's dividend make stupid decisions, and, as they continue to decline in quality, get promoted and lay off workers. The only overpaid ones I see are in the executive suites, merrily ruining the global economy. So don't lecture us about being overpaid. We're the ones holding it all together - at least in my company - any quality is a result of the commitment of the workers, not the management.
Yeah, so much better for them that he kicked them to the street.
And let me guess, dumped them out onto others to pay for until they could find another job?
How ethical. Much more ethical than asking them to accept competitive wages.
And it used to be that America was known for its management skills. Now, I think that the situation you describe is the the norm, not the exception.
If allowed to live free, there will never be slums of the hard working, never happened or will happen. It didn't even happen during the "Great Depression". Their will be a revolution or Civil War before that. I'll bet you would probably be telling the rioters/rebels about benefits of the "Free market" - if it were to come to that. LOL
That has to be about the dumbest crap I’ve ever read and that quite a feat coming from a globalist bottom feeder.
Truth hurts, eh?
So, by your own admission, idiots are driving the process that outsources labor and wants to bring in cheap H-1B hires, because that management is unethical, driven solely by short-term thinking, and don't understand quality.
Somehow, I think we've found the disconnect here.
If I thought like you I would have jumped off of a bridge long ago. Just sayin’.......
Some very ethical people are poor managers.
Sorry, but I have to run...gotta go earn my paycheck.
I don’t think propping up the costs to the business makes it more competitive. I told you point blank that costs were NOT propped up. Wages were stagnant for 5 years. Why do you think they started hiring illegals in the first place? To be more competitive. Finally, when China started doing commercial printing, it was impossible to compete.
I’m giving you an example of how globalization is not free trade, free market, or anything else but taking advantage of artificial, government created, local situations, and is nothing but another tool used to tear this country down to the level of the lowest common denominator.
It’s nation states versus globalism. I choose nation states.
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