Posted on 03/05/2016 6:01:11 PM PST by ConservingFreedom
NumbersUSA has announced to the media that we have downgraded Donald Trump on our Worker-Protection Immigration Grade Cards based on his statements in the last two debates that suggest the country has a labor shortage in a couple of categories that he indicates need foreign workers.
Since we began issuing the grades last spring, we have encouraged all of you to use them to push your favorite candidate(s) to improve their immigration positions.
For those of you who are Trump supporters, I urge you to use the information provided in this newsletter to push Trump to improve and to stop slipping on the issue that above all others catapulted him into the nomination lead.
ADMITS HE IS GOING "SOFT"
Trump acknowledged in Thursday night's Fox News debate that he has changed his position and now sides with Silicon Valley titans who claim America isn't producing enough high-tech workers.
Yet, there is no new evidence that anything has changed from previous reports that America has a glut of trained high-tech workers.
Fox's Megyn Kelly noted that his concern for Silicon Valley sounded at odds with his previous positions against businesses preferring foreign workers for high-skilled jobs.
"(KELLY) So you're abandoning the position on your website . . . "
"(TRUMP) I'm changing it, and I'm softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country. . . . People go to the best colleges. They'll go to Harvard, they'll go to Stanford. They'll go to Wharton. As soon as they're finished, they'll get shoved out. They want to stay in this country. They want to stay here desperately. They're not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country."
After Thursday night's debate, the Trump campaign issued a statement to clarify that the candidate has not changed his position against H-1B temporary visas for high-tech workers.. Neither he nor the Fox moderator had referred specifically to the H-1B visas in their exchange in the debate.
But his comments about helping Silicon Valley were even worse than if they had been about temporary visas because he was referring to lifetime work permits to be given to foreign students as they graduate from U.S. universities.
Trump's debate comments were still unsettling Michelle Malkin and John Miano when Chris and I sat down with them Friday afternoon. They have written a powerful book, "Sold Out," that refutes almost everything that the Silicon Valley titans have claimed about their need for more foreign tech workers. Next week, we'll begin providing you video clips from our conversation.
APPEASING JOBLESSNESS AMONG YOUNGER LESS-EDUCATED AMERICANS
Trump also repeated his claim of last week's debate that there aren't enough Americans willing to do entry-level seasonal jobs in hotels and resorts, justifying visa programs that import low-skilled foreign workers even though less-educated younger Americans who would be most likely to fill such jobs have horrendous unemployment rates.
These seasonal jobs are exactly the kind of jobs needed by younger Americans who haven't been able to find a first-rung of the labor force ladder. Without the Band-Aid of foreign-worker programs, businesses would be forced to create effective recruitment channels into communities of extremely high non-workforce participation.
I'm not so much bothered that Trump's businesses legally use the foreign visa programs for hospitality workers as I am that he isn't pledging to curtail everybody's use of the programs for the good of the country.
THE LATEST CHANGES FROM OUR GRADING COMMITTEE
Our Grading Committee met Friday morning, as we have nearly every week since last May, and weighed all recent candidate statements.
After steadily rising from a "C" grade last spring to an "A-minus" grade, Trump has taken a step backwards to a "B+" with his statements about worker visas at the high and low end.
Ted Cruz has recently provided solid reinforcement of his positions that earned him a straight "A" grade as the candidate who favors immigration policies that would be the most helpful to struggling American workers and their families.
Our Committee raised Marco Rubio's grade from a "D" to a "D+".
We retained the worker-protection grades for John Kasich (D), Hillary Clinton (D-minus) and Bernie Sanders (F-minus).
TRUMP REMAINS 'GOOD' TO 'EXCELLENT' IN MOST CATEGORIES
Although Mr. Trump's latest immigration comments have been disconcerting, especially in last night's debate, we determined that they only affected one category ("protect against unfair work visa competition") of the ten immigration issues we rate.
Mr. Trump's overall positions still indicate a presidency that would be a huge improvement for American workers in terms of immigration policy. He continues to earn a VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT rating in six categories, a GOOD rating in one, a 1st STEPS in one, and he has no position on two categories (Chain Migration and the Visa Lottery).
Any waffling and flexibility on deportations and the wall by Mr. Trump had already been factored into our ratings long ago based on earlier ambiguous or conflicting statements. His overall positions on the "border" remain Very Good and on "interior enforcement" remain Excellent.
All ratings and grades for all remaining candidates can be found at: https://www.numbersusa.com/content/elections/races/presidential/2016-presidential-hopefuls.html
There are a lot of American citizens who should get the jobs first.
I think they are punishing themselves with needless pessimism.
When America was a “can do” place it fulfilled its own prophecies. It went to the moon in under a decade.
When America became a “can’t do” place it also fulfilled its own prophecies. It couldn’t even keep a sane definition of marriage.
I think it takes more than a sheepskin; it takes vision.
“There are no worker shortages.”
Oh, yes there are! In my part of Colorado, there’s worker shortages practically across the board. Just worked with a mover who lamented his inability to hire. Have a client who’s finishes basements and he’s limited in his work because of his inability to hire skilled workers, yet he’s death on illegal immigration, though he does like Trump’s idea of controlled legal immigration for skilled people of good character.
Now you may ask, WHY is there a worker shortage in my area? If I had to guess, it’s that the various governments are simply supplying to much free stuff, such that too many people don’t feel much of a need to actually work very much. But, there’s also probably issues of worthless government education and others as well.
And American workers who don't have vision are forced to train their foreign replacements that do have vision?
I first hasten to say don’t have visibility into all H1B operations, only the one where I am now. Some of the H1B operations really are corner cutting bargain basements. One of the rivals of the place where I am is, I believe, that way. They never ever got back to me even after they notified me of an open position. Their name reminds me of an expression in English that means “Good bye.” I think they are going to be left in the dust, in the long run.
There is no utterly infallible rule across the board — there are H1B pessimists and local optimists. But what I described is where I believe the proportions are.
Like it or not, Indians have not forgotten about spirituality when Americans have gone crassly materialistic. That’s going to show.
And this is not a situation of training robots. This is a situation of training people who are believed better able to carry the ball. And often they do turn out better able to carry the ball.
My question to these locals would be: what did you ever do with God in your life? God already warned in the bible that the consequences of neglecting Him would be to end up as the tail with others as the head.
Yeah, what a time to be talking about religion. But this is exactly the time to be talking about religion. If your religion means something, you’ll have a better grip on heaven, so to speak.
“Christians need to get serious about Christianity again.”
You and I have clashed on a number of issues, but you will not hear an argument from me on this. A man I knew well, who evangelized everywhere he could, once told me that when America fails to send and support missionaries to the world with the Gospel, God would send foreigners here so they could hear the Gospel. I think you are experiencing that.
Also, I will take ten foreigners who truly love Christ and are obedient to the Bible for every one American who despises the priceless freedom our forefathers bought at great personal cost.
“Why can’t we elect Cruz instead who is a hard core constitutionalist?”
I’m with you. I voted for him in Texas and took two people with me who did the same. This was the first time they voted in a primary.
I feel like conservatives have been beat down so long under Obama, many are willing to settle for a populist who stands up to the media and the GOPe. Clinton is damaged goods. We should be running a true conservative who can PROVE that conservatism works when you actually try it. If we try being moderate on everything, we will get poor results which will be blamed on conservatism.
Or worse, we could get more left-of-center government. We really do not know for sure how Trump will govern. Maybe he will be a man of his word and stick with conservatism.
But this seems a lot like Bush’s claim he had to suspend free markets to save the free markets. Or, even worse, it is like Pelosi’s argument that we had to vote for the Obamacare bill to see what was in it.
Anyhow... yeah many of you folks are tired, tired, tired of the way I have of factoring problems along spiritual lines.
But before we were even born, we were spirits. We’re only on this earth for a visit. No matter how much we try to pretend it’s permanent, such an approach evades us. We get sick. We have accidents. We incur attacks. We die. Maybe the scorecard isn’t a materialistic one after all.
People who know this are in a better position to prosper, because they won’t overdo it, which is an American tendency.
So successful, we’ve started to worship ourselves, and that sends us downhill.
Anyhow, those who are incensed over the current state of affairs are probably thinking in materialistic terms. Oh, we deserved to prosper from this. But the problem is, we didn’t deserve it. The only thing we could earn is God getting angry at us. Treating all the benefit we get as God’s grace is the key to the right attitude. God will lavishly fuel celebrations of His grace — just because He wants to do that.
I don’t know what happened in some of the tragic stories like the mass Indianization of Disney’s IT operations. Being spiritual minded, I can guess a little, but I don’t want to just damn someone without even knowing. Maybe the magic of the Magic Kingdom got a little too real. Maybe they forgot that the best wonders that Disney could come up with were all a reflection of God, and only dim reflections at that. Just my surmise. At any rate, a people who had some crude idea of God self-existing came along, and they ate the lunches of these self pampering princes. Just surmising. Without deeper investigation, we could not know.
The Bible was provided as a summary of the will of God, but the real goal is to be obedient to the will of God. Even the bible says so: the first commandment to humanity existed and was violated before there was any scripture.
The danger of having a Bible at all is that, being a book of text as it is, it is subject to being misinterpreted according to the agendas of those who come to it.
"It doesn't matter"
I would say maybe more fully, a summary of the will and character and works of God. And there is doubtless more.
Using the bible right is a challenge and we’ve clashed over it, yes.
I think having knocked my head good and hard spiritually against WRONG ways to use the bible, has formed part of my background.
I see it now as kind of like the manual that comes with an aircraft. It’s useless without a serious attempt to actually fly the aircraft. Knowing it inside and out can never substitute for flying the aircraft, and flying it well. And it may even happen that someone might come along and fortuitously figure out some things about flying the aircraft without even reading the manual, perhaps because he heard some of the whispers of the aircraft’s builder.
And this is why the spiritual vision of Hindus doesn’t shock me as much as it used to. I will never become a Hindu, no. Christ remains the Name Above All Names and shows it, and He is the One to whom I have allegiance. I find that Hindus will listen to gospel if respectfully presented. The grace of God sure gets past the karma problem, and I have already started to let on to them about that. To them, it is an astounding blessing they do not yet fully grasp.
Well you may be right. There may be matters of priorities going through their head.
Trump looks poised enough to do enough of the right things, that the wrong things become relatively insignificant details.
It may happen that the American situation will evolve into a better condition after Trump, and/or Trump himself will evolve along with the people into a better condition.
The will of God is central to all this. Our wisest man may mean nothing compared to His work through the man that God has prepared and placed to be propitious to His will.
I have seen several spiritual and philosophical reasons to suspect something like this may be afoot.
These seasonal jobs are exactly the kind of jobs needed by younger Americans who haven't been able to find a first-rung of the labor force ladder.
entry-level seasonal jobs would more than likely be as a laundry worker or maid work, which is pretty much making beds and spending half your shift on your knees scrubbing tubs. Hours start at 5 or 6am to 2 or 3pm, which is a direct conflict with college hours. And I'm not sure if today's image-centric yoots would stay with that type of work for a month, much less an entire season. For the unemployed, there are two reasons not to take such work: one, unemployment benefits look back 18 months and a low wage will drag down your average wage; and two, it adds nothing to the resume - a McDonalds' job can at least be painted as team leadership training.
To recover an idea of the honorability of such jobs may be one desideratum.
A problem with our legacy may be that the older generations used to actually boast about how menial their work had been. And that was the wrong attitude. They should have spoken of how God rewarded their progressive effort.
And so in turning from a vice, the younger generations also turned from a virtue as well.
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