I spent some 30 years at the INS. Along the way I made some close friends and worked with truly dedicated people who are as outraged as I am about the unbelievable situation our nation finds itself in today.
An opinion piece appeared a couple of days ago in the Wall Street Journal and was forwarded to me by a former high- ranking member of the old INS. [ Wanted: A Smarter Immigration Policy ]
The issue of immigration, as I have often made clear, has a significant impact on many areas of concern for our nation.
Everything from national security and criminal justice to the economy, the environment, education and health care are hammered on a daily basis by our nation's continuing failures to secure our borders and create an immigration system that has integrity.
The issue of H1B visas has implications for at least three areas of concern for our nation and our citizens. Foreign workers most significantly impact national security, the economy and education.
Let us start out by considering the issue of the economics of the H1B visa program.
Virtually everyone is familiar with landscapers and construction companies that hire illegal aliens.
These industries as well as, farms, meat processing plants and restaurants are known for hiring illegal aliens. What many folks don't realize is that even "legal" immigration is fraught with fraud and abuses.
The high tech industries don't generally hire illegal aliens. They hire temporary workers who have the education that makes them desirable as employees of many high tech industries. These foreign workers also have another valuable trait: they will accept significantly lower salaries than their American counterparts. Often, immigration law firms, not unlike salesmen who want to close a deal, do whatever they can to get employers to hire foreign workers. For the law firms, their livelihood depends on this and so they are very motivated to make certain that foreign workers take priority over American workers.
If you don't believe me, check out this video of a segment of Lou Dobbs Tonight that aired on November 15, 2007 and dealt with the issue of H1B visas and made it clear that there is no shortage of American engineers, computer programmers and others with graduate degrees in the high tech industries.
Here is the link to that segment that runs about 5 minutes:
What will really infuriate you is the video of an immigration lawyers' conference in which lawyers were being coached to "not find qualified U.S. workers!"
The lecturer instructing the attorneys is Lawrence M. Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing for the firm of Cohen & Grigsby. This video was posted on You Tube by the Programmer Guild, an organization comprised of computer programmers.
I want you to now consider that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is that all-inclusive body of laws that regulates the entry of aliens into the United States and also their presence in the United States. It deals with immigration benefits and the grounds under which an alien might be removed (deported) from the United States. Under the INA, the law..." "...excludes aliens seeking to immigrate "for the purpose of performing skilled or unskilled labor," except that such aliens may be eligible for a visa if: the Secretary of Labor has determined that (A) there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work, and (B) the employment of the alien will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the United States workers similarly employed."
Please consider what the law states and then consider the entire issue of foreign workers. The immigration laws that in the mind of Nancy Pelosi and other "leaders" of our nation are egregious were promulgated with the clear intention of protecting the United States and the citizens of our nation. One of the really important issues that the INA addresses is the issue of protecting the American worker. Yet, Pelosi had the unmitigated chutzpah to declare that it was "Un-American" to arrest illegal aliens!
You have members of Congress doing everything in their power to expand the number of Hi1B visas to facilitate the entry of foreign workers into the United States to undercut Americans attempting to support their families!
It is clear that there is no shortage of Americans with the high-tech skills, only a shortage of political leaders who have integrity and who are actually willing to represent their constituents.
Again, I want to make another point that is important to remember. Our government has mortgaged the future of our grandchildren with the "Economic Stimulus Package." They claimed that it was vital to dump billions of our dollars into the economy to prime the economic pump and get our nation's economy moving.
If, indeed, this is what they had in mind, why did they not make E-Verify a part of the program to make certain that reasonable steps were being taken to help prevent illegal aliens from getting jobs? Why are they not opposed to increasing the number of H1B visas as well?
If you wonder why I am linking the E-Verify program to the H1B Visas the answer is simple and straightforward. But in order to answer the question, I will pose a rhetorical question: "What do illegal aliens and aliens on "temporary" work visas such as the H1B visa have in common?" The answer is that they are all foreign workers and as such, their goal is to take the money they earn and send as much of it back to their families in their home countries. Each year between 100 billion and 200 billion dollars leaves our nation's economy for foreign countries.
This is money that is not earned by American citizens or resident aliens. This is money that is not spent in the United States of America. This is money that is not invested in the United States of America. This money that is utterly lost to the economy to the United States of America!
By not discouraging foreign workers from coming to the United States and working and then sending money back home, our politicians make as much sense as the person who turns on the faucets on his bathtub in preparation for taking a bath but fails to close the drain. He then comes back to the tub some time later and finds that all of the hot water he had planned to bathe in had disappeared down the drain! At the same time, those politicians are undercutting their fellow American citizens and resident aliens who should expect the government to look out for their best interests.
In considering the issue of national security, there have been all too many instances where foreign workers have engaged in industrial espionage. Many of the have, admittedly, naturalized so that they would gain security clearances, but the point is that if we are concerned about the need to keep certain technologies from spreading outside the United States we need to not rush through the visa process as the Wall Street article strongly recommends that we do.
The visa requirement is simply a formality, but it is supposed to protect the security of our nation. Of course, the way that visas are all too often adjudicated, it would certainly appear that many of the leaders of our agencies have forgotten what their real missions are. The author of the opinion piece I linked to, made the following statement in his article: "Last week, in an encouraging sign that Washington has started to recognize the damage, the Obama administration pledged to throw enough resources at the problem to reduce the months-long screening to no more than two weeks in most cases. With the improvements that have been made in terrorist watch lists and other security screening tools, a decision on whether a visa applicant - especially one already living and working here - poses a threat should not take months."
Someone needs to mail this guy a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report! Consider this bit of brilliance from his opinion:
While the pledge to speed up security reviews is encouraging, the administration needs to take a more comprehensive look at the impact of post-9/11 visa and travel restrictions. Do we really need, for instance, to do in-person interviews of everyone who seeks a visa, even if they have already been interviewed for visas in the past, and we already have their fingerprints on U.S. government databases? That only wastes scarce consular resources on low-risk travelers. Is it necessary to pull all male travelers from Muslim countries into the long humiliation of secondary screening at the airport, even those who are frequent visitors well-known to U.S. officials? It is time to reassert some common sense.
It was the so-called "Visa Express" program that enabled a number of the terrorists to easily enter our country and then obliterate 3,000 people in the biggest mass murder/terrorist attack ever carried out in the United States! Someone needs to provide him with the GAO reports and the OIG reports that discuss how rampant visa fraud imperils our nation and our citizens.
Someone needs to send him, perhaps, crayons, to help him connect the dots - the problem is that he is unable to see the dots and could apparently care less about them! The bigger problem is that he states that, "...the Obama administration has pledged to throw enough resources at the problem to reduce months long screening to no more than two weeks in most cases." I know that the term "terrorist attack" is considered out of fashion in the current administration. The issue is not the terminology, it is the threat that continues to this day.
As for his concerns about the "humiliating secondary screening," I spent 4 years at John F. Kennedy International Airport as an immigration inspector. I can tell you that our goal was not to humiliate anyone but to make certain that we did what we could to keep out those whose presence in our country was contrary to law, hence our best interests. Every country does this. If he is concerned about being humiliated, I wonder if he has ever been thoroughly searched before boarding an airliner? I certainly have.
It might be a nuisance, but as I remember, I got into a discussion with the British Consul General at a panel discussion-breakfast I attended a couple of short years after the attacks of 9/11. The event was conducted at the New York Institute and the issue of the Visa Waiver Program came up. (I am certain that by now you know that my position is that the Visa Waiver Program should have ended on on February 27, 1993, the day after the first attack on the World Trade Center!)
He complained that it would be a "Bloody inconvenience" to require that citizens of Great Britain obtain visas before entering the United States. I told him that I could think of a greater inconvenience. He seemed quite annoyed and challenged me to name what that inconvenience might be. My response: "It is a far greater 'inconvenience' when terrorists hijack airliners filled with innocent passengers, and then, having commandeered those airliners, fly them at high speed into crowded skyscrapers!" The others at my table applauded and he left the table. Let me make this clear. I have worked closely with members of the British government. Their people are among the best in the world.
Great Britain is one of our very closest allies. My goal that morning was not to create an international incident. My goal is to restore integrity and sanity to the immigration system. Incidentally, that exchange that I had with him occurred long before the train bombing in England that took so many lives. No nation is immune to the lunacy and viciousness of terrorism.
Finally, as Lou Dobbs and Bill Tucker clearly pointed out in the video clip above, it is insane that our nation admits so many foreign workers when a substantial percentage of American citizens who get those advanced degrees often find it is pointless to stay within their field of study when they graduate from college with those costly graduate degrees.
Our nation was the envy of the world because it provided incredible opportunities to those who would get those advanced degrees and thus, not only elevate their lives, but elevate our nation at the same time.
It was this opportunity to achieve greatness that created the "Can do" spirit that became America's motto. By undercutting America's brightest, we are creating disincentives for our college students!
Corporate greed has, along with so much else, turned the "American Dream" on its ear and is converting it to an American nightmare! When we say the "Pledge of Allegiance" to the United States, shouldn't We the People have the right to expect reciprocity from the government of the United States to pledge to look out for us?
If your "Congressional representatives" in either the House of Representatives or the United States Senate are not willing to protect the jobs of Americans than we need to remove them from their jobs!
Good citizenship does not end at the voting booth, it simply begins there. In order for our representative democracy to represent us, we need to communicate with our elected representatives to let them know in clear and unequivocal terms what we want.
I implore you to get involved! We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.
This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue - simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue! You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem! Democracy is not a spectator sport! Lead, follow or get out of the way!
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