So Is It Class When the Wall Street Journal Says it? (Big Business wants Cheap Labor!)

unhyphenatedconservative ^ | 8-16-05 | Aaron Smith

[U.H. Conservative]

From the Wall Street Journal:

The White House is planning a new push to change the nation's immigration laws, looking in part for businesses to lobby Congress to pass measures that give more foreign-born workers legal status while also toughening lax enforcement.

But the conflicting interests of President Bush's big-business supporters, who believe the economy needs more workers, and some Republican Party conservatives -- who have made a top priority of clamping down on illegal immigration in the name of national security -- threaten the prospects for a quick deal.

The White House and its allies are looking to businesses for help in selling and supporting a new immigration policy, including funds to pay for a television advertising blitz. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie is helping to organize a group called Americans for Border and Economic Security to run a public media campaign.

Me: When a person argues that Washington's immigration policy (as established by both Democrats and Republicans) some Republicans are quick to cry "Class Warfare!" This accusation of unwholesome Marxist leanings is supposed to make the target run away in fear, like when liberals cry "racist."

And just as the constant cry of racist drained the charge of its power to all but the most faint-hearted of conservatives (sadly a group too well represented amongst the political class), the class warfare cliche is becoming laughable. When the Journal, hardly a tool of an inarguably left-wing media, runs a front page story on how it is business interests who stand to gain the most in flooding America with cheap labor ,the case is fairly well closed.

This story also helps put paid to the hoary myth that Bush's policy is designed to fill "jobs Americans won't take." The H1-b visas discussed later in the story are not for maids and construction workers. By the way, when exactly did Americans stop doing these jobs? Could it be after illegal aliens distorted the wage market and depressed below what an American can survive on?

But I digress. Back to H-1b visas. The people brought in under these visas are computer programmers and other knowledge workers. These are the very jobs that are touted as being created when we either export manufacturing positions abroad or import Third World laborers to fill those jobs at home.

But wait, defenders (Yes, there are defenders.) of this policy will say that Americans are dumbing down and aren't getting the education necessary to do these jobs.

Maybe, just maybe, these Americans aren't as dumb as critics think. Maybe these young people don;t see the value in spending tens of thousands of dollars (if you get a bargain) on educating themselves for jobs that will vanish just as the student loans come due. Maybe these young people have seen what happened to their blue collar friends in the construction trades and are scared of history repeating itself higher up the economic food chain.

But this is probably just class warfare

[U.H. Conservative]

And the sell out continues....

[U.H. Conservative]

ping

[backhoe]

For "Thunder on the Border," click this picture: