Tag Archives: immigration

Byzantine Visas

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In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the week, Martin Lawler and Margaret Stock wrote about dysfunctional and too low limits on H-1B visas for skilled, educated foreign workers. While on the right track, though, they missed some points.

Some claim there is no shortage of science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) workers, and that US companies hire foreign employees to be “indentured workers” who can be paid low wages. In 2012, David North of the Center for Immigration Studies said, “It is well known that many H-1B workers are, in effect, indentured by employers who had filed to obtain green cards for them—they are nominally free to leave, but it can be hard to keep your resident alien application alive after leaving the employer who set it in motion.”

Lawler and Stock correctly point out the fatuousness of this erroneous claim, but they miss a larger point. Say, arguendo, that North is right. There are two solutions to this, and neither include North’s view of how such foreign workers should be treated. Lawler and Stock addressed the foolishness of the (low) quota for H-1Bs. The other solution is to cut out the nonsense on the green cards: decouple them from visas. Either the green card applicant is suitable, or he is not. His STEM education is only one criterion, and it needn’t be a critical one.

And, in support of the above correction, Lawler and Stock note that

[t]he Labor Department must certify, through a formal process, that H-1B wages are appropriate. Public notices of the jobs, including the wages, must be posted at the work site. The notices must contain specific information about filing a complaint challenging the wage and working conditions. Once the certification is issued, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services conducts a thorough review of the entire case, including details about the employer, employees and positions.

But this misses a larger point, too. Government has no business entering the premises of a private enterprise and dictating to that enterprise who it may hire, at what pay rate, or (within very broad limits) under what conditions.

Full stop.

Labor price should be as competitive as any other good or service price.

Chuck Schumer’s Progressive Solution to Immigration Reform

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Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) tried to break the impasse over immigration on Sunday, suggesting that Congress pass a law that wouldn’t take effect until after President Barack Obama leaves office.

Yeah.  Because it’s entirely appropriate that the present President—or any President, come to that—refuse his sworn duty to enforce the laws on the Federal books whenever those laws are inconvenient to his ideology.

The distrust of Obama isn’t limited,either, to his decision not to deal with existing immigration law as it stands, his purported increase of deportations notwithstanding.  It has to do with his contempt for those laws, from his implementation of the DREAM Act by executive fiat after it had been explicitly rejected by Congress, to his execution of carbon cap-and-trade by executive fiat after Congress had explicitly rejected that, to his piecemeal rewrite of the Obamacare law by executive fiat, to….

Law Enforcement

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…and President Barack Obama.  House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) said last Thursday,

There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws.  It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.

This comes close to killing any sort of immigration reform before the November mid-terms.  Asked about this statement in a following daily mid-day press conference, Obama said through his Press Secretary Jay Carney the following:

The president has an exceptional record of improving border security on his watch.

Notice that.  Both Boehner’s description of the lack of trust in Obama to enforce the law and the question about that lack of trust were general; they were not limited in any way, including regarding any particular subset of the law.

Carney’s Obama’s evasiveness in answering the question is a clear demonstration of the factors underlying that lack of trust.

Immigration and Voting

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The central thesis of this post is a brief excerpt from Daniel Hannan’s (MEP) book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made The Modern World.

[I]n the 2010 Canadian election, immigrants were more likely to vote Conservative than native Canadians.  Think, for a moment, how exceptional such an outcome is.  In most of the world, newcomers vote overwhelmingly for left-of-center parties.  There are plenty of reasons why.  They are usually penniless when they arrive, and so gravitate to politicians who purport to represent the poor.  They tend to live in districts represented by leftist politicians who, at local level, are the first to help them navigate the political system of their new nation.  And, of course, left-wing parties see themselves as champions of all minorities.

The success of the Canadian Conservatives owed a great deal to their determined campaigning among ethnic minorities and new settlers.  But it was assisted by the non-racial way in which English-speaking societies define themselves. [pg 280]

This shouldn’t be surprising to any of us.  Immigrants come to the US, and to Canada, looking to make better lives for themselves and their families than was possible in their old country.  They bring with them a habit of self-reliance and a powerful work ethic.  By their immigration, they’ve shown themselves to be willing to take risks for gain and not simply to wait on handouts.  Immigrants are more likely to start (and succeed with) small businesses, too, and small businesses are the jobs generators of our economy.  These are principles of modern Conservatism in the US; we should be welcoming them with open arms.

Republican—and Conservative—candidates also should take heed of that last paragraph in the quote: “determined campaigning among ethnic minorities and new settlers.”  They should do this, not only in their own districts—which must come first, surely, as winning the election is a prerequisite to getting anything done in elective office—but also in their neighboring Democrat districts, where many more immigrants—and native minorities—live; these voters should not be dismissed by us.

It would help, also, if we, as a nation, turned to what has been demonstrated to a large degree in Canada: “the non-racial way in which” we define American society—but in practice as well nominally in law.  The Democrats and Progressives cannot let go of their racial (or gender) difference meme (recall the MSNBC bi-racial Cheerios ad kerfuffle, the cries of racism whenever a white man criticizes a black government official, the squawks of sexism when a man criticizes a woman candidate), but we Republicans and Conservatives surely can move beyond such racism and sexism.  Beginning, as alluded above, with going into immigrant and minority neighborhoods and talking directly with those folks—not as Asian or Mexican immigrants, not at Black- or Hispanic- or Asian-Americans, but as Americans and future Americans.

In the end, we shouldn’t be afraid of how immigrants might vote (we shouldn’t be shutting them out of our country over that question at all).  Immigrants in the United States generally would vote with Republicans and Conservatives, if only we would give them the chance.

Certainly, we need have no fear for the Conservative message in any contest of ideas.

Immigration, Again

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had some thoughts on this, which he passed on to the House Republicans as they left for their annual retreat.

As they consider the subject of immigration in their retreat, I expect the Republicans to focus on three things: border and interior security, legalization for some of the existing 11 million aliens, and ensuring that President Barack Obama enforces immigration law.  Within that, Republicans will consider ways to deal with the children of illegal aliens, visas for guest workers, and a legalization process that would require illegal aliens to pay fines and back taxes.

Contained in Sessions’ thoughts for the House Republicans were concerns about

…the negative impact of the House immigration proposal on US workers, taxpayers, and the rule of law.

[Sessions’] analysis said increasing the number of immigrants would hurt an already weak economy, lower wages, and increase unemployment.  He cited White House adviser Gene Sperling’s comment earlier this month that the economy has three people looking for every job opening.

…the House GOP leaders’ plan that’s taking shape would grant work permits almost immediately to those here illegally, giving them a chance to compete with unemployed Americans for any job.  He said it would lead to a surge in unskilled workers and would provide amnesty to a larger number of immigrants in the country illegally, giving them a chance to apply for citizenship through green cards.

I have some disagreement with the Republicans’ focus and with Sessions’ suggestions.

Absent from the focus is any action on easing immigration—making getting entry visas of any type easier and faster to get.  What the Republicans seem to be working on is an excellent start, and if that’s all that can get done this session, that much is worth getting done.  But they—and their Senate counterparts—must recognize that this is only a step on a long journey, and they must return next year (coincidentally, a new Congressional session) and take another step toward rationalizing our immigration system, and hopefully post 2016, finalizing that rationalization.

Unaddressed in both the House Republicans’ and Sessions’ positions is the role of immigrants in our elections.  The fear (carefully unspoken here) is that immigrants are monolithically Liberal in their attitudes and will be in their voting habits.  This is to misunderstand the willingness to take great risks, the initiative involved, the self-reliance inherent in the effort it takes for an alien to make the journey into the United States, whether that journey and entry are carried out legally or illegally (in most cases other than smuggling or terrorist entry, especially those entering illegally, perhaps).  Sessions, and Republicans and Conservatives generally, are overly pessimistic, and they lack confidence in the Conservative message as it regards immigration, immigrants, and our existing illegal aliens.

Sessions misunderstands the relationship between immigrants and jobs.  It’s immigrants who start, and succeed with, small businesses at a vast rate, and it’s small businesses that are the jobs creators in our economy.  Sessions’ jobs concerns are misplaced here.  The job applicant to job ratio claimed by Sperling would be greatly reduced by those immigrants and their new businesses.

Finally, the conflation of legalization or a path to citizenship with amnesty is simply a mendaciously offered red herring.  The plans on offer for legalizing existing illegal aliens all involve penalties of some sort, ranging from self-deportation (which could be satisfied by visiting the nearest consulate or embassy, these facilities being foreign soil) to paying a fine and back taxes (which carry their own penalties).  Amnesty simply isn’t present in any of the plans.