Displaced Americans

Washington Times ^ | March 14, 2003 | Paul Craig Roberts

[sarcasm]

U.S. corporations no longer have to outsource your high-tech or information technology (IT) job to China or India. They just bring your replacement here on an L-1 visa.

L-1 visas get around the legal technicalities that Congress placed on the H-1B visa program. Employers are not supposed to use H-1B visas to bring in foreigners to displace U.S. employees or in order to cut costs by paying low wages. H-1B visas are supposed to be utilized only when there is a shortage of particular skills, and the visa holder is supposed to be paid prevailing U.S. wages.

[SolutionsOnly]

And one other point: Other countries are bemoaning their 'Brain Drain' to the United States. Who comes out ahead in that deal?

[Looking4Truth]

I do have a problem, however, when our government takes away my competitive advantage of being in this country by letting in foreign programmers to work here when we already have a surplus of IT workers.

That's my take on the situation as well.

For reasons including but not limited to the visa scam, I've left the IT world and am now a truck mechanic who hopes to one day have his own custom motorcycle shop. It's been very hard financially but the freedom from the corporate PC wussies is very refreshing.

[FITZ]

We're not competitive now even without using American labor ---I think the problem lies more in some of your other points --excessive government regulations, excessive taxation, a huge welfare program, excessive CEO salaries etc. An American being paid $15-20 an hour isn't the problem and isn't what makes us uncompetitive. That is enough for most families to live on, if they don't make enough to live on, the government turns around and gives them food stamps and other handouts. Some Americans and others living here find they can live better and easier collecting welfare and/or SSI instead of taking lower paying jobs which is also a problem. Most of the problem is in the government.

[FITZ]

Other countries are bemoaning their 'Brain Drain' to the United States. Who comes out ahead in that deal?

Not necessarily us. For example --I live near the Mexican border, their better doctors often come here because they make more here. Then their patients feel they must come here too because the quality might be better --but very few come here with insurance or money so we end up having to provide free care. It's better on the Canadian border because the Canadians don't have that much of a brain drain going on and so have a more stable well-off country. When a brain drain is severe, it just makes for a lot of instability and worsening poverty and ultimately that isn't helpful to us.

[SolutionsOnly]

Here on the Northen Border (Minnesota) it's a little different. Canada is not Third World by any stretch of the imagination. You'd be surprised how many Canadians are working here. Personally, I welcome them. Great folks. They add value. We have some of that medical back and forth, but for very different reasons

Your situation there sounds like more of an illegal immigration issue - something that needs to be stopped YESTERDAY! Gotta love the INS.

[FITZ]

I agree that some brain drain helps the US --but it can also hurt the country they left but possibly helps that country in other ways. Minor amounts aren't a problem but when one country becomes more and more unstable and less self-sufficient, if we share a long border with an unstable country, it's not good for us.

[SolutionsOnly]

When American jobs are lost to Mexico, doesn't that help 'stabilize' Mexico and help them become more self-sufficient?

It's a Catch-22! Arrrgh!

[FITZ]

There seems to be no evidence that it has --Mexico isn't more stable today after NAFTA. It's worse. The campesinos were heavily protesting NAFTA back in January and February. 20 million people have fled Mexico ---massive fleeing of a country doesn't imply it's becoming more stable. I was listening to a Mexican talk show discussing massive migrations of people, and they said massive migrations are instability ---they cause it and are the result of it.

[SolutionsOnly]

Mexico still has a lot of corruption issues that stand in the way of any real progress, so I'm not holding my breath. I kinda wish we'd tighten up the border and get a little more serious about things. There doens't seem to be the politcal will this country make Mexico's step up to the plate.

But we're off on all whole 'nother tangent now, aren't we?

[brianl703]

Do we blame moral relativism?

[Jakarta ex-pat]

The writer stated that a corporate executive living in a gated community in Kansas City has more in common with his economic counterparts in Singapore and Shanghai and Bombay and Kuala Lampur than he does with middle-class working Americans living five miles away - and, with the high-speed communication and travel capabilities of modern life, it's easy for him to connect with those people. So the corporate class really IMO doesn't have much of a connection to their country, other than the need to influence their governments to extort favorable tax treatments, labor laws and trade terms.

BUMP