USCIS REACHES FY 2008 H-1B CAP

Hmmm....this is going to be a longer reply than I prefer, but I don't see any way around it.

The two are not mutually exclusive, and we therefore do not disagree. Companies will hire staff who provide a return on investment, wherever they are located.

***You just contradicted yourself. When someone gets hired overseas for the same job that an american got shafted over, it IS mutually exclusive.

It is quite possible for a single company to move one salaried job overseas and at the same time to add another salaried job in the US. Therefore the two are not mutually exclusive.

I also take issue with the term than an employee "got shafted" when he was replaced with an employee who was more valuable than he. The employee who lost his job has no Constitutional or other right to a job. Jobs are created when an employer and an employee agree to work together. When one decides to end that arrangement, that is no more of a "shafting" than if an employee leaves one job for another that pays more. If it is unethical for an employer to replace an employee, then it is unethical for an employee to quit for a better job.

That’s the nature of capitalism and that practice will grow human productivity more rapidly than hiring only domestic staff.

***Yes, that is the nature of capitalism. That doesn’t mean I am forced to merely accept it on the political plane, however. There is a wide continuum on the spectrum between Protectionism on one side, and Open Borders Free Trade on the other side, with FAIR TRADE striking a balance in the middle.

We are in 100% agreement that you are not forced to accept capitalism. And as this country has aged, every year brings more and more socialism. I define FAIR TRADE as voluntary trade between two entities. I suspect that you are not in favor of foreign trade at all, possibly because you are of the opinion that the job pool is static in size and that new entrants "steal" jobs from others. In that case, why have any foreign trade at all? Why even allow trade between states or between cities? Every time I buy a ticket on Travelocity, I've cut the wages of some travel agent somewhere.

It sounds to me like you are really against economic efficiency because you look only at those who temporarily are out of work rather than looking at the economic benefits for the rest of the world. The beauty of capitalism is that it creates ever more productivity, which is why we don't live in caves and why 90% of our population isn't still performing manual agricultural labor.

Well the opposite side of that same coin is that foreign companies hire US staff too.

***Yep, and then they promptly attempt to separate us from the rights delineated in the constitution, such as gun ownership, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc. An example, ongoing: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1811465/posts

What a curious assertion. I have done work for many foreign companies and not one of them has attempted to challenge any of my Constitutional rights. Do you actually perceive this as a widespread problem? Nearly all of my peers also generate a significant portion of their earnings from foreign companies, and not one has ever had any of their US freedoms challenged by their employers.

Our founding fathers were very concerned about the preservation of our freedoms, and they were not nearly as concerned about being competitive in the international market place. The thing that makes us such an attractive country IS THOSE FREEDOMS, and it is also one of the things which has been breeding the economic benefits of prosperity. I see the issue as one of economic patriotism. If it is good for the US, then it’s worth trying to keep it around. If it’s not good for the US, then it’s worth it to limit the activity.

Our founding fathers would weep today if they had any idea how few freedoms we have left. FDR pretty much ended the idea of a Republic, and today's Big Government Conservatives have abandoned any Goldwaterian attempts to reduce the size of government. That being said, I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms. What good is being able to carry a gun or have the right to assemble if 40%+ of my earnings are stolen from me by various levels of government every year? I am a 40% slave, but at least I am free to write about it, if not actually free to do anything about it.

I disagree with you that foreign trade and limited temporary immigration are not good for the US. I do agree that opening the borders (which seems to have already happened...just not legally) creates social stresses. But H-1Bs are for well educated folks who generally pay far more into our welfare state than they consume from it.

I doubt that kids are leaving engineering in droves in the United States because their jobs are not “safe”. I sat next to an engineer for AMD on a plane a couple days ago. He was taking his daughter to interview at UPenn, Princeton, MIT, and CMU.

***This is a classic fallacy. One anecdotal story versus droves and droves of others. I’m not going to bite. Since I didn’t post the statistics to back up my side and you didn’t post the statistics to back up your side, we end up going nowhere on it and frankly, I do not have that level of interest. I sit next to engineers every day of my life, and I have seen thousands of jobs going overseas here in the SF bay area. My engineering job basically went overseas as well.

I don't think that anecdotes are fallacious. I agree that anecdotes don't prove a case statistically. But I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering becaue they worry their jobs are not safe. In fact I think that theory to be enormously unlikely, if still not disprovable. There really is nothing for you to attempt to bite in my statement. You are meant to take it for exactly what it is, a single anecdote. I work with engineers too. And I have seen thousands of jobs come INTO the United States from foreign investment. It is sad to lose one's job, but you need to recognize that there are plenty of other jobs. And if you think that there are none that pay you enough, start your own firm.

She was on the robotics team and was studying electrical engineering texts on the plane.

***One smart kid. I’m happy for her. My advice to her is to go into something other than EE.

My advice to her was to do what she enjoys. Her father has certainly been a great success story at AMD, and the United States is a better country for it.

Most kids were playing their GameBoys or listening their iPods. I suspect most kids in the US avoid engineering because it is a lot harder than “communications” or whatever else is the course of least resistance on the way to a B.A.

***You are probably correct in that assessment. But when someone does bust their balls to get an engineering degree and the job goes overseas because that kid with the BA in business made a management decision, I stop supporting this activity.

I don't know what you mean by "the job goes overseas". Are engineering graduates indentured to a single company? Of course not. When one loses a job in ANY profession, one can simply get a new job. That is the nature of the employment market. And if you are concerned about jobs going overseas, you should be in favor of MORE H-1B visas. The lack of available visas practically guarantees that US employers will staff up overseas.

The corn hasn’t even been planted or grown IMHO.

***Wow, again you have contradicted yourself. Corn that is supposed to be planted in the ground is CORN SEED. If you eat the seed, you won’t be able to grow corn the next season. You just made my point for me. Thanks.

I certainly didn't make your point. The corn (read: children in the US) has not been grown (read: do not pursue education in engineering or the hard sciences) because most American children don't want to work hard. It has nothing to do with eating the corn. It is also a poor analogy because corn growth is passive from the perspective of the corn. Most college age students decide themselves what they want to study. Students and labor market participants are not corn.

Most kids in the US don’t value hard work or education.

***I think they do, but they don’t want to waste all that time on a difficult degree just to have the job hoisted overseas. They’re not stupid, they’re street smart. It’s much easier to work hard at that MBA and be the one who sends the job overseas. Besides, what you’re saying is a value position that has no bearing whatsoever on whether H1B visas are fraud magnets.

Perhaps you don't travel abroad as much as I. American students are among the worst in the industrialized world, esp. in math and science. You also fail to address why a student would work hard for an MBA without fear that his MBA job would be shipped abroad. Why would an engineering student fear foreign competition whereas an MBA would not?

I did not address "the fraud issue" at all. Of course I am opposed to fraud.

I’m not sure I agree that the US is competitive in maths or the hard sciences compared to many other countries.

***That’s because we are eating our own corn seed. We are not putting resources into this area.

Actually it has far more to do with the amount of time that children in the US spend studying and working versus playing PS3 or football. Parents in this country do not push their children very hard, and the schools are worse than most Western schools. Again it has nothing to do with corn or visas.

I don’t know whether our founding fathers thought much about competitiveness.

***Again you make my point for me.

What the founding fathers didn't think about is not particularly relevant. The founding fathers didn't think about nuclear weapons either. To base one's rationale on something that another party or group didn't evaluate is irrational. I certainly did not make your point. My point is that one would have to guess what the founding fathers' views would be on foreign trade and H-1B visas. From my readings, my guess would be that they would be largely in favor of both.

I would suggest that international trade was such a small part of GDP that competitiveness was not very important.

***So would I. That would suggest that international trade isn’t nearly as important as those conservative core values that our country is built upon.

You are missing an important point. That the founders didn't give much thought to international trade suggest that it was not as important as their core values were in 1776. Incidendally the founders were more libertarian or Classical Liberal than Conservative...the Conservatives were the Tories. Conservatives mostly fled for Canada. So rather than suggesting that international trade ISN'T important, you can only infer that the founders thought that it WASN'T important in 1776. They most certainly would think it important today, because, in fact, it is quite important.

All those smart people want to come HERE, and it’s for a reason. Because HERE is BETTER than THERE, wherever THERE is. I work with internationals from all over the world — Russia, India, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, Germany, France, England, Canada, Mexico, Iran, basically everywhere. They study science in their own country and come here because they like it, our freedoms work better than over there to produce a better economy and working environment, and in several other ways the US is simply a better place to be. Most of the folks on H1B visas are living at a very low wage compared to their counterparts just 2 cubicles down.

I agree. And a quick way to make everywhere else as good or better than HERE is to prohibit the best and brightest from around the world from actually coming HERE.

Incidentally, that guy on the plane was born in Taiwan and is now a US citizen.

***So is my wife. I’m thoroughly familiar with the story. That doesn’t mean it bolsters your point.

Actually it does bolster my point. It shows that legal immigrants who are well qualified create value which benefits everybody. That is my exact point, and the guy on the plane was a living example.

He’s exactly the type person that cannot get into the US now. Had he stayed in Taiwan, he would be creating value there instead of here, as would his daughter one day soon...

***That’s a nonsense statement: “creating value”.

What an odd thing to say. The only reason that anybody has a job is because he creates value. The only reason that any company exists is because it creates value. The only reasons that it is beneficial to allow limited legal immigration by folks like our Taiwanese friend is that it creates value. The only reason we have a capitalist rather than a socialist economy is that it is better at creating value. The entire point of an integrated economy is to allocate resources to create the most value.

Such a sentiment does not appear to be a major concern of our founding fathers, and I’m kinda glad it isn’t because it suggests that a person’s value is only measured in wealth or production of goods or some economic measurability. Baloney.

Incorrect. You need to distinguish between the value that one creates through economic activity and the worth of a human. Recognizing that the former exists does not imply that the latter does not. The founding fathers wrote comparatively little about economics and KNEW relatively little about economics. "The Wealth of Nations" wasn't even written until 1776. You seem to be caught in a mental trap such that you assume if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance. This is a puzzling notion.

He’s a citizen of the US so he has as much rights as I do and he is hoping his daughter does well in OUR COUNTRY. She won’t need an H1B visa, so your point starts to fall apart very rapidly at -40db/decade.

I don't know what the -40db/decade is. But I have been alive enough decades to know that he would not ever have become a citizen if the policies you favor had been in place when he came to the United States. He never would have had an opportunity to become a citizen, not would his daughter. From your perspective, his success and citizenship and daughter's probable success have robbed another US citizen's job, success, and child's success. You probably think this, because you assume that the economy is a zero sum game with a finite number of jobs and opportunity such that every new entrant must therefore displace someone else who was entitled to his employment. I am here to tell you that you are mistaken.

jas3

Hmmm....this is going to be a longer reply than I prefer, but I don't see any way around it. ****Yikes, this has turned into something that took WAY too much time. Here is my response. When an issue gets this complicated, very few people will actually read through the post and I can’t blame them. They sometimes resort to scanning, or looking for a way to boil it all up into one or two bite- sized concepts. One of those concepts is that this issue is resonating across America and there’s only ONE presidential candidate as far as I can see who would do something about the fraud in the H1B program, as well as tackle the border issues as part of his security policies, and who “gets it” on other policies such as China, WOT, social issues, jobs, honor and duty to country: DUNCAN HUNTER is that man. I will not be responding further to your posts on this subject because the return on investment appears to be negligible. Feel free to have the last word. My responses in this post are designated by 4 asterisks****. It is quite possible for a single company to move one salaried job overseas and at the same time to add another salaried job in the US. Therefore the two are not mutually exclusive. ****It’s also possible that they’ll offer you unicorn rides on the good ship Lollipop. But we are discussing the actual events that occur on the ground, which is that American jobs are going overseas and more Americans are damaged by the process of losing their jobs than benefit from it. In that respect we are only discussing the case where the two are mutually exclusive. Arguing the outside corner case is disingenuous and a waste of time. I also take issue with the term than an employee "got shafted" when he was replaced with an employee who was more valuable than he. ****”Hunter is a strong opponent of free trade deals like CAFTA and NAFTA and talked about the trade inequities that accompany these bills and how American companies and thereby workers are getting shafted.” This is a direct quote from a blog post on FR, and the guy doesn’t even seem to agree with Hunter. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1811525/posts?page=13#13 I take issue that such workers are getting shafted. You see it one way, I see it another. The employee who lost his job has no Constitutional or other right to a job. ****Big whup. So what. We aren’t talking about the employee’s constitutional “right” to a job because that doesn’t exist, and therefore you’re propping up a strawman to argue against. Jobs are created when an employer and an employee agree to work together. When one decides to end that arrangement, that is no more of a "shafting" than if an employee leaves one job for another that pays more. If it is unethical for an employer to replace an employee, then it is unethical for an employee to quit for a better job. ****It is unethical for an employer to replace American engineers with H1B visa engineers in the manner by which this program is being utilized. The program has become a form of indentured servitude, which we gave up on 4 generations ago. It is a loophole that companies are using to mistreat some workers and that loophole needs to be closed. We are in 100% agreement that you are not forced to accept capitalism. And as this country has aged, every year brings more and more socialism. I define FAIR TRADE as voluntary trade between two entities. ****I would go with Duncan Hunter’s definition of Fair Trade, whatever that happens to be at the moment. I admit I haven’t looked it up just yet, but just to keep things simple I will go with whatever definition he provides. I know, I know, it’s intellectually lazy but I simply don’t have the time to go round & round on endless definitions & argumentations. I like the way Hunter looks at the Free Trade spectrum. Do you have a candidate you back? How does your candidate view H1B visas? I suspect that you are not in favor of foreign trade at all, possibly because you are of the opinion that the job pool is static in size and that new entrants "steal" jobs from others. ****Your suspicion is wrong. Since that isn’t the case, your point is moot, so I won’t bother with it. It sounds to me like you are really against economic efficiency because you look only at those who temporarily are out of work rather than looking at the economic benefits for the rest of the world. ****There might be some truth interlaced in there with your hyperbole. But it’s such an outrageous exaggeration of my position that I can’t get past the fact you’ve brought in another straw argument. I do not “look at” one side of the issue “rather than” look at the economic benefits for the rest of the world, but like every citizen, I place more of an emphasis on the things that are important to me. That’s what politics is all about. And yes, if it ain’t so great for America but counts as “economic benefits for the rest of the world”, then I’m not nearly as interested as are many of the Steppin Fetchit Corporate Clymers who inhabit the Rockefeller wing of the republican party. The beauty of capitalism is that it creates ever more productivity, which is why we don't live in caves and why 90% of our population isn't still performing manual agricultural labor. ****I agree that there is a certain element of beauty in capitalism. Your point seems to have hung like a dangling participle. An example, ongoing: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1811465/posts What a curious assertion. ****And yet, we freepers have been going back & forth on these very issues for several years. Where does a company's right to prohibit guns stop? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1296398/posts Congress makes room for more foreigners for high tech-jobs http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1294234/posts I have done work for many foreign companies and not one of them has attempted to challenge any of my Constitutional rights. ****And I have worked for at least one American Internationalist company that did attempt to challenge at least one of my constitutional rights. One of my clients was HP and they literally fired a person who had a biblical excerpt in his cubicle because it wasn’t in line with the current regime thinking about homosexual “rights”. Do you actually perceive this as a widespread problem? ****I do not perceive it as widespread. Yet. But I do perceive it is growing and that people are ignorant of their constitutional rights. Also, they value economic “rights” over constitutional ones. Kind a like you do: “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.” Nearly all of my peers also generate a significant portion of their earnings from foreign companies, and not one has ever had any of their US freedoms challenged by their employers. ****I doubt any of them would tell you about it when it happened, and you would probably have a tin ear for it anyways, because you say yourself, “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.” Our founding fathers would weep today if they had any idea how few freedoms we have left. ****I agree. But since you’re arguing against me and you’re taking the approach that your economic freedoms are worth more than your social ones, you end up with little credibility. FDR pretty much ended the idea of a Republic, and today's Big Government Conservatives have abandoned any Goldwaterian attempts to reduce the size of government. ****Well enough said. That being said, I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms. ****Amazing, Amazing statement. And it’s a non sequitur. It simply does not follow from what you had led up to it. Your addlepated thinking is all over the place. What good is being able to carry a gun or have the right to assemble if 40%+ of my earnings are stolen from me by various levels of government every year? ****Because by carrying a gun you can preserve your LIFE. Having the right to assemble means there are other things more important than your earnings. This narrow economic perspective you have is quite demeaning to humans. I am a 40% slave, but at least I am free to write about it, if not actually free to do anything about it. ****Some say the glass is 40% empty, others say it is 60% full. I say we’re lucky to have water in a glass. I disagree with you that foreign trade and limited temporary immigration are not good for the US. ****And yet you say nothing in support of your contention. Perhaps you could let all of us know who your candidate is for president, so we can all vote for him or against her and let the chips fall where they may. I do agree that opening the borders (which seems to have already happened...just not legally) creates social stresses. But H-1Bs are for well educated folks who generally pay far more into our welfare state than they consume from it. ****I disagree with you, strongly, on this point. And my disagreement comes from personal experience. I have run across dozens of H1B visa entrants, and only 1 of them was worth any additional effort to bring him in. It wasn’t because he was more educated, it was because he was smarter than others. But even he was rattled that he couldn’t move up in the organization due to the indentured servitude he was stuck with (his OWN words). These H1B visas may have originally been intended to ease some kind of educated worker shortage but the reality on the ground is that they are being used by companies to reduce wage pressure, plain and simple. The people working these H1B jobs are no more qualified than the average American engineer who would go for the job, on average. The system is riddled with fraud. I don't think that anecdotes are fallacious. ****The point where your anecdote becomes fallacious is when you prop it up to argue against multitudes of other examples. A moose bit my sister once. Does that mean there are thousands of moose (meese? Mooses?) running around biting women for the fun of it? NO. I agree that anecdotes don't prove a case statistically. ****Again you make my point for me. But I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. In fact I think that theory to be enormously unlikely, if still not disprovable. ****That’s a fancy way of saying that you see it your way and I see it mine and neither of us can prove our contentions. But what I can do is vote for a presidential candidate who would do something about this problem, and I perceive Hunter would do exactly that. Go ahead and push your favorite candidate here. It has been my experience in debating folks with an absolutist bent that they do not have real world candidates that they support because no one measures up. It’s one way of pointing out that your perspective is so far askew that it doesn’t represent mainstream anything. There really is nothing for you to attempt to bite in my statement. You are meant to take it for exactly what it is, a single anecdote. I work with engineers too. And I have seen thousands of jobs come INTO the United States from foreign investment. ****Very cool. Except that anyone can say that. Personally, I think it’s a big gigantic crock of bull dung. I look forward to you showing how you have seen these thousands of jobs come into the US from foreign investment and that it is somehow irreducibly related to the H1B visa program. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with my common sense and basic intuition which tells me that you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. It is sad to lose one's job, but you need to recognize that there are plenty of other jobs. And if you think that there are none that pay you enough, start your own firm. ****There are more options than that. One of the options is to start affecting change on the political level. When enough people get tired of the nonsense, they do something about it. I can’t tell yet if we are at that critical mass, but I find your absolutist meanderings to be a load of hooey. My advice to her was to do what she enjoys. Her father has certainly been a great success story at AMD, and the United States is a better country for it. ****Since you’re the only person who knows who this is, we have to take your word for it. My intuition tells me that, once again, it’s a load of baloney that somehow “the United States is a better country for it” and that if our country IS better off because of this man, it would probably be due to something other than his supposed success story at AMD. I don't know what you mean by "the job goes overseas". ****Here, start with some outsourcing threads and educate yourself. Jobs worth $ 210 billion to be outsourced to India in 2005 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234346/posts Are engineering graduates indentured to a single company? Of course not. ****They are if they are here on an H1B visa! NOW You’re starting to GET IT. When one loses a job in ANY profession, one can simply get a new job. That is the nature of the employment market. And if you are concerned about jobs going overseas, you should be in favor of MORE H-1B visas. The lack of available visas practically guarantees that US employers will staff up overseas. ****Baloney. I certainly didn't make your point. The corn (read: children in the US) has not been grown (read: do not pursue education in engineering or the hard sciences) because most American children don't want to work hard. ****We both agree that our students are not pursuing educations in the hard sciences. You stated earlier, “I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. “ It probably doesn’t matter, for purposes of our discussion here, WHY the kids are not pursuing the hard sciences. What does matter is that we both agree that it IS taking place. The fact that as a nation we are not generating a solution in this area but instead choose to import science workers and export science jobs is a way of “eating our seed corn”. If you don’t want to see the point, that’s ok. It just means you want to keep arguing. It has nothing to do with eating the corn. It is also a poor analogy because corn growth is passive from the perspective of the corn. Most college age students decide themselves what they want to study. Students and labor market participants are not corn. ****I love it when someone tries to break down an analogy by saying basically, “the analogy doesn’t work because A is not B”. It’s an incredible fallacy. DUH. A is LIKE B. That’s why A makes a good analogy for B. Perhaps you don't travel abroad as much as I. American students are among the worst in the industrialized world, esp. in math and science. ****You are resorting to a subtle form of fallacy known as an appeal to authority, as if your so-called authority as a world traveler trumps mine. No one can travel the world enough to see all that would be necessary to be the right authority on this issue, so your attempt is wasted. Nice try, though. Keep those fallacies coming. You also fail to address why a student would work hard for an MBA without fear that his MBA job would be shipped abroad. ****When the discussion gets this long, it really is a stretch to point out that a person failed to address some other point. You must really like arguing. One reason why the MBA would be a better bet is due to its ability to be ported across industries. Engineering talent suffers from the false perception that it cannot jump from industry to industry whereas there is a widespread perception that MBAs can operate in any industry. I don’t happen to agree with that perception, but it is a market reality nonetheless. It makes the MBA a bigger-bang-for-the-buck degree versus engineering. Why would an engineering student fear foreign competition whereas an MBA would not? ****Because it is engineering jobs that are being shipped overseas by the managers. The next generation of jobs to be shipped overseas will be managerial, but the present batch of Steppin Fetchits will have already moved on by then. I did not address "the fraud issue" at all. Of course I am opposed to fraud. ****Glad to hear it. I’m not sure I agree that the US is competitive in maths or the hard sciences compared to many other countries. ***That’s because we are eating our own corn seed. We are not putting resources into this area. Actually it has far more to do with the amount of time that children in the US spend studying and working versus playing PS3 or football. Parents in this country do not push their children very hard, and the schools are worse than most Western schools. Again it has nothing to do with corn or visas. ****We’re both approaching this from different angles. You think the problem is that American kids are lazy, I think the problem is that kids know that by studying real hard in the sciences they set themselves up for disappointment when they could be studying something else that brings in more rewards. There’s probably truth in both statements, and I usually agree with a more puritanical viewpoint. But not on this issue, and that’s due to my own experience seeing those jobs go away. The fact is, it is engineering jobs which are being wiped out here in the US. You don’t get an engineering degree by spending your time playing PS3. So when a kid looks up from his PS3 and sees Dad struggling to find an engineering job while the neighbors’ Dads seems to be doing okay reorganizing whatsamawhoozits, that kid will probably go into the whatsamawhoozit business. It’s human nature. It’s also human nature that companies will seek to pay the least for the work product that they can. I don’t know whether our founding fathers thought much about competitiveness. ***Again you make my point for me. What the founding fathers didn't think about is not particularly relevant. The founding fathers didn't think about nuclear weapons either. To base one's rationale on something that another party or group didn't evaluate is irrational. I certainly did not make your point. My point is that one would have to guess what the founding fathers' views would be on foreign trade and H-1B visas. From my readings, my guess would be that they would be largely in favor of both. ****So, here it appears you have gained some coherence. Congratulations on finding your way back. My readings suggest exactly the opposite, and it’s one reason why they chose to have a certain level of citizenship and even restricted certain elected positions (like the presidency) from foreigners because they knew that not everyone who steps on this soil is necessarily here for the betterment of the US. The founding fathers were seeing some large immigration patterns and they were quite adamant that for someone to come and work here, they should become an American. They would be against H1B visas. They loved foreign trade, because it got them rich. For instance, there was a lot of money being made shipping American made guns & goods across the atlantic, bringing back slaves for rum, and then importing the rum to America for more guns & goods – the golden triangle. It was a purely pragmatic approach. Of course, it didn’t help the slaves all that much. I would suggest that international trade was such a small part of GDP that competitiveness was not very important. ***So would I. That would suggest that international trade isn’t nearly as important as those conservative core values that our country is built upon. You are missing an important point. That the founders didn't give much thought to international trade suggest that it was not as important as their core values were in 1776. Incidendally the founders were more libertarian or Classical Liberal than Conservative...the Conservatives were the Tories. Conservatives mostly fled for Canada. So rather than suggesting that international trade ISN'T important, you can only infer that the founders thought that it WASN'T important in 1776. ****Darn, you came so close to making a good point. Too bad for you. They most certainly would think it important today, because, in fact, it is quite important. ****Here, you completely fall on your face. You’re projecting your beliefs back onto the founding fathers. You think they would approach it like you would rather than like how THEY would. They would look at the number of people who still want to crawl through mud to get into America as the great indicator that our social rights & freedoms from the Bill of Rights are more valuable than temporary economic gains we have managed to finagle in the last generation or 2. I work with Most of the folks on H1B visas are living at a very low wage compared to their counterparts just 2 cubicles down. >>>I agree. And a quick way to make everywhere else as good or better than HERE is to prohibit the best and brightest from around the world from actually coming HERE. ****See, here you’re actually overlooking the problem that results from fraud in the H1B visa program. The fraud is what is breeding all the mediocrity we see from these internationals. If the program were working the way it was intended, the best & brightest would find it easier to come here than the mediocre indentured servants we’re seeing on the program and who have as much of a chance of getting in (because it’s now a lottery). You seem to be caught in a mental trap such that you assume if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance. This is a puzzling notion. ****Ok, here you return back to making some interesting argument but you seemed to have lost your point. Unfortunately you slip back into your habit of exaggerating my position (a.k.a. straw argumentation) and then arguing against it. I do not assume that “if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance”, it is just an INDICATOR of how important certain timeless issues are in comparison to others. You seem to focus extensively on economic issues, which are important but not as important as other issues. Our country was quite poor for about 150 years or so, and it suited us that we had these valuable rights that made us a good country. The fact that we now have some wealth is attracting people who simply want the wealth and could care less about the values that made this country great. …. But I have been alive enough decades to know that he would not ever have become a citizen if the policies you favor had been in place when he came to the United States. ****It would have simply been harder for him, that’s all. I know people at AMD. I know what it takes to get to the top. Your friend is a hard working soul and that’s a good thing. But I simply haven’t met that many immigrants who were worth going to all the trouble for. We don’t need H1B visas, there are enough Americans to fill those jobs. He never would have had an opportunity to become a citizen, not would his daughter. ****nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Baloney Baloney. A complete exaggeration of my position. From your perspective, his success and citizenship and daughter's probable success have robbed another US citizen's job, success, and child's success. ****Interesting exaggeration of my perspective, using loaded terms such as “robbed”. Every single H1B visa position is supposed to be a job that an American CAN’T do by virtue of the unique needs generated by the skillset and knowledge involved. The more I look into the program (have you read Matloff’s paper?) the more I see that there are actually VERY FEW jobs that would qualify under such a program, and american companies are simply using it as a form of indentured servitude to keep wages down. They’re actually being very crafty, but I don’t have to agree with it. You probably think this, because you assume that the economy is a zero sum game with a finite number of jobs and opportunity such that every new entrant must therefore displace someone else who was entitled to his employment. I am here to tell you that you are mistaken. ****Another set of exaggerations and loaded terms like “entitlement”. You don’t know what I think, so don’t bother.

Reformatted

It is quite possible for a single company to move one salaried job overseas and at the same time to add another salaried job in the US. Therefore the two are not mutually exclusive.
****It’s also possible that they’ll offer you unicorn rides on the good ship Lollipop. But we are discussing the actual events that occur on the ground, which is that American jobs are going overseas and more Americans are damaged by the process of losing their jobs than benefit from it. In that respect we are only discussing the case where the two are mutually exclusive. Arguing the outside corner case is disingenuous and a waste of time.

I also take issue with the term than an employee "got shafted" when he was replaced with an employee who was more valuable than he.
****”Hunter is a strong opponent of free trade deals like CAFTA and NAFTA and talked about the trade inequities that accompany these bills and how American companies and thereby workers are getting shafted.” This is a direct quote from a blog post on FR, and the guy doesn’t even seem to agree with Hunter. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1811525/posts?page=13#13 I take issue that such workers are getting shafted. You see it one way, I see it another.

The employee who lost his job has no Constitutional or other right to a job.
****Big whup. So what. We aren’t talking about the employee’s constitutional “right” to a job because that doesn’t exist, and therefore you’re propping up a strawman to argue against.

Jobs are created when an employer and an employee agree to work together. When one decides to end that arrangement, that is no more of a "shafting" than if an employee leaves one job for another that pays more. If it is unethical for an employer to replace an employee, then it is unethical for an employee to quit for a better job.
****It is unethical for an employer to replace American engineers with H1B visa engineers in the manner by which this program is being utilized. The program has become a form of indentured servitude, which we gave up on 4 generations ago. It is a loophole that companies are using to mistreat some workers and that loophole needs to be closed.

We are in 100% agreement that you are not forced to accept capitalism. And as this country has aged, every year brings more and more socialism. I define FAIR TRADE as voluntary trade between two entities.
****I would go with Duncan Hunter’s definition of Fair Trade, whatever that happens to be at the moment. I admit I haven’t looked it up just yet, but just to keep things simple I will go with whatever definition he provides. I know, I know, it’s intellectually lazy but I simply don’t have the time to go round & round on endless definitions & argumentations. I like the way Hunter looks at the Free Trade spectrum. Do you have a candidate you back? How does your candidate view H1B visas?

I suspect that you are not in favor of foreign trade at all, possibly because you are of the opinion that the job pool is static in size and that new entrants "steal" jobs from others.
****Your suspicion is wrong. Since that isn’t the case, your point is moot, so I won’t bother with it.

It sounds to me like you are really against economic efficiency because you look only at those who temporarily are out of work rather than looking at the economic benefits for the rest of the world.
****There might be some truth interlaced in there with your hyperbole. But it’s such an outrageous exaggeration of my position that I can’t get past the fact you’ve brought in another straw argument. I do not “look at” one side of the issue “rather than” look at the economic benefits for the rest of the world, but like every citizen, I place more of an emphasis on the things that are important to me. That’s what politics is all about. And yes, if it ain’t so great for America but counts as “economic benefits for the rest of the world”, then I’m not nearly as interested as are many of the Steppin Fetchit Corporate Clymers who inhabit the Rockefeller wing of the republican party.

The beauty of capitalism is that it creates ever more productivity, which is why we don't live in caves and why 90% of our population isn't still performing manual agricultural labor.
****I agree that there is a certain element of beauty in capitalism. Your point seems to have hung like a dangling participle.

An example, ongoing: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1811465/posts
What a curious assertion.
****And yet, we freepers have been going back & forth on these very issues for several years.

Where does a company's right to prohibit guns stop?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1296398/posts

Congress makes room for more foreigners for high tech-jobs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1294234/posts

I have done work for many foreign companies and not one of them has attempted to challenge any of my Constitutional rights.
****And I have worked for at least one American Internationalist company that did attempt to challenge at least one of my constitutional rights. One of my clients was HP and they literally fired a person who had a biblical excerpt in his cubicle because it wasn’t in line with the current regime thinking about homosexual “rights”.

Do you actually perceive this as a widespread problem?
****I do not perceive it as widespread. Yet. But I do perceive it is growing and that people are ignorant of their constitutional rights. Also, they value economic “rights” over constitutional ones. Kind a like you do: “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.”

Nearly all of my peers also generate a significant portion of their earnings from foreign companies, and not one has ever had any of their US freedoms challenged by their employers.
****I doubt any of them would tell you about it when it happened, and you would probably have a tin ear for it anyways, because you say yourself, “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.”

Our founding fathers would weep today if they had any idea how few freedoms we have left.
****I agree. But since you’re arguing against me and you’re taking the approach that your economic freedoms are worth more than your social ones, you end up with little credibility.

FDR pretty much ended the idea of a Republic, and today's Big Government Conservatives have abandoned any Goldwaterian attempts to reduce the size of government. <
****Well enough said.

That being said, I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.
****Amazing, Amazing statement. And it’s a non sequitur. It simply does not follow from what you had led up to it. Your addlepated thinking is all over the place.

What good is being able to carry a gun or have the right to assemble if 40%+ of my earnings are stolen from me by various levels of government every year?
****Because by carrying a gun you can preserve your LIFE. Having the right to assemble means there are other things more important than your earnings. This narrow economic perspective you have is quite demeaning to humans.

I am a 40% slave, but at least I am free to write about it, if not actually free to do anything about it.
****Some say the glass is 40% empty, others say it is 60% full. I say we’re lucky to have water in a glass.

I disagree with you that foreign trade and limited temporary immigration are not good for the US. ****And yet you say nothing in support of your contention. Perhaps you could let all of us know who your candidate is for president, so we can all vote for him or against her and let the chips fall where they may.

I do agree that opening the borders (which seems to have already happened...just not legally) creates social stresses. But H-1Bs are for well educated folks who generally pay far more into our welfare state than they consume from it.
****I disagree with you, strongly, on this point. And my disagreement comes from personal experience. I have run across dozens of H1B visa entrants, and only 1 of them was worth any additional effort to bring him in. It wasn’t because he was more educated, it was because he was smarter than others. But even he was rattled that he couldn’t move up in the organization due to the indentured servitude he was stuck with (his OWN words). These H1B visas may have originally been intended to ease some kind of educated worker shortage but the reality on the ground is that they are being used by companies to reduce wage pressure, plain and simple. The people working these H1B jobs are no more qualified than the average American engineer who would go for the job, on average. The system is riddled with fraud.

I don't think that anecdotes are fallacious.
****The point where your anecdote becomes fallacious is when you prop it up to argue against multitudes of other examples. A moose bit my sister once. Does that mean there are thousands of moose (meese? Mooses?) running around biting women for the fun of it? NO.

I agree that anecdotes don't prove a case statistically.
****Again you make my point for me.

But I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. In fact I think that theory to be enormously unlikely, if still not disprovable.
****That’s a fancy way of saying that you see it your way and I see it mine and neither of us can prove our contentions. But what I can do is vote for a presidential candidate who would do something about this problem, and I perceive Hunter would do exactly that. Go ahead and push your favorite candidate here. It has been my experience in debating folks with an absolutist bent that they do not have real world candidates that they support because no one measures up. It’s one way of pointing out that your perspective is so far askew that it doesn’t represent mainstream anything.

There really is nothing for you to attempt to bite in my statement. You are meant to take it for exactly what it is, a single anecdote. I work with engineers too. And I have seen thousands of jobs come INTO the United States from foreign investment.
****Very cool. Except that anyone can say that. Personally, I think it’s a big gigantic crock of bull dung. I look forward to you showing how you have seen these thousands of jobs come into the US from foreign investment and that it is somehow irreducibly related to the H1B visa program. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with my common sense and basic intuition which tells me that you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

It is sad to lose one's job, but you need to recognize that there are plenty of other jobs. And if you think that there are none that pay you enough, start your own firm.
****There are more options than that. One of the options is to start affecting change on the political level. When enough people get tired of the nonsense, they do something about it. I can’t tell yet if we are at that critical mass, but I find your absolutist meanderings to be a load of hooey.

My advice to her was to do what she enjoys. Her father has certainly been a great success story at AMD, and the United States is a better country for it.
****Since you’re the only person who knows who this is, we have to take your word for it. My intuition tells me that, once again, it’s a load of baloney that somehow “the United States is a better country for it” and that if our country IS better off because of this man, it would probably be due to something other than his supposed success story at AMD.

I don't know what you mean by "the job goes overseas".
****Here, start with some outsourcing threads and educate yourself.
Jobs worth $ 210 billion to be outsourced to India in 2005
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234346/posts

Are engineering graduates indentured to a single company? Of course not.
****They are if they are here on an H1B visa! NOW You’re starting to GET IT.

When one loses a job in ANY profession, one can simply get a new job. That is the nature of the employment market. And if you are concerned about jobs going overseas, you should be in favor of MORE H-1B visas. The lack of available visas practically guarantees that US employers will staff up overseas.
****Baloney.

I certainly didn't make your point. The corn (read: children in the US) has not been grown (read: do not pursue education in engineering or the hard sciences) because most American children don't want to work hard.
****We both agree that our students are not pursuing educations in the hard sciences. You stated earlier, “I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. “ It probably doesn’t matter, for purposes of our discussion here, WHY the kids are not pursuing the hard sciences. What does matter is that we both agree that it IS taking place. The fact that as a nation we are not generating a solution in this area but instead choose to import science workers and export science jobs is a way of “eating our seed corn”. If you don’t want to see the point, that’s ok. It just means you want to keep arguing.

It has nothing to do with eating the corn. It is also a poor analogy because corn growth is passive from the perspective of the corn. Most college age students decide themselves what they want to study. Students and labor market participants are not corn.
****I love it when someone tries to break down an analogy by saying basically, “the analogy doesn’t work because A is not B”. It’s an incredible fallacy. DUH. A is LIKE B. That’s why A makes a good analogy for B.

Perhaps you don't travel abroad as much as I. American students are among the worst in the industrialized world, esp. in math and science.
****You are resorting to a subtle form of fallacy known as an appeal to authority, as if your so-called authority as a world traveler trumps mine. No one can travel the world enough to see all that would be necessary to be the right authority on this issue, so your attempt is wasted. Nice try, though. Keep those fallacies coming.

You also fail to address why a student would work hard for an MBA without fear that his MBA job would be shipped abroad.
****When the discussion gets this long, it really is a stretch to point out that a person failed to address some other point. You must really like arguing. One reason why the MBA would be a better bet is due to its ability to be ported across industries. Engineering talent suffers from the false perception that it cannot jump from industry to industry whereas there is a widespread perception that MBAs can operate in any industry. I don’t happen to agree with that perception, but it is a market reality nonetheless. It makes the MBA a bigger-bang-for-the-buck degree versus engineering.

Why would an engineering student fear foreign competition whereas an MBA would not?
****Because it is engineering jobs that are being shipped overseas by the managers. The next generation of jobs to be shipped overseas will be managerial, but the present batch of Steppin Fetchits will have already moved on by then.

I did not address "the fraud issue" at all. Of course I am opposed to fraud.
****Glad to hear it.

I’m not sure I agree that the US is competitive in maths or the hard sciences compared to many other countries.
***That’s because we are eating our own corn seed. We are not putting resources into this area.
Actually it has far more to do with the amount of time that children in the US spend studying and working versus playing PS3 or football. Parents in this country do not push their children very hard, and the schools are worse than most Western schools. Again it has nothing to do with corn or visas.
****We’re both approaching this from different angles. You think the problem is that American kids are lazy, I think the problem is that kids know that by studying real hard in the sciences they set themselves up for disappointment when they could be studying something else that brings in more rewards. There’s probably truth in both statements, and I usually agree with a more puritanical viewpoint. But not on this issue, and that’s due to my own experience seeing those jobs go away. The fact is, it is engineering jobs which are being wiped out here in the US. You don’t get an engineering degree by spending your time playing PS3. So when a kid looks up from his PS3 and sees Dad struggling to find an engineering job while the neighbors’ Dads seems to be doing okay reorganizing whatsamawhoozits, that kid will probably go into the whatsamawhoozit business. It’s human nature. It’s also human nature that companies will seek to pay the least for the work product that they can.

I don’t know whether our founding fathers thought much about competitiveness.
***Again you make my point for me.

What the founding fathers didn't think about is not particularly relevant. The founding fathers didn't think about nuclear weapons either. To base one's rationale on something that another party or group didn't evaluate is irrational. I certainly did not make your point. My point is that one would have to guess what the founding fathers' views would be on foreign trade and H-1B visas. From my readings, my guess would be that they would be largely in favor of both.
****So, here it appears you have gained some coherence. Congratulations on finding your way back. My readings suggest exactly the opposite, and it’s one reason why they chose to have a certain level of citizenship and even restricted certain elected positions (like the presidency) from foreigners because they knew that not everyone who steps on this soil is necessarily here for the betterment of the US. The founding fathers were seeing some large immigration patterns and they were quite adamant that for someone to come and work here, they should become an American. They would be against H1B visas. They loved foreign trade, because it got them rich. For instance, there was a lot of money being made shipping American made guns & goods across the atlantic, bringing back slaves for rum, and then importing the rum to America for more guns & goods – the golden triangle. It was a purely pragmatic approach. Of course, it didn’t help the slaves all that much.

I would suggest that international trade was such a small part of GDP that competitiveness was not very important.
***So would I. That would suggest that international trade isn’t nearly as important as those conservative core values that our country is built upon.
You are missing an important point. That the founders didn't give much thought to international trade suggest that it was not as important as their core values were in 1776. Incidendally the founders were more libertarian or Classical Liberal than Conservative...the Conservatives were the Tories. Conservatives mostly fled for Canada. So rather than suggesting that international trade ISN'T important, you can only infer that the founders thought that it WASN'T important in 1776.
****Darn, you came so close to making a good point. Too bad for you.

They most certainly would think it important today, because, in fact, it is quite important.
****Here, you completely fall on your face. You’re projecting your beliefs back onto the founding fathers. You think they would approach it like you would rather than like how THEY would. They would look at the number of people who still want to crawl through mud to get into America as the great indicator that our social rights & freedoms from the Bill of Rights are more valuable than temporary economic gains we have managed to finagle in the last generation or 2.

I work with Most of the folks on H1B visas are living at a very low wage compared to their counterparts just 2 cubicles down.
>>>I agree. And a quick way to make everywhere else as good or better than HERE is to prohibit the best and brightest from around the world from actually coming HERE.
****See, here you’re actually overlooking the problem that results from fraud in the H1B visa program. The fraud is what is breeding all the mediocrity we see from these internationals. If the program were working the way it was intended, the best & brightest would find it easier to come here than the mediocre indentured servants we’re seeing on the program and who have as much of a chance of getting in (because it’s now a lottery).

You seem to be caught in a mental trap such that you assume if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance. This is a puzzling notion.
****Ok, here you return back to making some interesting argument but you seemed to have lost your point. Unfortunately you slip back into your habit of exaggerating my position (a.k.a. straw argumentation) and then arguing against it. I do not assume that “if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance”, it is just an INDICATOR of how important certain timeless issues are in comparison to others. You seem to focus extensively on economic issues, which are important but not as important as other issues. Our country was quite poor for about 150 years or so, and it suited us that we had these valuable rights that made us a good country. The fact that we now have some wealth is attracting people who simply want the wealth and could care less about the values that made this country great.

…. But I have been alive enough decades to know that he would not ever have become a citizen if the policies you favor had been in place when he came to the United States.
****It would have simply been harder for him, that’s all. I know people at AMD. I know what it takes to get to the top. Your friend is a hard working soul and that’s a good thing. But I simply haven’t met that many immigrants who were worth going to all the trouble for. We don’t need H1B visas, there are enough Americans to fill those jobs.

He never would have had an opportunity to become a citizen, not would his daughter.
****nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Baloney Baloney. A complete exaggeration of my position.

From your perspective, his success and citizenship and daughter's probable success have robbed another US citizen's job, success, and child's success.
****Interesting exaggeration of my perspective, using loaded terms such as “robbed”. Every single H1B visa position is supposed to be a job that an American CAN’T do by virtue of the unique needs generated by the skillset and knowledge involved. The more I look into the program (have you read Matloff’s paper?) the more I see that there are actually VERY FEW jobs that would qualify under such a program, and american companies are simply using it as a form of indentured servitude to keep wages down. They’re actually being very crafty, but I don’t have to agree with it.

You probably think this, because you assume that the economy is a zero sum game with a finite number of jobs and opportunity such that every new entrant must therefore displace someone else who was entitled to his employment. I am here to tell you that you are mistaken.
****Another set of exaggerations and loaded terms like “entitlement”. You don’t know what I think, so don’t bother.

Kevmo, I would humbly suggest that you take a few minutes to learn how to properly format posts on FreeRepublic. You are forcing your readers (if there are any besides me with enough patience to wade through your jumbled post) to disentagle text from two authors, which is not easy. FreeRepublic has an excellent beginners guide to posting with HTML that you should learn. It would help you make your point and would increase your readership.

Reformatted

Hmmm....this is going to be a longer reply than I prefer, but I don't see any way around it.

****Yikes, this has turned into something that took WAY too much time. Here is my response. When an issue gets this complicated, very few people will actually read through the post and I can’t blame them. They sometimes resort to scanning, or looking for a way to boil it all up into one or two bite- sized concepts. One of those concepts is that this issue is resonating across America and there’s only ONE presidential candidate as far as I can see who would do something about the fraud in the H1B program, as well as tackle the border issues as part of his security policies, and who “gets it” on other policies such as China, WOT, social issues, jobs, honor and duty to country: DUNCAN HUNTER is that man. I will not be responding further to your posts on this subject because the return on investment appears to be negligible. Feel free to have the last word. My responses in this post are designated by 4 asterisks****.

I have greater faith than you in most people who read FreeRepublic. Most readers here make an attempt to understand complex issues rather than trying to find "one or two bite- sized concepts.". The great majority of people here are very well read and will make an attempt to understand very complex issues.

I certainly disagree that the H-1B issue is resonating across America. Most people have never even heard of H-1B visas. However Illegal immigration is a significant issue in much of the US, particularly along the Mexican border. But even that issue is resonating less than you think, which accounts for Duncan Hunters very poor poll numbers. I can't understand why you morphed your reply to my post into a propaganda piece for Mr. Hunter rather than trying to refute my points or to make new arguments. Simply stating that you like Duncan Hunter is not relevant. I like Duncan Hines. And I like Gregory Hines. Neither have any bearing on whether or not the H-1B program is or is not good policy.

I'm sorry that you will not be posting further on this thread, although I doubt that will turn out to be the case. The primary goal of posting on forums such as FreeRepublic is to try to convince others of one's own views. If you feel the return is too low, then you have not succeeded in this goal.

It is quite possible for a single company to move one salaried job overseas and at the same time to add another salaried job in the US. Therefore the two are not mutually exclusive.

****It’s also possible that they’ll offer you unicorn rides on the good ship Lollipop. But we are discussing the actual events that occur on the ground, which is that American jobs are going overseas and more Americans are damaged by the process of losing their jobs than benefit from it. In that respect we are only discussing the case where the two are mutually exclusive. Arguing the outside corner case is disingenuous and a waste of time.

Let's recap my original point for you, since I am sure you didn't understand it. I stated that I believe that US companies will move existing jobs overseas if they can't hire people locally. You stated that your opinion differs from mine because you see US companies moving existing jobs overseas even if they CAN hire people locally. I tried to explain to you that the two positions are not mutually exclusive. As you failed to understand my point, I will give examples and further explain my reasoning to you. The issue is not whether one is more likely than the other. It is ONLY that they are not mutually exclusive, which for some unknown reason, you insist on suggesting that they are.

As an example, a hospital may have two radiologists on staff in the US who make $150,000. By replacing one radiologist with two Indian radiologists who will work later shifts covering 24 hours a day for less money, the hospital may be able to expand its services in the United States. The hospital may add additional beds creating more demand for local care in the United States and serve more patients here in the United States. This is an example of an employer replacing one person here in the US, but adding additional nurses and other staff to care for marginal patients who would otherwise not be admitted or treated at a hospital. Likewise a US based commercial bank that outsources activities such as wire processing to a country such as Ireland will have additonal resources to hire staff in the United States.

Your suggestions that US companies which outsource can not at the same time also hire new staff in the US is just plain wrong. And suggesting that such processes are as unlikely as unicorn rides on a ship exposes your lack of knowledge of how, when, where, and why corporations hire staff. These are not outside corner cases. Nearly every large international company adds some jobs in the same countries in which they are outsourcing other jobs.

I also take issue with the term than an employee "got shafted" when he was replaced with an employee who was more valuable than he.

****”Hunter is a strong opponent of free trade deals like CAFTA and NAFTA and talked about the trade inequities that accompany these bills and how American companies and thereby workers are getting shafted.” This is a direct quote from a blog post on FR, and the guy doesn’t even seem to agree with Hunter. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1811525/posts?page=13#13 I take issue that such workers are getting shafted. You see it one way, I see it another.

It is not relevant what Duncan Hunter thinks. His reasoning as to WHY he has reached a conclusion might be useful if you explained that you had adopted his reasoning, but you have neither explained Mr. Hunter's reasoning, nor suggested that you have adopted it. For the record, I am not fond of either CAFTA nor NAFTA, as the United States does not need such complex and cumbersome legislation to adopt free trade. I am in favor of free trade. I am opposed to what you would term "fair" trade, which is absolutely not "fair" by any economic definition of the word.

The employee who lost his job has no Constitutional or other right to a job.

****Big whup. So what. We aren’t talking about the employee’s constitutional “right” to a job because that doesn’t exist, and therefore you’re propping up a strawman to argue against.

Perhaps you missed the phrase "or other right"? You have argued from the perspective that an employee who loses his job to a more productive employee has been shafted. I am arguing that employees do not have a right to a job. Jobs exist because they are an economic arrangement that is beneficial to both the employer and the employee. When either party wishes to end that arrangement, he is free to do so. When an employee leaves a company for another job, is he "shafting" his employer? Also, in the future, you may wish to avoid phrases such as "Big whup." They detract from your argument and suggest that you are not actually attempting to engage in constructive dialog.

Jobs are created when an employer and an employee agree to work together. When one decides to end that arrangement, that is no more of a "shafting" than if an employee leaves one job for another that pays more. If it is unethical for an employer to replace an employee, then it is unethical for an employee to quit for a better job.

****It is unethical for an employer to replace American engineers with H1B visa engineers in the manner by which this program is being utilized. The program has become a form of indentured servitude, which we gave up on 4 generations ago. It is a loophole that companies are using to mistreat some workers and that loophole needs to be closed.

You pretend that your concern is actually with the H-1B employee's status, but actually your opposition is based on the antiquated notion that the H-1B employee has stolen an American's job.

H-1Bs are not indentured servants. H-1Bs can quit whenever they like, whereas indentured servants were unable to quit their job. It would behoove you to study what the common terms were of indentured servitude. The were typically characterized by a contract of seven or so years to an employer in exchange for transportation to a new country. During the terms of the servitude the employer would not pay the servant, but would be responsible for his room, board, training, and other miscellaneous expenses. H-1B employers pay their H-1Bs cash. H-1B employers do not pay the H-1B's room, board, or other miscellaneous expenses. H-1Bs are typical guest workers subject to most of the same protections as US employees, except that if and when their employment is terminated they will return to their homes. Suggesting that returning to one's home creates servitude is like suggesting a scraped knee is terminal brain cancer.

We are in 100% agreement that you are not forced to accept capitalism. And as this country has aged, every year brings more and more socialism. I define FAIR TRADE as voluntary trade between two entities.

****I would go with Duncan Hunter’s definition of Fair Trade, whatever that happens to be at the moment. I admit I haven’t looked it up just yet, but just to keep things simple I will go with whatever definition he provides. I know, I know, it’s intellectually lazy but I simply don’t have the time to go round & round on endless definitions & argumentations. I like the way Hunter looks at the Free Trade spectrum. Do you have a candidate you back? How does your candidate view H1B visas?

Why would you support Duncan Hunter's position on an issue if you don't know what it is? He's a politician, not a deity.

No, I don't have a candidate that I back yet. I am considering offering my financial and other support to one of three candidates, one of whom has not announced that he is running. I typically wait until later in the election season before endorsing a candidate. By doing so I have a better chance of understanding the candidates' positions on various issues important to me.

I suspect that you are not in favor of foreign trade at all, possibly because you are of the opinion that the job pool is static in size and that new entrants "steal" jobs from others.

****Your suspicion is wrong. Since that isn’t the case, your point is moot, so I won’t bother with it.

I don't think my suspicion is wrong. You frequently refer to "American jobs" as though there is some finite integer that represents the limited pool of jobs and which isn't dynamic. I wonder if you have read any of Julian Simon's work. I would strongly recommend you do so.

It sounds to me like you are really against economic efficiency because you look only at those who temporarily are out of work rather than looking at the economic benefits for the rest of the world.

****There might be some truth interlaced in there with your hyperbole. But it’s such an outrageous exaggeration of my position that I can’t get past the fact you’ve brought in another straw argument. I do not “look at” one side of the issue “rather than” look at the economic benefits for the rest of the world, but like every citizen, I place more of an emphasis on the things that are important to me. That’s what politics is all about. And yes, if it ain’t so great for America but counts as “economic benefits for the rest of the world”, then I’m not nearly as interested as are many of the Steppin Fetchit Corporate Clymers who inhabit the Rockefeller wing of the republican party.

I think that you've not understood how labor markets work well enough to comprehend that new entrants tend to increase wealth for an economy. At one point there were only 25 million people in what is now the US. Today we have 300 million. Somehow we have managed to absorb 275 million people and added enormous numbers of new jobs. The labor pool is extremely flexible. You've argued in this thread positions that suggest that you are opposed to economic efficiency in the market allocation of labor. Thus my view that you oppose economic efficiency when you dislike its effect. The issue is not about politics. It is about increasing wealth for everybody. We all work to create value for which we are rewarded and with which we can purchase goods and services. Your positions, if adopted, lead to less wealth for everybody both in and outside of the United States. You seem concerned that free trade will benefit the US less than the rest of the world. That is certainly not the case.

I am not familiar with the term "Steppin Fetchit Corporate Clymers" or why they would be considered Rockefeller Republicans. I would note that you seem strangely hostile to corporate America and that such hostility is more common over at DU, the DailyKOS, or on the blogs of anti-globalism greens.

The beauty of capitalism is that it creates ever more productivity, which is why we don't live in caves and why 90% of our population isn't still performing manual agricultural labor.

****I agree that there is a certain element of beauty in capitalism. Your point seems to have hung like a dangling participle.

I don't understand what you mean by "hung like a dangling participle.". If you were making an obtuse insult at my grammar, alas I have not seen the error. Please elaborate and/or elucidate.

An example, ongoing: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1811465/posts

What a curious assertion.

****And yet, we freepers have been going back & forth on these very issues for several years.

Where does a company's right to prohibit guns stop? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1296398/posts

What makes you think that prohibitions on guns has anything to do with non-US owned companies over US companies? Nearly every commercial building I enter in NYC is owned and leased by a US owned company and not one of them would allow me to carry a gun further than the lobby. Every one requires that I walk through a metal detector and that my bags be scanned for firearms. Your argument that foreign investment in the US is problematic because non-US companies attempt to impinge on gun rights has no basis in reality.

Congress makes room for more foreigners for high tech-jobs http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1294234/posts

Was there any text that was supposed to accompany this link?

I have done work for many foreign companies and not one of them has attempted to challenge any of my Constitutional rights.

****And I have worked for at least one American Internationalist company that did attempt to challenge at least one of my constitutional rights. One of my clients was HP and they literally fired a person who had a biblical excerpt in his cubicle because it wasn’t in line with the current regime thinking about homosexual “rights”.

So then is your point that foreign capital invested in the US is a problem because US companies challenge your Constitutional rights? That makes no sense whatsoever. Your orignal point was that foreign capital was problematic because foreign companies attempt to deny Constitutional rights to US workers. Giving an example of a US company denying rights to US workers does not make your point. In fact, it hurts your argument, since is suggests that the practice is common and has nothing to do with whether capital is of foreign or domestic origin.

I fail to see how any employee has a Constitutional right to display a biblical excerpt on company property. If the company doesn't want a biblical excerpt or a comic strip or a playboy centerfold on its property then the employee can remove it or be terminated.

Do you actually perceive this as a widespread problem?

****I do not perceive it as widespread. Yet. But I do perceive it is growing and that people are ignorant of their constitutional rights. Also, they value economic “rights” over constitutional ones. Kind a like you do: “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.”

I do not perceive it as widespread or in danger of being widespread. It is a canard that you have used to confuse the issue of whether the US benefits from foreign capital invested in this country (which it certainly does). Of course people are quite ignorant of their Constitutional rights. Most people in this country are entirely ignorant of our system of government and how it has degenerated over the years from a Constitutional Republic into a Direct Democracy with only limited Constitutional protections.

Your distinction of economic "rights" over constitutional ones suggests that you are not very familiar with either the Constitution nor the thinking of the Founders. I highly recommend to you the works of James Madison and the Federalist Papers. All of the Founders thought that the right to be secure in one's property was the most essential right from which all other rights sprung. It is also worth noting that the works of Thomas Paine center on property rights. Finally you may remember that the proximate cause of the Boston Tea Party was not about gun control, nor the right to practice a specific religion. It was about taxes. The Revolutionary War was fought primarily over property rights. I hope that you are familiar with the Constitutional property protection called eminent domain, but I fear that you are not if you genuinely believe there is a distinction between economic rights and constitutional rights.

Nearly all of my peers also generate a significant portion of their earnings from foreign companies, and not one has ever had any of their US freedoms challenged by their employers.

****I doubt any of them would tell you about it when it happened, and you would probably have a tin ear for it anyways, because you say yourself, “ I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.”

I can assure you that your doubts are misplaced. My peers are quite vocal when ANY of their rights (real or imagined) are impinged upon in any way. The lack of smoke in this case is due to a lack of fire. You've already admitted above that you do not perceive foreign owned companies as posing a widespread problem in trying to restrict the Constitutional rights of US citizends. So why then do you pretend that it is a problem a few text lines later?

Our founding fathers would weep today if they had any idea how few freedoms we have left.

****I agree. But since you’re arguing against me and you’re taking the approach that your economic freedoms are worth more than your social ones, you end up with little credibility.

Let me see if I understand your position here. You believe that no Constitutional rights are more valuable than any other Constitutional rights and that therefore you personally value them all exactly equally with such conviction that anyone else in the world who recognizes that the right to keep one's property is more valuable than the right to, for example, not have troops quartered in one's home has little credibility to you. Is that correct or would you like to rephrase your assertion? If it is correct, then you need to a little more time reading your history. And perhaps if you are one day unfortunate enough to be subject to a 70% marginal income tax rate (as we were in the 70s) you will learn a little bit about the value of your economic rights.

FDR pretty much ended the idea of a Republic, and today's Big Government Conservatives have abandoned any Goldwaterian attempts to reduce the size of government.

****Well enough said.

That being said, I value my economic freedoms in the United States more than most of my social freedoms.

****Amazing, Amazing statement. And it’s a non sequitur. It simply does not follow from what you had led up to it. Your addlepated thinking is all over the place.

It is neither amazing nor a non sequitur. From what premise do you presume that my conclusion does not follow? You have no premise whatsoever from which to assume how I would or would not value economic versus social freedoms. Are you familiar with the work of the Heritage Foundation on Economic Freedoms? If you were, you would note that the US now ranks behind both Hong Kong and Singapore. Hong Kong is less corrupt, has greater investment freedom, greater monetary freedom, much greater freedom from government, greater trade freedom, etc. And every year the US finds some excuse, whether it is the war on drugs or the war on terror or something else to further restrict our economic freedoms and to grow government. Given the relatively large number of countries that allow freedom of religon and speech and the relatively few countries with significant economic freedoms, the latter are more rare and are thus more valuable.

What good is being able to carry a gun or have the right to assemble if 40%+ of my earnings are stolen from me by various levels of government every year?

****Because by carrying a gun you can preserve your LIFE. Having the right to assemble means there are other things more important than your earnings. This narrow economic perspective you have is quite demeaning to humans.

carrying a gun may or may not preserve my life. So far I have never needed to use a gun to preserve my life or even to defend myself or my property. On the other hand, my property is stolen from me by various levels of government every year, and having a gun is no use in preventing that theft. Having the right to assemble means only that I have the right to assemble, not that there are other things more important to me than my earnings. But given the choice of one or the other, I would rather have the fruits of my labor than the right to assemble. My economic view is neither narrow nor demeaning. My preference is to avoid economic slavery through taxation. Yours is to assemble. You are free to hold your own views, but they are not demeaning or narrow. You prefer economic slavery + assembly rather than economic freedom - assembly.

I am a 40% slave, but at least I am free to write about it, if not actually free to do anything about it.

****Some say the glass is 40% empty, others say it is 60% full. I say we’re lucky to have water in a glass.

Now you sound like Hillary Clinton who believes that I am lucky to be able to keep any of my earnings. I say we are losing more economic rights every year, and to declare that as lucky is to completely miss the danger of creeping socialism. Have you read any Hayek?

I disagree with you that foreign trade and limited temporary immigration are not good for the US.

****And yet you say nothing in support of your contention.

Am I required to? Do I really have to explain the benefits of foreign trade to you? I had expected that you were at least that advanced in your education that you had already come to the same conclusion, but if you would like me to walk you through how both foreign trade and limited temporary immigration benefit the US, I am certainly willing to do so.

Perhaps you could let all of us know who your candidate is for president, so we can all vote for him or against her and let the chips fall where they may.

I don't have a candidate yet, but if I did, it would not be relevant to this thread. I can tell you that there are no "hers" in the race for whom I would ever vote (or to whom I would give a glass of water if I found her dehydrated in the desert).

I do agree that opening the borders (which seems to have already happened...just not legally) creates social stresses. But H-1Bs are for well educated folks who generally pay far more into our welfare state than they consume from it.

****I disagree with you, strongly, on this point. And my disagreement comes from personal experience. I have run across dozens of H1B visa entrants, and only 1 of them was worth any additional effort to bring him in. It wasn’t because he was more educated, it was because he was smarter than others. But even he was rattled that he couldn’t move up in the organization due to the indentured servitude he was stuck with (his OWN words). These H1B visas may have originally been intended to ease some kind of educated worker shortage but the reality on the ground is that they are being used by companies to reduce wage pressure, plain and simple. The people working these H1B jobs are no more qualified than the average American engineer who would go for the job, on average. The system is riddled with fraud.

Your personal experience has nothing to do with my point. I wrote that H-1Bs pay more into the welfare state than they receive from it. You countered with an argument that only one H-1B was worth any effort to bring him into the country, which is completely irrelevant to my point.

Even if your comment had been relevant it was wrong. Your judgement of worth is completely irrelevant. It is only the employer's judgement that counts. The employer brough in the H-1Bs because THEY found them valuable.

As discusssed above H-1Bs are not indentured servants and are free to leave whenever they choose to. And if the fellow that you thought was so smart WAS in fact so smart, why did he think that his temporary visa would allow him the same opportunities to move up in a company as a permanent resident?

I don't think that anecdotes are fallacious.

****The point where your anecdote becomes fallacious is when you prop it up to argue against multitudes of other examples. A moose bit my sister once. Does that mean there are thousands of moose (meese? Mooses?) running around biting women for the fun of it? NO.

However your anecdote does prove that moose bite. And you didn't provide "multitudes of other examples." So far we have a sample of ONE anecdote which I have provided. And that anecdote supports my contention. It does not prove it, but I didn't say that it did. I only gave you the anecdote as an example to help you understand my position.

I agree that anecdotes don't prove a case statistically.

****Again you make my point for me.

This was an example of me agreeing with you, not making your point for you. If I had made your point for you, I would have had to actually have argued a point. And your use of the word again is incorrect too, since I have not previously made any points for you.

But I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. In fact I think that theory to be enormously unlikely, if still not disprovable.

****That’s a fancy way of saying that you see it your way and I see it mine and neither of us can prove our contentions. But what I can do is vote for a presidential candidate who would do something about this problem, and I perceive Hunter would do exactly that. Go ahead and push your favorite candidate here. It has been my experience in debating folks with an absolutist bent that they do not have real world candidates that they support because no one measures up. It’s one way of pointing out that your perspective is so far askew that it doesn’t represent mainstream anything.

I have no favorite candidate to push yet, although I am leaning towards Mr. Fred Dalton Thompson. However I am still evaluating two other candiates. I find irony in your suggestion that "folks with an absolutist bent....do not have real world candidates that they support" given that Hunter's is not a mainstream candidate and has about an equal chance of being nominated as you do.

There really is nothing for you to attempt to bite in my statement. You are meant to take it for exactly what it is, a single anecdote. I work with engineers too. And I have seen thousands of jobs come INTO the United States from foreign investment.

****Very cool. Except that anyone can say that. Personally, I think it’s a big gigantic crock of bull dung.

Well you could start by looking at jobs in the US created by Honda or Toyota. You could look at Dannon. There's Credit Suisse and ING. There are dozens of financial service companies and manufacturers. There's Cemex. There are foreign energy companies. Nearly every sector of the economy has large foreign owned companies operating in the United States, and the economy benefits from that investment. So simply dismiss it as "bull dung" is to refuse to acknowledge the obvious. Pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal pretty much any day and take a look at how many huge non-US companies operate here.

I look forward to you showing how you have seen these thousands of jobs come into the US from foreign investment and that it is somehow irreducibly related to the H1B visa program. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with my common sense and basic intuition which tells me that you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

I have notice a very strong tendency for you to stick with what you perceive to be common sense rather than attempting to do primary research and learn actual facts. Also I did not state that foreign investment and H-1B visas are irreducibly related.

It is sad to lose one's job, but you need to recognize that there are plenty of other jobs. And if you think that there are none that pay you enough, start your own firm.

****There are more options than that. One of the options is to start affecting change on the political level. When enough people get tired of the nonsense, they do something about it. I can’t tell yet if we are at that critical mass, but I find your absolutist meanderings to be a load of hooey.

None of my comments are meanderings, nor are they absolutist. So what do you propose as changes that will benefit the United States? Would you end foreign trade? Would you prohibit all immigration? Would you prohibit all foreign investment? You seem generally opposed to international trade and immigration, but I don't think you are aware of the consequence of ending them.

My advice to her was to do what she enjoys. Her father has certainly been a great success story at AMD, and the United States is a better country for it.

****Since you’re the only person who knows who this is, we have to take your word for it. My intuition tells me that, once again, it’s a load of baloney that somehow “the United States is a better country for it” and that if our country IS better off because of this man, it would probably be due to something other than his supposed success story at AMD.

I am not the only person who knows of the success of this man. But you certainly have to take my word for it, since you don't know him. If your intuition is telling you that the United States is NOT better off for having a successful immigrant who has done exceptionally well professionally, then you should stop relying on your intuition entirely.

I don't know what you mean by "the job goes overseas". ****Here, start with some outsourcing threads and educate yourself. Jobs worth $ 210 billion to be outsourced to India in 2005 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234346/posts

I still don't understand your point. You wrote "THE" job goes overseas, as if there is only one job available to graduates. Reading about outsourcing has nothing to do with whether or not graduates have ONE job. They do not. When kids graduate and take a job, they generally do not starve in the gutter if they lose their first job for any reason.

Are engineering graduates indentured to a single company? Of course not.

****They are if they are here on an H1B visa! NOW You’re starting to GET IT.

But sadly, at the same time, you have lost the context of your own thread. Your point was that a recent US graduate would be in trouble when "THE" job was shipped overseas. Now you seem to have confused that point by thinking that instead you were refering to non-US graduates here on H-1B visas who would lose out when their H-1B jobs were shipped overseas. This is another example of why you should learn to use HTML formatting for your posts. You have confused yourself.

When one loses a job in ANY profession, one can simply get a new job. That is the nature of the employment market. And if you are concerned about jobs going overseas, you should be in favor of MORE H-1B visas. The lack of available visas practically guarantees that US employers will staff up overseas.

****Baloney.

I can personally guarantee you that if I can't bring a German executive into the United States this year by him getting very lucky and getting an H-1B (<20% chance based on Monday's application count) that I will instead shutter our US operations and fire 4 US employees. I will then hire 4 staff in Germany, which will be expensive and suboptimal, but I will have no choice if I can't bring Guntar here. Our situation with this company is extremely common and results from too few H-1Bs.

I certainly didn't make your point. The corn (read: children in the US) has not been grown (read: do not pursue education in engineering or the hard sciences) because most American children don't want to work hard.

****We both agree that our students are not pursuing educations in the hard sciences. You stated earlier, “I don't think it is possible to prove that kids are not studying engineering because they worry their jobs are not safe. “ It probably doesn’t matter, for purposes of our discussion here, WHY the kids are not pursuing the hard sciences.

It most certainly does matter why they are not pursuing hard science jobs. If your earlier contention were correct that they fear foreign competition then you might have a point. But since that is extremely unlikely, there must be other reasons, and you can't go on pretending that H-1B visas are the reason that Johnny can't read, write, or program.

What does matter is that we both agree that it IS taking place. The fact that as a nation we are not generating a solution in this area but instead choose to import science workers and export science jobs is a way of “eating our seed corn”. If you don’t want to see the point, that’s ok. It just means you want to keep arguing.

We still live in a free(-ish) country, and unless you are going to mandate what college kids are allowed to study, there's not much you can do about changing the proportion of engineering students unlesss you change the culture. Changing the culture has nothing to do with visa programs. We chose to import science workers because there are not enough here now, and those that are here are not as valuable. Once again, the analogy to corn is mystifying.

It has nothing to do with eating the corn. It is also a poor analogy because corn growth is passive from the perspective of the corn. Most college age students decide themselves what they want to study. Students and labor market participants are not corn.

****I love it when someone tries to break down an analogy by saying basically, “the analogy doesn’t work because A is not B”. It’s an incredible fallacy. DUH. A is LIKE B. That’s why A makes a good analogy for B.

OK, then let me be more clear. A is not only not B in your analogy, but A is absolutely nothing at all LIKE B. So Children are not Corn AND Children are not LIKE Corn either. Now do you understand?

Perhaps you don't travel abroad as much as I. American students are among the worst in the industrialized world, esp. in math and science.

****You are resorting to a subtle form of fallacy known as an appeal to authority, as if your so-called authority as a world traveler trumps mine. No one can travel the world enough to see all that would be necessary to be the right authority on this issue, so your attempt is wasted. Nice try, though. Keep those fallacies coming.

Why would you suggest this is a fallacy when you have already agreed to it above? And of course one does not need to travel the world to be an authority on whether or not US students are or are not equivalent to their peers around the world in other nations. They typically do poorly on standardized math and science tests compared to non-US children.

You also fail to address why a student would work hard for an MBA without fear that his MBA job would be shipped abroad.

****When the discussion gets this long, it really is a stretch to point out that a person failed to address some other point. You must really like arguing. One reason why the MBA would be a better bet is due to its ability to be ported across industries. Engineering talent suffers from the false perception that it cannot jump from industry to industry whereas there is a widespread perception that MBAs can operate in any industry. I don’t happen to agree with that perception, but it is a market reality nonetheless. It makes the MBA a bigger-bang-for-the-buck degree versus engineering.

Your logic fails. If an MBA can be ported across industries, then that means that a foreign MBA can be ported across industries too. Therefore an MBA is no more or less likely to be replace by a foreign MBA employee than an engineer is to be replaced by a foreign engineer. The MBA is a bigger bang for the buck degree than an engineering degree because it is a more valuable degree if earned from a top 20 school. It has nothing to do with who is afraid of being replaced by whom.

I bring up the question of the MBA not because I like to argue but because your position is logically incorrect. You can't hold that MBA students are not afraid of foreign competition while engineering students are when they are equally as likely to be displaced.

Why would an engineering student fear foreign competition whereas an MBA would not?

****Because it is engineering jobs that are being shipped overseas by the managers. The next generation of jobs to be shipped overseas will be managerial, but the present batch of Steppin Fetchits will have already moved on by then.

So why are MBA jobs not being shipped overseas already? I contend it is because MBAs provide more value. If engineering jobs are being shipped overseas, then by definition US engineers who lost their jobs were overpaid.

I did not address "the fraud issue" at all. Of course I am opposed to fraud.

****Glad to hear it.

Why in the world would you assume otherwise?

I’m not sure I agree that the US is competitive in maths or the hard sciences compared to many other countries.

***That’s because we are eating our own corn seed. We are not putting resources into this area.

Actually it has far more to do with the amount of time that children in the US spend studying and working versus playing PS3 or football. Parents in this country do not push their children very hard, and the schools are worse than most Western schools. Again it has nothing to do with corn or visas.

****We’re both approaching this from different angles. You think the problem is that American kids are lazy, I think the problem is that kids know that by studying real hard in the sciences they set themselves up for disappointment when they could be studying something else that brings in more rewards. There’s probably truth in both statements, and I usually agree with a more puritanical viewpoint. But not on this issue, and that’s due to my own experience seeing those jobs go away. The fact is, it is engineering jobs which are being wiped out here in the US. You don’t get an engineering degree by spending your time playing PS3. So when a kid looks up from his PS3 and sees Dad struggling to find an engineering job while the neighbors’ Dads seems to be doing okay reorganizing whatsamawhoozits, that kid will probably go into the whatsamawhoozit business. It’s human nature. It’s also human nature that companies will seek to pay the least for the work product that they can.

I'm extremely skeptical. I also think you overstate your point when you claim that engineering jobs are being wiped out. Has the total number of engineers actively at work in the US declined in the last 10 years as a result of oursourcing, as a result of overspending during the tech bubble, or for other reasons? (Or not at all?)

I don’t know whether our founding fathers thought much about competitiveness.

***Again you make my point for me.

This is the third time that you have confused my statement with your point. That the founding fathers (and all of human society) knew next to nothing about economics and competitiveness does not suggest that neither are important. How can you fail to understand that?

What the founding fathers didn't think about is not particularly relevant. The founding fathers didn't think about nuclear weapons either. To base one's rationale on something that another party or group didn't evaluate is irrational. I certainly did not make your point. My point is that one would have to guess what the founding fathers' views would be on foreign trade and H-1B visas. From my readings, my guess would be that they would be largely in favor of both.

****So, here it appears you have gained some coherence. Congratulations on finding your way back. My readings suggest exactly the opposite, and it’s one reason why they chose to have a certain level of citizenship and even restricted certain elected positions (like the presidency) from foreigners because they knew that not everyone who steps on this soil is necessarily here for the betterment of the US. The founding fathers were seeing some large immigration patterns and they were quite adamant that for someone to come and work here, they should become an American. They would be against H1B visas. They loved foreign trade, because it got them rich. For instance, there was a lot of money being made shipping American made guns & goods across the atlantic, bringing back slaves for rum, and then importing the rum to America for more guns & goods – the golden triangle. It was a purely pragmatic approach. Of course, it didn’t help the slaves all that much.

I would be interested specifically in which readings you believe state the opposite. Exactly which books? What other elected positions besides the Presidency or the Vice Presidency do you think are subject to the "natural born" clause? There are none. I suspect you are ignorant of the origin of the "natural born" clause and John Jay's letter to George Washington in 1787. In fact nobody really knows what that clause means or why it was introduced other than that at the time John Jay thought that perhaps the English might somehow gain control of the Presidency and that the Committee of Eleven adopted it without comment or debate. It remains largely a mystery.

I would suggest that international trade was such a small part of GDP that competitiveness was not very important.

***So would I. That would suggest that international trade isn’t nearly as important as those conservative core values that our country is built upon.

You are missing an important point. That the founders didn't give much thought to international trade suggest that it was not as important as their core values were in 1776. Incidendally the founders were more libertarian or Classical Liberal than Conservative...the Conservatives were the Tories. Conservatives mostly fled for Canada. So rather than suggesting that international trade ISN'T important, you can only infer that the founders thought that it WASN'T important in 1776.

****Darn, you came so close to making a good point. Too bad for you.

Taunting is a poor technique for attempting to prove a point. It is often used when one has already lost the argument as here, where you attempted to claim that in 1776 the founders should somehow of been able to predict the eventual importance of international trade and should have written extensively on it.

They most certainly would think it important today, because, in fact, it is quite important.

****Here, you completely fall on your face. You’re projecting your beliefs back onto the founding fathers. You think they would approach it like you would rather than like how THEY would. They would look at the number of people who still want to crawl through mud to get into America as the great indicator that our social rights & freedoms from the Bill of Rights are more valuable than temporary economic gains we have managed to finagle in the last generation or 2.

Social rights and freedoms are not enemies of international trade. If you don't like free trade, you are free to not engage in same. Others who do like international trade are free to do so. That is the very essence of economic freedom.

I work with Most of the folks on H1B visas are living at a very low wage compared to their counterparts just 2 cubicles down.

>>>I agree. And a quick way to make everywhere else as good or better than HERE is to prohibit the best and brightest from around the world from actually coming HERE.

****See, here you’re actually overlooking the problem that results from fraud in the H1B visa program. The fraud is what is breeding all the mediocrity we see from these internationals. If the program were working the way it was intended, the best & brightest would find it easier to come here than the mediocre indentured servants we’re seeing on the program and who have as much of a chance of getting in (because it’s now a lottery).

You spend a lot of time talking about fraud, but you have yet to explain what you are talking about. What sort of fraud do you think is endemic to the H-1B program? If all the H-1Bs are mediocre than why would any companies ever go to the effort and expense to try to hire them? Clearly these companies value the employees and don't consdier them mediocre. Did all 150,000 applications get filed on Monday for mediocre H-1Bs? That just doesn't make any sense.

A couple more points for you: H-1Bs are not indentured servants & there is only a lottery because there are so many applicants. If the number of H-1Bs was raised, the best and the brightest would all be expedited as has happened in previous years. This is the first year that all the expedited applications exceeded the total number of available visas.

You seem to be caught in a mental trap such that you assume if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance. This is a puzzling notion.

****Ok, here you return back to making some interesting argument but you seemed to have lost your point. Unfortunately you slip back into your habit of exaggerating my position (a.k.a. straw argumentation) and then arguing against it. I do not assume that “if the founders neglected to write extensively on a topic that it is of little importance”, it is just an INDICATOR of how important certain timeless issues are in comparison to others. You seem to focus extensively on economic issues, which are important but not as important as other issues. Our country was quite poor for about 150 years or so, and it suited us that we had these valuable rights that made us a good country. The fact that we now have some wealth is attracting people who simply want the wealth and could care less about the values that made this country great.

You are not well educated enough on the history of economics to understand that "timeless" issues like economics were incredibly young topics upon which very little had been written and even less was generally agreed upon. That the founders wrote nothing on economics is not an indicator that they thought it unimportant but only that they knew nothing about it. There was next to nothing at all known about economics when the founders wrote. Expecting them to have written about economics as an indicator of some timeless issue is about as sensible as expecting them to have written about stellar evolution. It is incorrect to state that poverty suited the US. You also understate the wealth of the US after about 1830.

…. But I have been alive enough decades to know that he would not ever have become a citizen if the policies you favor had been in place when he came to the United States.

****It would have simply been harder for him, that’s all. I know people at AMD. I know what it takes to get to the top. Your friend is a hard working soul and that’s a good thing. But I simply haven’t met that many immigrants who were worth going to all the trouble for. We don’t need H1B visas, there are enough Americans to fill those jobs.

Here you again make the mistake that there are a limited number of jobs and that immigrants are stealing American jobs. You also claim somehow that my AMD friend would have found a way into the country. Other than the visa program, how do you suggest that would have happened?

He never would have had an opportunity to become a citizen, not would his daughter.

****nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Baloney Baloney. A complete exaggeration of my position.

So then explain to me how it would have happened.

From your perspective, his success and citizenship and daughter's probable success have robbed another US citizen's job, success, and child's success.

****Interesting exaggeration of my perspective, using loaded terms such as “robbed”. Every single H1B visa position is supposed to be a job that an American CAN’T do by virtue of the unique needs generated by the skillset and knowledge involved. The more I look into the program (have you read Matloff’s paper?) the more I see that there are actually VERY FEW jobs that would qualify under such a program, and american companies are simply using it as a form of indentured servitude to keep wages down. They’re actually being very crafty, but I don’t have to agree with it.

Robbed is a term that I would have expected YOU to use. I was attempting to mimic your language. You are incorrect on your assertion on what the H-1Bs are supposed to be. I would suggest you read the US Department of Labor's 2006-2001 Strategic Plan. I will quote to you one section:

"An E-3 or H-1B1 worker may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

Perhaps you have been confused by the H-1B program requirements, which is why you assume there is significant fraud? If you are aware of actual fraud, you can bring it to the attention of the DOL. But perhaps all this fraud is imagined.

You probably think this, because you assume that the economy is a zero sum game with a finite number of jobs and opportunity such that every new entrant must therefore displace someone else who was entitled to his employment. I am here to tell you that you are mistaken.

****Another set of exaggerations and loaded terms like “entitlement”. You don’t know what I think, so don’t bother.

Unfortunately, I have a very good understanding of what you think, and I wish you would take the time to read a little more before you form such strong and ill-informed opinions.

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