As I See It: Lawyers, Lies, and Statistics
What should America do about this issue?
ITJUNGLE-Here’s a statistic guaranteed to curdle the cream in an IT professional’s coffee. The huge populations of China and India have produced a correspondingly huge crop of offsprings–628 million kids under the age of 15, give or take a village. That’s a lot of young people who will soon (if they haven’t already) enter the global labor market. Americans, on the other hand, have sired some 60 million moppets, who blissfully haunt the nation’s malls, unaware of the approaching competitive tidal wave about to engulf them.
It’s no coincidence that as the job market turns predatory, American workers have lost their teeth. The numbers tell the tale, and the story told by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is one of betrayal. Between 2000 and 2005, IT employment opportunities in the United States grew by about 332,000 jobs. If those opportunities escaped your notice, there’s a good reason. During the same time period, the United States imported about 330,000 H1-B workers to fill many of those jobs. Engineers fared even worse. While 95,000 H1-B visas were issued for engineers, the Department of Labor reports that engineering employment shrank by almost 124,000 jobs.
How did this happen? In theory, qualified American applicants must be considered first, and H1-B workers can only be hired if qualified Americans are unavailable. Holy ethical dilemma, Batman! What’s a corporation to do? The trick for those hiring managers willing to circumvent the law is to find ways to “disqualify” qualified Americans. If that seems daunting, don’t worry; there are law firms eager to teach corporate clients how to shaft their countrymen.
John,
You’ve nailed this problem. Put the American kids to work as slave labor in … Utah coal mines.
MD
That is why the key is labor must have rights and a real justice system! The concept of pitting western workers against labor with limited rights here or overseas creates the problem.
We have created a race to the bottom via wages, safety standards, enviorment………..
A good portion of this “free trade” and global economy is funded indirectly by the American taxpayer. The military industrial complex is just one example.
Back in the days when more kids meant more farm hands, this article might have made sense. But, when the social security system needs younger employees to pay into the system so that retirees can collect, anti-immigration notions are simply anti-elderly.
When you recognize that the color of a man’s skin is less important to the future of the economic system than the fact that he is –- or is not — allowed to contribute to it, you’ll begin to join the reality based community.
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The “analysts” don’t seem to have a clue about the power of this country. Elitists problems elitist solutions. We’re all just warm bodies to them. Multinational corporations are the weak link. They’re chock fulla spies and traiters!!!
(I’m pretty sure we’ve always been outnumbered by the Chinese)
I’d get me some more farm hands but I don’t have a farm.
I know my solution to the future issues of 100 percent self-funding of Social Security is very communistic.
Every green dollar of income should be taxed.
Of course, that’s my solution to paying off the debt, too.
If you don’t want to pay your share, based on how much you benefit from the system, leave.
The system is biased towards private property aka wealth.
It’s biased against people wanting to live a simple life.