WITH A DWINDLING LABOR SUPPLY IN THE U.S., ARGUMENTS ABOUND FOR EASING IMMIGRATION RULES
By William Pesek Jr.
Give me your tired, your poor, your ... unemployed. You won't find these exact words carved on the base of the Statue of Liberty, but they represent an idea for which economists, including Alan Greenspan, increasingly have endorsed. It's a concept that may just help keep alive this New Economy of ours.
----------------------
Is this sort of garbage worth the effort to argue? Isn't there a point at which the big effect of the Big Lie is just plain boredom and exhaustion? From whence does this boundless creativity, a cornucopia of duplicitious nonsense, and its oceans of toxic thought issue? I guess it is just a matter of money. The more people you pay to write it, the more it flows.
But you know I feel it is always the same argument and it always has the same beginning. And the beginning (in my mind) for this particular brand of corporate-mind-suck is the Reagan Revolution. It's a kind of benchmark, a zero year, a turn from BRB (before Reagan bullshit) to ARB (after Reagan bullshit).
Let the tedium begin. I do this for personal exercise and discipline. Please don't bother to read it. It blames the usual suspects, capitalism and corporate greed.
"As we're all well aware, the New World is simply running out of workers, particularly skilled ones. The depleting pool of available labor in the U.S., along with the economy's strong growth rate, prompted the Federal Reserve to boost interest rates last week. Tightening employment conditions could prompt them to act again if Help Wanted signs go unanswered. Or if everyone from burger flippers at McDonald's to Silicon Valley computer wizards continue to see paychecks fatten."
Well, we have exploited all the most easily exploited here, States side. So, full employment means that in order to continue growth, corporate America faces the choice of actually devoting resources to education and training and therefore invest in bringing the vast sea of the US workforce up from the depths--or just take advantage of another country's investiments in training and education, and import the most readily exploitable skilled labor here without putting out a penny. If you were a capitalist pig asshole, what would you do?
Obviously, "Why not open the floodgates to more immigrants?"
And god knows we wouldn't want to allow labor to charge more for their exploitation when we know that, "Fed Chairman Greenspan recently said more immigrants would help make the unemployment rate's effect on inflation become "less and less of a potential problem."
In other words, let the wet backs kill off any local working class hope or power to push for wage increases.
"Over the last decade, immigrants have played a vital role in the economy. Because foreign workers have boosted the labor force, companies have been able to expand and profit even as the number of available native workers shrank. If jobs had gone unfilled, businesses couldn't have grown and achieved high rates of productivity. This would've led to slower growth, stagnant corporate profits and a less vibrant stock market. Could the Dow have risen above 10,000 without workers to keep our economy growing?"
The vital role of course was that immigrants were more easily exploited by paying less for their labor, while furthering the immiserization process in the existing labor pool by pressuring a drop to equivalent wage levels. However, I have no argument with the idea that without this double crunch, "This would've led to slower growth, stagnant corporate profits and a less vibrant stock market."
"The irony, of course, is that without help from immigrants, the Fed would've raised rates aggressively and choked off the nation's longest peacetime expansion."
There is no irony unless you think it's amusing that Fed interest rates are used to suppress raising wage demands--coded as inflation.
"But it's other countries, not the U.S., that are hearing the sucking sound as more and more of their citizens contemplate moving to America. Tired of cumbersome regulation, high taxes and impediments to entrepreneurial pursuits, a growing flow of young Asians, Latin Americans, Canadians and Europeans are heading to U.S. shores. This solid contribution from foreign workers may be a key reason why economists' fears of higher inflation haven't been realized. Consider that of the 12.7 million new jobs created since 1990, immigrants have filled 38%."
I am reasonably certain that immigrant workers are not moved in the slightest by cumbersome regulation, high taxes, and impediments to their entrepreneurial pursuits. I think that must be the multinational corporations Pesek was thinking of.
"While he understands the economic arguments, Krikorian worries that the U.S. is 'importing poverty' and 'Brazilianizing' our labor force by increasing the gap between rich and poor through immigration."
I thought the neo-liberal policies to turn the US into Brazil accounted for the economic miracle that produced our longest peacetime expansion ever. But see, since I am obviously not an economist, I miss these finer points.
"...studies also suggest that new immigrants rely more on government handouts than the native born."
Which I guess goes to prove the tattered remnants of the New Deal and War on Poverty still have a role to play--temporally shoring up the waves of imported tired masses so they can just barerly live on unlivable wages and help produce the greatest boom since whenever.
"Yet most economists think the pluses outweigh the negatives."
I am sure they do. Especially the ones Barron's pays to say so.
"One intriguing side effect of tight labor markets is that the proper conduct of immigration policy is becoming an important complement to monetary policy."
Careful guys, you might let the cat out of the bag. Remember the Big Lie has to appear seamless in order to be compelling. The labor market is tight at the bottom because monetary policy has driven the former middle class to compete with the bottom at lowest tolerable wage for the maximum available skill. Now the trick is how to enhance those skill levels at the bottom without paying to produce them. Hence,
"The U.S. already has been recalibrating its system of selective immigration. One example is the so-called H-1B visa for professionals in short supply to help eliminate serious shortages in certain professions like computer programming."
The neat part of this plan is that the Indian masses paid to produce their professional and technocratic classes. Now all US capital has to do is manipulate immigration policies to skim off this bountiful natural resource--holding our racist noses of course while doing so. But I guess we'll give up just about anything for a buck.
"In a recent study, TransAtlantic Futures examined three sources of foreign labor supply: legal immigration, illegal immigration and workers on the H-1B visa program. The research shows that immigrants from Mexico, the largest supplier of both legal and illegal workers, had the biggest impact on U.S. employment, followed closely by India. Residents of India have received 46% of all H-1B visas issued so far in 1999, while China has accounted for 10%."
The problem with exploiting the professional Chinese classes is they have to make the language transition--all very costly in time and support, so forget China. These guys (or the engineers at any rate) are better off in the clean rooms where they don't have to talk. So, we might just as well hire the existing US work force and train them, perish the thought. But wait, India already has done all the English language work plus higher education degrees, so these minions are ready to hit the keyboard FOB, emerging newly washed from their temporary housing encampments. And of course when you're finished with them you can send them back to India. God knows you wouldn't want a bunch of pissed off Hindus rattling their cages in Fremont.
"What makes the topic particularly timely is that it may be an important election issue in 2000."
Which means that a lot of Silcon Valley corporations have plenty of extra cash to buy their candidates to promote this pressing need. Silcon Valley needs more programmers like San Jose needs more strip malls.
"By most indications, immigration isn't the hot-button issue it used to be...The antiimmigration rhetoric of just a few years ago has all but disappeared. States and municipalities are under less pressure to ban public services and assistance to immigrants"
Since the blatant racist policies of Republican candidates cost them virtually all their public offices in California government--due to the fact that nearly half the population is composed of Mexican-, African-, or Asian-Americans--I guess their bash-immigrants tactic pushed the wrong hot-button with the voters. Wonder why?
"The shift may be related in part to the role U.S. educational institutions play in arming foreign students to compete against Uncle Sam. Alison Cleveland of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce thinks that with American colleges and universities graduating non-resident aliens in all disciplines, it's pointless to bar U.S. companies from capitalizing on that knowledge."
Makes sense to me. Why capitalize on the more expensive local product, when you can wait a year and re-import a languishing professional class with the same education and skill from off shore.
"Houston immigration attorney Charles Foster adds that the tremendous growth in high-tech jobs throughout the economy, combined with decreasing enrollment by U.S. students in high-tech fields, has resulted in an increased demand for foreign professionals in many specialty occupations. As Foster sees it, 'Our current inability to satisfy this demand will harm both our economy and our ability to compete globally.'"
Well, we certainly wouldn't want to harm our economy or damage our ability to compete globally by improving the standard of living and education of our labor force, would we? Of course the real question is why there is a decline in the ranks of US students going into lengthy and expensive high-tech and professional fields. Well, see that's the problem with immisering the local middle class--they can't afford to support their kids through a PhD and a couple of years of work experience. But, the high bourgeois of India, Latin America, and Europe still can, so there you have it.
Chuck Grimes