Derb: It’s worse than you think. When the president said:
The H-1B should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field.
He, like most immigration enthusiasts, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is no such requirement. The video you linked to was to show employers how to game the green-card system for “skilled” workers, which does have such a requirement, but companies can, and do, hire H-1Bs all the time specifically to replace existing American workers — who are sometimes required, as a condition of their severance pay, to train their replacements. Here’s the way one university site describes it:
Another advantage to the H-1B category is that the employer does not need to demonstrate that there is a shortage of qualified U.S. workers and, consequently, a labor certification process can be avoided.
The firm does have to demonstrate it’s paying the prevailing wage and that’s where the gaming comes in — “prevailing wage” is a legal term of art that has little connection to what actual people in a particular occupation are actually paid.
The reason this question even came up is that the H-1B program is designed to beggar educated, middle-class people who have the means to complain. Blue-collar workers are much more thoroughly screwed by our immigration system, but they’re less likely to have the skills and the means to object — and those groups who claim to speak for them are firmly part of the post-American, open-borders-uber-alles left, and consequently say nothing.
This is a tricky argument for Republicans to make: How can you say on one hand the government should have no say in corporate decisions to offshore work to the lowest bidder for the benefit of shareholders, yet they should be obligated to recruit and retain the highest-paid labor domestically at a negative benefit to those same shareholders.
It seems you can't have it both ways unless you except the notion that corporations exist for something other than pure profit - which is the Left's premise.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not that hard at all. Corporations hire and employ people to maximize the corporation's return on investment. The United States articulates and enforces immigration policy to advance US national interests. The two are not interchangeable.
Whether a corporation chooses to set up a shop outside of the US is a very different question than whether the US permits an immigrant to enter the country to work.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusebut if the corporation leaves to go overseas to hire foreign workers, how is that better/different than if the corporation stays here and hires foreign workers? either way, if you think our national interest is hurt by US workers being replaced by foreign workers, it seems like you should be concerned.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's better/different in that the corporation is choosing to take their property out of the country, as opposed to requiring the country to accept their preferred employees or customers. Just because I think something is good for the country, I don't assume that means the government has the authority to do something about it. Do you think the US has the authority to bar emmigration for those US citizens who want to legally move to another country? After all, "brain drain" can be a national problem.
What the government does have authority over is our immigration policy. I think our national interest might be served by allowing some workers in, and not others. I do not think the employers or customers of those foreign workers are necessarily the best judge of what benefits the country as a whole, though.
Where this becomes an interesting conversation is in the realm of national defense - the government exerts controls over dual use technology and employs sanctions as a projection of national power.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusesigh. remind me again why conservatives think businesses should have to justify to the government their reasons for hiring someone? this sounds like liberal micromanaging of the economy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWith that logic, on immigration if you are in for a penny, you are in for a pound. Forget just science and engineering specialties. If the "Conservative" argument about imported labor is that Corporations should be free to make use labor from whatever source, then what they are implicitly arguing for is open borders across almost all employment domains.
I mean why stop at scientists and engineers? If farmers prefer cheap immigrant labor (which they do), then access to Latin American labor should be unfettered. Extend that rationale to nurses and teachers (already happening). Every job category (excepting politicians and C-Level Crony Capitalists of course and the elements of the Military-Security Complex) is then open for displacement by imported foreign labor.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusei think we can drastically increase the number of legal immigrants admitted without going straight to open borders. but yes, i wouldn't mind evolving to an open border.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@jamie,
An open border? Should we also stop paying US Customs to protect us from cheap couterfiet goods and intellectual property infringement? There's a pretty good market for fully automoatic weapons, I guess we should let them in too? After all, aren't these are just arbitary rules to be discarded too?
Without borders, the US and the 50 states wouldn't be able to tax because there would be no definition of where that authority begins and ends.
Perhaps, you should open your borders first, allow immigrants to camp in your yard and use your bathroom and kitchen without any contribution toward the building costs of your bathroom and kitchen.
Open Borders = Anarchy
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd so what? There is a difference between illegal immigrants and people who go through an orderly process to fulfill demand in the United States. If, having followed the processes of legal immigration, a laborer is still more competitive than a native alternative, so what?
When you shop around for goods and services, it helps you. You can stretch your dollar more, and thus support more companies (and their laborers). Do you feel a tinge of guilt that purchasing your car for 10% less is less money flowing through to the laborers, ignoring the additional laborers you helped support with that money spent at a different company?
Unions love making this emotional appeal. "Don't use those non-union people because you are preventing us from making a decent living". And conservatives rightly reject such specious thinking. We reject it because Union workers have no more claim on MY money than a non-union worker and because paying above-market rates for labor means you have less money to spend on other people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnions? What do unions have to do with it? You've meandered off the plantation.
Your claim is for unrestricted immigration into the U.S. for employment That's it. You're for it. And open borders for employment is "Conservative".
BTW, with 9% unemployment and around 18% real unemployment, there are plenty of Americans who can "fulfill demand".
BTW II:
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow lovely that you declare Unions have nothing to do with it. Too bad reality does not abide your hand-waving.
"Americans (or Union Workers) deserve these jobs, and you are giving them to Foreigners (non-Union workers)."
The constructions are exactly the same- you've defined a class of people and insist that class has more "right" to an employer's money than others. And that "right" you've discovered imposes obligations on other people and their money.
Yes, the United States government has the power to set immigration policy. But you are justifying the exercise of that power on the notion that an American's desire for a job at a certain price outweigh's the Employer's right to engage in a contract with someone at a lower price. In other words, you are arguing for a subsidy paid by Employers (and their customers) to the class of laborer you prefer. That you use Immigration policy as the foundation of your subsidy, rather than Pro-Union legislation and the commerce clause, makes little difference.
I am not arguing for Open Borders. I am arguing for a sane guest worker program that allows companies to safely, legally bring people to this country to work without threatening our National Security or granting a bunch of people instant voting rights or status on our welfare programs. It seems the only counter-argument you have for it is that Americans are owed those jobs. I don't see how that comports with conservative free market principles.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRe: "I am arguing for a sane guest worker program..."
Hah! Who defines "sane"? You? So an IT manager could just fire all his American workers and replace them with immigrants? And if it's OK for the IT shop, how about the construction company? The owner tells all his machine operators they have to take minimum wage or they will be replaced by Mexican immigrants. Extend that to every other domain except the National Security Leviathan. According to your "free market" rubric, that would be just swell.
You pull that thread and you're looking at all kinds of social and economic pathology. More of the "I got mine" mentality of Let 'em eat cake "Conservatism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAwesome how you skipped over my actual argument. But never mind, you demonstrate your protectionist silliness just fine.
According to you, Free Markets are swell as long as you are hiring "the right people." A person with money doesn't get to spend that money as he wishes- he has to spend it hiring Americans (or Union, or people of a certain color). And a company is somehow obligated to pay your protected class of people, regardless of whether or not it is in their best interests because, evidently, the interests of your protected class of people outweigh the interests of the person actually, you know, signing the check.
Heck, why stop there? Buying equipment from outside the US costs American jobs. Let's start jacking up tariffs on imported items. Just so long as the Americans get their jobs, who cares if you have to spend twice as much for a computer for your business. Ignoring the fact that this actually harms Americans rather than helps them, it is just a clever way of hiding a tax subsidy on American labor- forcing Americans to pay more for other Americans. If you think that's Conservative, then I guess I am no conservative. Shrug.
Sorry, but your ideology is the one with the "I got mine" mentality. In your ideology, an IT worker gets above-market pay, and if that means the employer doesn't hire another guy, or invest in a new business operation, oh well. The IT worker got his payout. That two foreigners could have lived off the same salary, or that the new business venture could have funded new jobs domestically means nothing to you. "I got mine" indeed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat's sauce for the Goose. You ain't so special either. Why don't you recruit someone from Chindia and pay him half salary to take your job?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRepublicans are fine with civil law limiting what corporations can do in pursuit of pure profit. That's why you can't have a legal murder-for-hire corp. Government determining when and if immigration is in the national interest is a Republican principle.
Instead of all these easily gamed legal rules, we should just set a H1-B quota and auction them off to the highest corporate bidders. If corporations really desperately need somebody from abroad, they will be willing to pay for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusemurder is an externality imposed on others. what is the externality imposed if the business hires a skilled worker from overseas?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnemployment for the US citizen who could have been hired instead.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe externality is the cost imposed by the employer on American citizens by the addition of the foreign worker and his family to the United States - the additional burden on schools, roads, and other government-funded infrastructure.
America is an asset owned by the citizens of this country - in financial terms a very real asset. But the concept of "willing worker/willing employer" pretends the owners of that asset have no right to a say in who uses that asset.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlus the unemployment and other direct social services costs when the American citizen gets displaced or not hired because of an H-1B.
The percentage of American Ph.D. Medicinal Chemists who are no longer doing Medicinal Chemistry is amazing, yet the H-1B pipeline continues to flow.
Somehow, those people are no longer the "Best and Brightest" enough. Shame about Americans being inferior and everything...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat is the very best candidate is a foreigner?
As a part-owner of an engineering firm, I know that we often hire H-1Bs not so we can pay them less (we don't), but because they are better. I don't see why we should have to hire some lackadaisical student over someone who graduated summa laude (the ridiculous filter would not allow me to write the full name of that kind of degree) because the lazier kid is an American and the superstar is Indian. In order to do well as a company, we need the very best. Sometimes they are American, often they are not (especially in the sciences), and how in the world can conservatives tell me with a straight face that it is 'conservative' to force me to hire lesser qualified candidates?
Stop with the affirmative action for citizens. If you want a good job, work hard and people will want to hire you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse