America is a country of over three hundred million people. As of today the official unemployment rate is 7.6%. The real unemployment rate, depending on the definition, it’s much higher – anywhere from 11% to 29%.
Given the above information, one must ask why is it that corporations are pushing the government to add special provisions to the immigration reform bill in order to allow special treatment for highly skilled workers (H1-B visas). Why not retrain and tap the thousands of engineers and other workers in the unemployment pool?
One should find The New York Times article, A Bill Allowing More Foreign Workers Stirs a Tech Debate, very problematic because while it gives numbers to justify a carve out in immigration reform for highly skilled workers, it does not move the debate forward,? making politicians accountable for the policies they push.
The core of the article is stated below.
Silicon Valley companies, warning of an acute labor shortage, say it is too costly to retrain older workers like Mr. Doernberg, and that the country is not producing enough younger Americans with the precise skills the industry needs. Their arguments have persuaded a majority of senators to give them what they want: a provision in the immigration bill to let in many more foreign professionals.
But Americans like Mr. Doernberg and the powerful labor lobby say that what the tech industry really wants is to depress wages and bring in more pliant, less costly temporary workers from overseas. If there is such a talent shortage, they ask, why are wages for most engineers not rising faster? Labor groups have pushed for a requirement to offer jobs to equally qualified Americans before hiring foreigners, a provision that the industry has fiercely resisted.
The pitched arguments of both sides, which are likely to resurface in the House when it takes up its version of an immigration overhaul, cloud a complicated reality. There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole. If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers ? more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs ? but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers. [source]
Within those three paragraphs is the encapsulation of purposeful failed policy as U.S. corporations have used global capitalism to commoditize the American worker. These are statements that give the current economic condition and the request by these corporations plausibility. It is the request for Americans to forgo simple mathematical facts by referring to corporate skewed ?empirical evidence?.
Corporations always attempt to use dubious market arguments when bribing politicians to write certain types of policies, and simply disregard realities of these said policies. If one believes in the market, it should be true that a shortage of skilled workers would raise their wages and value high enough to induce people to enter those fields. The reality is that these highly skilled workers? wages are not going through the roof or increasing that much.
The corporatists want their cake even after they have already eaten it. How so? It is true that America is not producing enough highly skilled workers. It is also true that America as a whole has a failed education policy. The war industrial complex is always funded because America maintains an imagined sense of being at war. The prison industrial complex is always funded (America spends more per prisoner than per student). Yet, while it is acknowledged that there is a shortage of skilled workers, education budgets for Head Start, primary schools, secondary schools, junior colleges, and universities are cut by both the state governments and federal governments under the false premise that raising taxes on the corporations and wealthy would further damage the economy.
The above mentioned article should not have been simply a statement of facts, empirical evidence, and skewed facts. That does no justice to the American reader. They deserve more. There needs to be an excoriation of the policies that are put in place by corporate purchased politicians that represent this plutocracy. It can be summarized in one paragraph.
Corporations have decided that profits for their few shareholders are more important than keeping a high standard of living for Americans who are willing to work for that higher standard. They have created a false narrative that higher taxes depress an economy. They have bribed politicians to cut or keep taxes low at the expense of educating its citizenry, and providing social services dictated by the creation of any humane society. When the foreseeable results of their actions create a shortage of skilled workers, they willfully forget their market force tenet of supply and demand that would ultimately cause higher wages to attract more American workers in those fields. Instead, they bribe politicians to use the resources of other countries to bring these foreign skilled workers into America at a discount.
Every American should be for easy and fair immigration to America. The history of the United States dictates that its immigration policy should be as lenient as possible, lest it has not atoned for its original occupation of these lands. There should not be any special carve outs for skilled workers. America must train Americans (native born and immigrants) for the American workforce. Corporations must pay for the vast American military, stability, security, and loyal workforce that allowed their existence. Americans must disregard the rhetoric of fear from these corporations who threaten job loss based on policy. They really have nowhere more secure to go. After all, without America they do not exist.
Edited and published by WP
