Sep 13, 2020 | Politics
Stuart Anderson at Forbes succinctly points out that the Trump Administration’s H1-B visa restrictions won’t create new U.S. jobs, but move sectors of the economy outside of the U.S. where workers are not restricted by their nationality:
Government officials and others who ignore or won’t concede that the labor market is global seem to believe, despite the evidence, that companies won’t send work outside the United States in response to H-1B visa restrictions. “Foreign affiliate employment increased as a direct response to increasingly stringent restrictions on H-1B visas,” according to firm-level data in important research by Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business. “[A]ny policies that are motivated by concerns about the loss of native jobs should consider that policies aimed at reducing immigration have the unintended consequence of encouraging firms to offshore jobs abroad.”
“IT outsourcing has evolved from relatively simple tasks to much more complex software development,” notes the Wall Street Journal. “[Pennsylvania-based] EPAM developers, scattered across more than 160 offices in multiple time zones using Microsoft’s collaboration software, Teams, routinely work on a single project. For example, developers in Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, and the U.S. are working on booking platforms for a major online travel company.”
What will be the impact of the new H-1B regulation? “All of the changes in the regulation are likely to be resisted by employers as inconsistent with the statute and economically harmful,” said William Stock. “If allowed to go into effect, the regulation will continue the current trend of employers sending high-value technology work offshore because of policies from this administration that are keeping and pushing key personnel outside the United States.” [“Regulation To Restrict H-1B Visas Moves Toward Final Step“]
More importantly, as Robert Tracinski argued in Restrictions on “H-1B” Visas Punish Ability and Trample the Rights of Employer and Employee:
The irrational premise behind our nation’s immigration laws is that a native-born American has a “right” to a particular job, not because he has earned it, but because he was born here. To this “right,” the law sacrifices the employer’s right to hire the best employees — and the immigrant’s right to take a job that he deserves. To put it succinctly, initiative and productiveness are sacrificed to sloth and inertia.
The “American dream” is essentially the freedom of each individual to rise as far as his abilities take him. The opponents of immigration, however, want to repudiate that vision by turning America into a privileged preserve for those who want the law to set aside jobs for them — jobs they cannot freely earn through their own efforts.
The quotas on H-1B visas — along with all other visas — should not just be expanded; they should be eliminated. Any immigrant who wants to come to America in search of a better life should be let in — and any employer who wants to hire him should be free to do so. Anything less would be un-American.
Related: Rebecca Girn: Trump’s Immigration Visa Restrictions are a Violation of Individual Rights
Jul 17, 2015 | Politics
From The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime – WSJ:
…numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”
A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that “for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,” according to the report. “This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”
It also holds true in states with large populations of illegal residents. A 2008 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants are underrepresented in the prison system. “The incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared [with] 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults,” the study concludes. “The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population.”
[…]
Every immigrant here illegally has already broken a law, though that doesn’t mean they are predisposed to crime. In a 2005 paper, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that more recently arrived immigrants are even less crime-prone than their predecessors. In 1980 the incarceration rate of foreign nationals was about one percentage point below natives. A decade later that had fallen to a little more than a percentage point, and by 2000 it was almost three percentage points lower.
[…]
How do you balance border security and labor-market demand? Should relatives of people already here continue to be given an immigration preference? Is it time to move toward a skills-based immigration system similar to Canada’s? How should the federal government treat border states and cities that bear the upfront costs of illegal entries? Is walling off the southern border feasible? Would it make the U.S. safer? And what should be done about the estimated 12 million undocumented people already living here?
Aug 25, 2014 | Politics
“Open immigration” in the context of capitalism means open to non-criminals and open to non-jidhadists. It does not exclude screening for criminals (those who violate rights), those with contagious diseases, and terrorists.
This is how Yaron Brook and Craig Biddle use the term. (I believe Binswanger is for “open borders” eventually — but only after the removal of jihadists).
Those who paint advocates of open immigration, such as Brook, Biddle and Weiner as leaving borders open with no screening (for jihadists and diseases, etc.) are dishonest.
Dr. Brook explicitly states screening is required in his definition of open immigration in his video.
Biddle states in his essay on open immigration and individual rights:
“Open immigration does not mean that anyone may enter the country at any location or in any manner he chooses; it is not unchecked or unmonitored immigration. Nor does it mean that anyone who immigrates to America should be eligible for U.S. citizenship–the proper requirements of which are a separate matter. Open immigration means that anyone is free to enter and reside in America–providing that he enters at a designated checkpoint and passes an objective screening process, the purpose of which is to keep out criminals, enemies of America, and people with certain kinds of contagious diseases.2 Such a policy is not only politically right; it is morally right.”
There are many differing arguments for open immigration — each with their different nuances — many of those arguments for open (and closed) immigration are wrong. So be careful when you lump them all together.
Don’t get caught up in the open to everyone vs. closed to everyone dichotomy on this issue. So people be careful when you paint with your overly large brush when demonizing an imagined enemy.
Aug 25, 2014 | Politics
“Open immigration” in the context of capitalism means open to non-criminals and open to non-jidhadists. It does not exclude screening for criminals (those who violate rights), those with contagious diseases, and terrorists.
This is how Yaron Brook and Craig Biddle use the term. (I believe Binswanger is for “open borders” eventually — so I am not sure how he
will handle jihadists).
Those who paint advocates of open immigration, such as Brook, Biddle and Weiner as leaving borders open with no screening (for jihadists and diseases, etc.) are dishonest.
Dr. Brook explicitly states screening is required in his definition of open immigration in his video. Link is here:
http://openimmigration.net/category/video/
Biddle states in his essay on open immigration and individual rights:
“Open immigration does not mean that anyone may enter the country at any location or in any manner he chooses; it is not unchecked or unmonitored immigration. Nor does it mean that anyone who immigrates to America should be eligible for U.S. citizenship–the proper requirements of which are a separate matter. Open immigration means that anyone is free to enter and reside in America–providing that he enters at a designated checkpoint and passes an objective screening process, the purpose of which is to keep out criminals, enemies of America, and people with certain kinds of contagious diseases.2 Such a policy is not only politically right; it is morally right.”
There are many differing arguments for open immigration — each with their different nuances — many of those arguments for open (and closed) immigration are wrong. So be careful when you lump them all together.
Don’t get caught up in the open to everyone vs. closed to everyone dichotomy on this issue. So people be careful when you paint with your overly large brush when demonizing an imagined enemy.
Aug 19, 2013 | Politics
Writes Om Malik:
In the first episode of the second season of British television show, The Hour its protagonist, Freddie Lyon upon returning from America explains why he was intoxicated by the new world:
“Being nobody in a country where everybody thinks they can be somebody…”
That one utterance by a fictional character sums up why every immigrant wants to come to America and that does include me. This is the country where Albert Einstein and Nicola Tesla were somebody. This is the place where Kim Kardashian and Alex Rodriguez are somebody. Kanye West and Steve Jobs, they are somebody. At one point they were nobodies. This quirky, burger munching, frappuccino swigging, football loving, gas-guzzling cross between utopia and Disney Land is a nation of nobodies who are on their way to be somebody.
And that is the beauty of America.
On a globe, America is a landmass, a country. In an immigrant’s heart it is a belief that future is almost always better. It may not be perfect and it is certainly not equal, but it still is one of a kind — the only place where an absolute stranger with a funny name and a funny accent with no friends or contacts can show up, work hard and actually get to do what he was destined to do.
That America is the place, I can now officially call home.[iAMerican]
