Diane Alden
Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Rob Sanchez is a labor and economic activist and head of Zazona, a company that keeps track of the decline of American jobs in the technical and manufacturing fields as well as the travesty that is the current work visa system. (http://www.zazona.com)

Sanchez points out the extremes in the ideology of one-way free trade job killers like NAFTA and CAFTA. In addition, he and many others, like Pete Bennett and Mike Emmons, are experts on the corrupt U.S. visa system – a system being manipulated by transnational corporations, a travesty in a so-called "free market" economy and nothing but a corporate subsidy.

CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), of course, is the recently passed "free trade" bill that will allow Americans – or, rather, transnational profiteers and predators, Wall Street speculators and our government – to use Chile and Singapore to screw with the American economy and displace more American workers.

Before passage of the next economic train wreck referred to as CAFTA, Sanchez relates, the following exchange between himself and Republican Sen. John McCain's office took place.

"Today I spoke to John McCain's staffer, Matt Riqunas. He said:

"McCain will vote for the FTA (Fast Track Authority). He emphasized that McCain totally understands the immigration implications and thinks it's necessary to bring in more nonimmigrants into the U.S.A."

Furthermore, Sanchez says, McCain's staffer also insisted that American workers would be protected. "I explained to him that American workers aren't protected now and will be even worse off after the FTA is passed. I explained to him that even the DOL (Department of Labor) says that companies don't have to give preference to American workers.

"Riqunas immediately quipped back that companies couldn't replace American workers. He was wrong so I described to him why they could replace Americans. Detailing the 90-day rule I told him that it only applies to 1% of the companies that were H-1B dependent. He was in stunned silence for a very long time so I followed that by telling him that these FTA agreements have no protections at all – in fact they are like a renegade L-1 visa."

Sanchez relates: "Riqunas lectured me that I just don't understand the law. We ended the conversation when he told me that McCain feels that this FTA is good for America."

Sanchez says, "Staffers and the politicians often try snow-jobs like the one I just described. They often try to argue that Americans are protected – so be prepared and don't let them get away with it. I strongly recommend that you review the issues at these web pages before calling them:"

CAFTA passed the Senate, by the way.

The U.S. trade deficit has multiplied by 10 since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. Since then, both the Clinton and Bush administrations have pushed to normalize trade with China, finalize the agreement with Jordan and promote a new round of World Trade Organization talks.

Last year Congress narrowly voted to give Bush ''fast track'' authority to negotiate new trade deals. Now we have the largest trade deficit with China, at around $120 billion. Our trade deficit overall is reaching half a trillion dollars.

Additionally, there is more foreign and American investment money heading for China. This money is funding not only the manufacture of flip-flops and coffee mugs but also research and development in critical technologies. Bill Gates is investing $750 million in research and development in China alone. And yet our pundits wonder where all the capital funding for U.S. business is.

When China finally gets what it needs in technology, funding and capital, it will challenge the U.S. in the Far East. It will not "reform" but instead will do what all superpowers do and increase its power and control over as much territory as possible.

In 2000, the Chinese foreign minister related that sooner or later China and the U.S. would be at war. Now that China is working its way toward a nuclear-powered Navy, that is not an idle boast or threat. Yet our companies continue to sell out to China in the name of free trade and a perversion of capitalism antithetical to the best interests of the U.S.

How to Succeed in Business by Manipulating the System

Apologists for one-way free trade always tell us bills like CAFTA create more American jobs than they destroy. Thus, they continue to blow smoke up our skirts. As foreign companies buy out American companies, sell off lucrative sectors or keep shells in the U.S., they could care less about American workers or wage levels of American workers or markets for American goods.

Since NAFTA was signed, exports have increased a little. But manufacturing jobs have disappeared to the tune of nearly 3 million jobs. Lest the cheerleaders for one-way free trade snow you with the idea that more jobs have been created since NAFTA, let me remind you that the fastest growing job sector has been in retail sales and food services.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor, that is the way it will be for the foreseeable future. Food services and retail sales benefits and wages don't come anywhere near what manufacturing jobs and subsidiary industries provided to the vast majority of American workers.

What we have to come to terms with as citizens in a free republic is that the profit motive has no country, no borders and no loyalty to anyone. Transnationals, by and large, don't either. As one old priest reminded me not long ago: "You and I both know as human beings and as believers that money has no morality in itself … so that if money is the dominant factor in the New World Order, it must be leavened by belief and by religion and by the more beautiful things of human life; otherwise we will deteriorate into a jungle."

But how do transnational companies get around U.S. immigration, trade and visa laws? Let's take a look at the case of the Mercedes company in Alabama.

Alabama is a rural state. Neither the cost of living nor wages have ever matched those of the Northeast or Midwest. But that wasn't good enough for Mercedes, who used the visa system to get around paying the relatively low wages required by skilled labor in Alabama.

Thanks again to the eagle eye of Rob Sanchez for the information regarding Mercedes and misuse of the U.S. visa system.

The state of Alabama provided Mercedes with $253 million in subsidies to build its original plant in the mid-1990s. Another $119 million was proffered for the $600-million expansion. In return, Mercedes promised jobs for state residents. Some jobs were created, but Mercedes is bringing in cheap laborers from Poland under the B-1 visa.

Now, these jobs are not for engineers or scarce high-tech people who have no desire to move to rural Alabama. The misuse of H-1B or L-1 visas by a transnational is typical. The jobs provided to workers, from Poland this time, are in blue-collar sheet metal and painting. This is how the scam works:

According to a report in the Birmingham Free Press by Jennifer Dixon, the Polish workers receive approximately $1,100 a month, which is deposited in Poland. A foreign entity called Transsystems of Poland pays their living expenses while they are in the U.S.

The Sheet Metal Workers' Local 73 headquarters in Chicago tells us that the Polish workers make $5 to $6 per hour, while sheet metal workers in Alabama would normally receive $20.71 per hour. However, in the South shops and areas are right-to-work and are not unionized. The going wage is around $12 to $17 per hour in these places rather than the $21 required by unions for their members.

Dixon reports: "The foreign workers at Mercedes are employed by two companies – Transsystem of Poland and Gregorec Ltd. of Britain. The businesses were hired by Eisenmann, a German company that is installing the paint shop. Mercedes is expanding its factory to add a second assembly line, which requires a second paint shop. The factory will produce two vehicles: a new M-class SUV and the Mercedes-Benz Grand Sports Tourer.

"The first Transsystem workers arrived in January, and as many as 37 have come to work at Mercedes ... there are 32 Transsystem and 23 Gregorec workers at the site."

Furthermore, "The Polish workers said they stay either three or six months, and when they return home, others are brought in to replace them. They say they travel from job to job, and from country to country, doing similar work."

In any event, Transystem acts as a bodyshop that subcontracts Polish workers to Mercedes. Transsystem deposits the money in Poland because so it won’t have to pay taxes or FICA. The Polish B-1 visa holders are given a "living allowance." Living allowances are tax-free, so the Polish workers don't pay into our system.

No one is blaming Polish workers. While the number of Polish workers is under a hundred, that is the number of jobs not available to sheet metal workers or painters in Alabama. There is no scarcity of such workers, by the way. They use the H-1B visa, which is supposed to be for scarce technical skills or scientists to come to this country.

The Mercedes story is not exceptional but rather typical of the entire importation of cheap labor through outsourcing or misuse of the visa system. (Check out H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class.)

Nonetheless, the big economic lie boogies on under cover of our obsession with Bush's 16 words, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson or the latest flap in Hollywood or what inane political "gotcha" games the Democrats are playing with President Bush these days.

God bless the Poles, who helped the U.S. in Iraq. However, something is wrong when the U.S. economy is in the tank and U.S. blue-collar workers are getting canned by the score in manufacturing and skilled trades.

Meanwhile, U.S. engineers and technical workers, many of whom have been out of work for months and in some cases years, are stunned as we continue to import foreign workers through L-1 or H-1B visas. A horrifically convenient way for transnationals and their friends in government to get around the law. Conservative economist Milton Friedman describes such visas as nothing but a corporate subsidy.

Congress and various administrations as well as the transnationals are dancing on the graves of the American economy and our freedoms. They don't seem to care that manufacturing used to employ blue-collar workers in jobs that pay more than they receive working for Wal-Mart, the U.S.'s largest employer. Now technical and service workers find their wages and options depressed, and that will be the case at least for a decade.

You can thank the corruption of the establishment, and that includes both political parties as well as the insanity of electoral politics and the worship of an ideology, the corporate version of "free trade" over freedom, security and strength.

Buy America

A few representatives in the U.S. are concerned about the direction of critical manufacturing, the economy and sectors such as machine tooling and U.S. manufactures of components for U.S. weapons systems.

The White House and Donald Rumsfeld are fighting a conservative effort to steer manufacturing in critical areas back to the U.S.

A "Buy America" amendment was passed by the House of Representatives in May as part of a defense authorization bill, requiring 65 percent of components in items bought by the Pentagon be made in the U.S., compared to 50 percent under current law. It would also require some components such as machine tools to be 100 percent U.S.-made.

However, the Senate turned aside a similar effort, and the two bills must be reconciled before being sent to the White House.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has spearheaded the campaign, feels "it does not serve our national interest to have our national security dependent on foreign countries."

Hunter and others cite a delay in obtaining a component from a Swiss manufacturer for precision-guided munitions during the Iraq war as evidence that the U.S. needs to be more self-sufficient.

However, according to the New York Times, Rumsfeld said "he will recommend that President George W. Bush veto the entire $400 billion 2004 Pentagon budget if Hunter does not back down. According to a White House statement, Hunter's proposals are "burdensome, counterproductive and have the potential to degrade U.S. military capabilities."

What happens in a situation where our foreign suppliers are destroyed or our supply lines are cut off or the suppliers are now enemies? I guess our leaders don't think that far ahead. Planning for future contingencies doesn't seem to be in their job description.

Corporate Sellout vs. Working for a Living

Phony "free trade" does not benefit the vast majority of American workers, who do not have a college education and have depended on manufacturing or skilled labor, carpentry, electricians, and machinists, to achieve the American dream. The free market has been so badly manipulated by both corporations and the U.S. government that all the "kings horses and all the king's men" will never put that Humpty together again.

The lies they tell you about U.S. economic growth – are lies. The U.S. stock market is NOT the economy and no progress or REAL growth is ever accomplished by shuffling paper wealth or doing derivatives or Enron type cooking the books. In fact, all kinds of faux wealth will disappear along with manufacturing and high tech service jobs if our leaders don't achieve a greater understanding of what is happening to the United States, very soon.

The answer from Wall Street ought to scare you. Two different economic talking heads on two different stock and bond oriented TV shows maintained that American workers whose wages are depressed because of outsourcing, globalism or cheap labor visas and immigration, will be able to make up lost wages and wealth in the stock market. Which surreal planet in the universe do these people live on? It sends a chill up my spine.

Most citizens of the U.S. do not support themselves on their investments. They work for a living. Those who depended on the stock market for retirement or to pay for their children's education recently discovered – the stock market is a gamble.

In addition, the overwhelming majority of American workers have less than a college education. They also have little leverage in bargaining with employers. Most people require a certain degree of job security in order to achieve a minimal, decent level of living. NAFTA, while extending protections for investors, explicitly excluded any protections for working people in the form of labor standards, worker rights, and the maintenance of social investments. Just ask the former employees of Enron and Global Crossing about corporate consideration for employees or concern for the U.S. economy.

Transnationals and government collusion is deconstructing and destroying the United States and its economic and political well being. It has gotten worse since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War there was a kind of truce as transnationalis depended on the U.S. to protect its interests and defeat communism and collectivism around the world.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the wage earner is terrified about his future. Throwing a tax cut here or there only helps create more consumer buying frenzy or acts as a stop gap to service individual debt. Meanwhile, with the passage of CAFTA the U.S. will get more foreign workers on L-1 or H-1B visas and more cheap goods flooding the U.S.. We are the dumping ground for the world in a thousand different ways, from people to 'stuff' and the day of reckoning is going to be a lulu. Numerous studies including Forester Research and various universities from Harvard to Vanderbilt to UC at Davis, indicate that high end service jobs and financial occupations from architecture to computer engineering to law and stock analysis, are being outsourced or subjected to cheap labor through immigration and the visa system.

Why is it so hard for our establishment elite to understand that Americans can not buy their way into prosperity and long term economic growth? Neither can the vast majority become prosperous by depending on the stock market as opposed to good wages from a decent job.

As it is, there is no way we can maintain our economic strength by exporting jobs and technology to China or India or Mexico.

In addition, how many of us are concerned that our national security is at stake as companies like Boeing, Microsoft, Loral and Hughes, IBM and the rest of them rush madly to invest or build plant or send billions in research and development money to countries who are not our friends, countries like China. China, a country notorious for not living up to the WTO rules or the trade agreements it has signed. Pirating of everything from GPS tracking systems to DVDs as well as massive copyright infringement and manipulating its currency have become a Chinese art form. Furthermore, where are the free traders as the Chinese charge a tariff of up to 24 percent for U.S.-made products while the United States levies only up to 3 percent duty on products brought in from China. These are not the actions of a free trading partner or a "friend."

Transnational corporations who aid and abet this behavior should be treated as a foreign government and required to sign separate economic treaties with the U.S.. But that will happen when hell freezes over given the current mindset of the establishment elite.

As reported by journalist Mark Riebling in March of this year: "The Hughes Electronics Corporation (formerly owned by GM, now owned by Boeing) acknowledges that a string of Chinese rocket failures in the 1990s ended only after it sold data on guidance systems, telemetry, aerodynamics, and rocket failures to China. In November 2000, China promised to not assist other countries in developing ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons. But CIA told Congress earlier this year that China has continued to provide missile related items and/or assistance to North Korea, Iran, and several other "countries of proliferation concerns."

Journalist Michael Scherer quotes defense expert Frank Gaffney on corporate pursuit of the bottom line at the expense of national security and American jobs: "It is an outrage, if not actually criminal, when you have companies end-running these sanctions."

The History of Corporate Globalism Is Not a Pretty Picture

In “The Splendid Blonde Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide” by Christopher Simpson, published in 1993, the most thoroughly investigated account yet of the pre-World War II financial dealings between transnational corporations and the U.S. government's financial relationships are laid out in exhaustive detail.

According to Simpson, "U.S.- German investment mania gripped the Roaring 20s financial elite. This mania was rooted in the 1919 Versailles agreements on reparations, which imposed payments of approximately $30 billion (about $600 billion in 2000 dollars) by the German government to other European countries over 30 years. By 1922, attempts to raise the money to pay reparations had driven the German economy into a deep crisis. For U.S. companies, this was a golden opportunity."

U.S. corporations and Nazi-era Germany and even post war government and economic connections are part of a larger pattern. In fact, U.S. support for dictators like Saddam Hussein has often been the result of too close connections between large transnational corporations and the U.S. government and a policy during the Cold War which supported any dictator if they were friendly to transnational corporations. Support for the Saudi Royal Family is part of that bigger darker picture of the United States and parasitic corporate parasitic relationships.

Transnational corporations and the profit motive have no loyalty to any country. That is a concept that Americans need to recognize as the interests of transnational big business and U.S. sovereignty and survival may no longer be one and the same.

An early modern example of that dichotomy is exemplified when in 1943, Sen. Harry S. Truman's investigating committee exposed a financial pre-war relationship between American companies Ethyl, Standard Oil,, General Motors and DuPont on the one hand and the German chemical company I.G. Farben on the other. Internal company memos described the relationship as a "full marriage" which was "designed to outlast the war" no matter which side won. Ethyl had given leaded gasoline production technology to I.G. in return for patents on synthetic rubber to G.M. and DuPont. The U.S. companies did little research but vigorously protected the German synthetic rubber patents. When the war opened the Japanese cut off supplies of rubber (a critical strategic material) and synthetic rubber from oil had been blocked. At the time, British intelligence calls Standard Oil a "hostile and dangerous element of the enemy." (Stephenson, 1976, Borkin, 1978).

In our own era, various administrations and politicians are pushed into friendships and special arrangements with China or the Saudis or with Saddam Hussein who hated our enemy at the time, Iran. Even in the face of treachery that has led us into a series of wars and disasters such as 9.11 the tendency to turn a blind eye to all this continues to this day.

It is past time to ask the question: Is the United States of America for sale to the highest bidder and are U.S. transnational business interests more important than maintaining our economic base, independence, and right to exist as a sovereign nation? Are we selling our souls under the cover of one way, manipulated "free trade" so that "investors" can make bucks at the expense of U.S. freedom and sovereignty and the taxpayer? Do we all sell out so that we can buy cheap coffee mugs from Wal-Mart or hire cheap labor who work on critical components to our weapons systems? Do various agencies of the U.S. government merely pose as functionaries of large corporations including on occasion our intelligence agencies such as the CIA being used to gather information for GM, Ford or Boeing.

I suspect it will take complete devotion by the American people to remind our representatives and both political parties that this country is not for sale and neither are our sons and daughters pawns in corporate war games for the benefit of a select few.

Remember that money and profit have no loyalty to any country. That is a fact and not anti-capitalist class warfare. Small business and medium business is not the problem here. It is that transnationals no longer have any loyalty to the United States. But they do have lots of friends in Congress and in the U.S. government.

As we struggle to recognize the feckless nature of most transnationals, we are being eviscerated by the left through high taxes, regulations, unrestricted immigration, identity politics, lack of concern for the U.S. sovereignty, and radical environmentalism. The left propels us towards balkanization and collectivism with a corporate twist.

On the other hand, the economic establishment of the left or the right, whether Bill Gates or Wall Street Journal, understand nothing but the bottom line and cling to their own perverted ideologies and failed myths. In other words, they use the mantra of "free trade" to beat up on anyone who asks questions about whether the manipulated version of "free trade" is working in the best interests of the United States and its people.

Our political, social, economic and religious cohesion and our freedom must be weighed in the light of unpleasant realities and misplaced devotion to certain ideologies. Neither our freedom, free trade, or the free market are being well served by those in business, politics or economics who have no loyalty to this country, to its people, its survival as an independent nation, or its basic principles as may be found in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Please contact Diane Alden at alden@newsmax.com or dianealden7@bellsouth.net.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration

Editor's note:
Have an Opinion About This? Click Here to Send an URGENT PriorityGram Today