Invasion of the workers

originally published 10/07/2003

I've worked in the computer field for over 40 years. Almost all of that time it was lucrative and there were more jobs than qualified people. About 10 years ago, we began to see an influx of computer job-seekers from foreign nations... many from India and Pakistan, and the market changed. There were other factors involved too, but immigrants were an important part of the change. Suddenly, I had more job competition than ever before. Naturally, this news story caught my attention:

Congress cuts visas for skilled foreign workers
High unemployment in U.S. tech sector
underscored by rollback in H1-B program

Washington --A huge visa program for foreign high-tech and other specialized workers will quietly shrink by two-thirds starting today, drastically reducing the number of available slots for Indian, Chinese and other highly educated workers -- many of them graduates of U.S. universities -- who rely on the visas to get U.S. jobs when they graduate.

With the tech economy still mired in recession and unemployment in Silicon Valley at 8.7 percent in August -- after reaching 9.5 percent in June -- Congress has let the H1-B visa program drop from 195,000 new visas a year to its preboom level of just 65,000.

The program was expanded twice by Congress with great bipartisan fanfare, the last time in 2000, to 195,000 visas, just as the tech boom reached its peak. Members, particularly from California, were eager to respond to Silicon Valley executives who complained they could not find enough Americans to fill the upper ranks of their burgeoning workforce.

But since the tech collapse, laid-off engineers and computer workers in Silicon Valley and other tech-heavy regions have complained bitterly that the program allowed foreign workers to steal their jobs and undermine their pay.

Yep... that's what happened. That helps explain what happened to my cushy position in the computer field.

There is a huge group of people invading my America. They're taking jobs that used to be available to me, and making it very difficult for me to find "good" work. Some of those people are pretty shady. Some are on welfare programs. Most of them are just so very different... they dress strangely, and are difficult to understand. They gather in certain parts of the cities, and soon after, shops in those areas cater to them and almost become off-limits to people like me. If I walk into one of those areas, I feel out of place... in my own country... and I get strange looks from those who "belong" there. Many of these people are taking up space and tax money in our public school system, which means that I'm being forced to pay to educate them so that they can then take work away from me. I've worked my whole life in high-tech, but I've literally been shoved out by preferences that give jobs to these newcomers. Sure... they can do the work, but I was here first... shouldn't I have the preference?

I could be talking about immigrants, but I'm not. I'm talking about young Americans. Everything that Americans fear about immigrants is also true of that "ongoing invasion" of younger generations following us.

No, I'm not really complaining about younger people taking work from me, or being strange and different from me. Two of them are my own children. With age, though, it does become reality... youth can seem like aliens invading my world. I have to remind myself that I was once in their position, seeming alien to my own parents, marching out into the world, picking plum jobs off the job tree.

It's the same with immigrants. It doesn't make any difference what their origin is, they are job competition for me. Most are good people... some aren't... just like the rest of us. Their ways are no stranger than those of our own youth.

Libertarians favor open borders... open borders for people and for trade. Some people are frightened by that. They believe that immigrants will take American jobs, or that foreign goods will reduce American manufacturing, reducing jobs further. Some believe that if borders are truly open, we'll get a lot of criminals and evildoers immigrating here. Some are concerned that immigrants will take advantage of our welfare systems, or deluge our public schools. Some simply aren't comfortable having "different" people around, and worry that "American ways" will be overwhelmed by other cultures, religions, and beliefs.

These aren't silly fears; there is some basis for each of them. I'm surrounded by immigrant neighbors, from all over the world. Any store I shop in will have some immigrant clerks. I usually buy fast-food from Mexican workers. There's an Indian grocery nearby. I buy cigarettes from Palestinians. Within walking distance, I can go to an Oriental buffet, a Mexican restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant, two Chinese restaurants, and more. The local donut shop is now owned by oriental people.

It's a different world. I grew up in the Midwest; immigrants then were people who moved in from another state, and even they were rare. I grew up in a uniquely "American" period as well... during WWII and the 50's... the period of lowest immigration in our history. People who had any sort of accent were viewed with suspicion. We weren't very comfortable with Japanese, German, Italian, or Russian descent, or any other accent we couldn't identify. Their homelands had recently been, or were still, our enemies. Our government had imprisoned people of those nationalities, and we were all aware of the "Red scare".

I don't remember when I first became aware that our nation was "all about" immigration... aware that my own ancestors immigrated here from Germany, and Scotland and Ireland. Our "immigrants" were almost all Europeans, who looked and sounded much alike. Sure, there were a few Slavic names, and a few Italians... a few different shades of white, but all still clearly white. In my youth, everyone who seemed foreign had a tag name... kraut, nip, chink, pollock, kike, mick, wop, and more. I'm not positive, but it's likely that my family name was changed to Smith upon immigration, otherwise I might have been a "kraut" and looked at suspiciously. Could my father have worked in a WWII munitions factory with the name Schmidt?

Point is... I grew up about as "American" as possible... as nervous about immigrants as almost anyone else in America. I've personally experienced a reduction in employment opportunities due to immigration. How does such a person move to the other side of the immigration debate... way over to the "open borders" position? Check my next posting and find out, in "Tear down that wall, Mr. Bush"

The 2007 No Force, No Fraud Award for Doublespeak

Hillary has outdone herself. I have no doubt that, were I mad enough to seek a session of self-torture, I could find hundreds of shining examples of truly expert doublespeak from Mrs. Clinton. I suspect that were I to follow her speaking engagements, I couldn't take notes fast enough to record examples. She is the Mistress of Misleadings, the Dame of Deception... the Fraulein of Fraud.

Even the title of her book "It Takes a Village" (to raise children) was a masterpiece of fuzzy, feel-good deceit... a euphemistic phrase that really means that you, as parents, are not up to the job, so government should step in.

But... the Heroin of Hoax has pushed doublespeak to a pinnacle that truly qualifies her to become our President. Her new $110 billion health care reform plan is named "American Health Choices Plan"

Leapin' Lizards... how can it fail with a name like that? We can't argue with American, we all want Health, we adore Choices, and we all like to think there's a plan. Sure, it would be better if it formed an acronym (AHCP would sound something like a restrained German sneeze), but how could anyone argue with Hillary's American Health Choices Plan?

Oh, but there is one small problem... one word... that qualifies Hillary for the 2007 No Force, No Fraud Award for Doublespeak. The word is... CHOICES.

Granted, "American Health Plan" would have been dull and sterile, cold and unfeeling, and the addition of CHOICES makes a huge difference. CHOICES becomes the primary word in AHCP. CHOICES is a lovable word... we all like choices. Libertarians even like to say that we're pro-choice on everything.

Ah, but there's the rub... the true masterpiece of political doublespeak... CHOICES is a bald-faced lie, so big that it might even be ignored.

The basic choice, the most important choice of all, is to be able to say "No thanks, I don't want that". That is the basic right of freedom... being able to opt out. Being free means being able to choose what to include in your life, what you need or don't need, and on what to spend the money you earn. Every (and I do mean every) enforced dictate by government (at any level) squeezes individual alternatives and completely destroys a few individual lives.

We each make careful choices concerning our lifestyle, balancing what we want against what we can afford, eliminating some things in favor of others, finding the particular combination of choices that suits our unique situation. We reevaluate those choices continually, as new choices appear, as our desires change, or as costs change. The particular combination of such choices makes each of our lifestyles absolutely unique.

The lower our income, the more important each of those choices becomes, because we have to choose fewer "enhancements". Those closest to the economic "bottom rung" have the fewest choices... they spend time finding cheaper alternatives to what they feel they must have. Any negative impact on their choices can be catastrophic, setting off a chain of failures.

Hillary's "American Health Choices Plan", regardless of its details, is quite the opposite of what its name implies. It would eliminate the choice we now have... the choice of paying someone else to manage our health versus managing it ourselves. It would be a disastrous elimination of choice, and a destructive reduction of freedom. While pretending to help those most in need, it would push still more people into needy situations. It would be a near-ultimate example of one of Harry Browne's lines - Government breaks your leg and then offers you a crutch. That's not only true, and terrible, but government always leaves a lot of broken legs without crutches.