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Senate Bill Will Take Even More Jobs From Americans Diane Alden Both political parties are bought and paid for by one economic or corporate interest or another. In the world of the Beltway Iron Triangle, the primary directive is to accumulate as much money for re-election as possible while making points with power brokers and corporate lobbying groups. What may be at stake for the professional politician and eternal inhabitant of the Beltway is a lucrative position in a post-government life, perhaps in the financial, lobbying or corporate world. It is all about connections, after all. In Washington, cronyism is rampant, and in some cases, so is nepotism. It is less and less unusual for those on the political or policy-making food chain to connect relatives and friends or colleagues into positions of power and influence. Influence-peddling in the Beltway is honed to a fine art. Longtime Beltway powerhouse, Reagan speechwriter and all-around thoughtful maven of the political scene, Peggy Noonan, wrote a powerful piece for the Wall Street Journal. Peggy advances what I have been trying to tell people for several years: This nation is going off in the wrong direction, a good bit of it due to our establishment elite, including the Senate of the United States. A great deal of the problem is that significant sectors of the government are bought and paid for by corporate or other interests – at our expense.
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In the Journal article, "A Separate Peace," Peggy writes: "How are things going in America?" She tells us there is "growing knowledge that there is no such thing as homeland security." In addition, "A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned by an interest group or financial entity. ..." There is more to this great piece by Ms. Noonan. It should be read and sent out to every American in and out of government. [www.opinionjournal.com/columnist/pnoonan]
Peggy Noonan can sense the terrible predicament that is exemplified by the actions or inaction of the U.S. Senate. The political figures elected to represent the people of their respective states instead choose to invariably advance certain economic interests over the best interests of their constituents or the United States. That is obvious to all but the most uninterested or partisan "Kool-Aid"-drinking true believers in the establishment. We are stuck with a government so corrupt and venal it consistently sells us out, usually to the highest bidder, whether they be foreign or domestic. In the process they continue to give away the American birthright for a corporate buck.
As many of us who are usually optimists have come to believe, establishment power brokers have no concern or interest in the limits of their power or the meaning of our freedom. The U.S. Senate is the most obvious player in the game of obtaining power and keeping it. In that regard, Senators are shameless as they continue to do the bidding of economically powerful groups involved in "public-private partnerships" or economic interests that have no allegiance to the United States of America. A case in point: the recent push by the U.S. Senate for more economic visas for foreign workers. The demand by economic interests, corporations, particularly Bill Gates, comes at the expense of American-born workers, scientists, engineers and thousands in other professions, skilled and unskilled. The U.S. Senate is about to allow an increase in the infamous H-1B and attendant L-1 visa "plan," which is called the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 (S. 1932). Leading the latest attempt to do an injustice to the American worker, taxpayer and citizenry is that paragon of moderation, Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa. Thanks to Arlen and the other bandits and buccaneers in the U.S. Senate, particularly the Judiciary Committee, megabillionaire and leftist Bill Gates, along with a phalanx of corporate supremacists, are building empires on the backs of Americans and the American nation-state. This effort is supported by our government and the political class as they bow to the demands to increase H-1B and L-1 visas to accommodate universities, hospitals, technology companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which say there is a shortage of qualified workers – a shortage that exists only in the minds of profit-hungry and cost-cutting megacorporations or thoughtless groups like the Chamber of Commerce. As one former government worker stated, "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents Chinese business interests better than any group I know. " The Package With the Bomb The latest bombing of the Middle Class, particularly on the professional occupations, may be found in Specter's and the Senate budget package. It includes provisions that will make available hundreds of thousands of green cards for new permanent legal immigrants. Without much concern about how any of us feel or what we think, the Senate Judiciary is in the process of selling 368,000 visas to foreign workers or, rather, offering them up to the transnational corporations or foreign body shops that bring workers from around the globe to the U.S. The Senate is still debating the "plan" and will vote on it within days if it has not already. [Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 (S. 1932)] The measure is supported by universities, hospitals, technology companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which say there is a shortage of qualified workers. That is rotten baloney, but it allows an avenue for various economic interests to maximize profits while paying wages that remain stagnant and benefits that are usually nonexistent. Often, if any benefits are paid, they are offered by a foreign consulting body shop that provides the foreign worker to corporate interests that increasingly demand them. For the American worker, that is one more reason wages and salaries remain stagnant and have for nearly a decade. Countless economic and government reports, plus Alan Greenspan himself, refused to spin the numbers in August 2005. In effect, Greenspan admitted that wages and benefits had declined or remained stagnant and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Of course it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize basic market economics: When you bring in more and more cheap or docile, compliant labor into the U.S. from China, India or all points on the compass, wages and benefits will remain stagnant or depressed as long as the supply never ends. This situation exists courtesy of the U.S. Senate and Congress and multiple badly negotiated trade deals. Regarding stipulations in Specter's bill, the Washington Times reports, "The bill's measures would 'recapture' 90,000 unused employment-based immigration visas and would exempt family members from counting toward the cap, which is set at 140,000 per year. The bill also increases H-1B visas from 65,000 to 95,000 in fiscal 2006 and raises the fee employers pay by $500." That will garner the U.S. Treasury about $120 million per year and "help" deficit reduction. Better they should not promise drug benefits to a growing number of senior citizens. Congress and the Bush White House might have thought better of offering pharmaceutical companies a never-ending supply of drugged-out American schoolchildren in the gosh-awful mental health screening and accompanying drug "plan" that passed Congress last year. They might have opted not to create one more huge bureaucratic black hole such as the money pit called the Department of Homeland Security. If Congress had been wise, instead of spending like there was no tomorrow, they might have reformed the CIA instead of choosing to add another layer of bureaucracy in the newly created "Clandestine Service." The $120 million sale of U.S. worker visas is a piddly amount in comparison to what is being expended on programs we don't need and can ill afford. Worse, this "effort" is being done on the backs of the American Middle Class. The ultimate cost to the American worker, the taxpayer or U.S.-born student, as well as our future scientific and technological growth, is incalculable. Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies investigated the actual nature of the foreign worker visa. She reports: "According to researcher Ronil Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology, 'the Indian IT industry has utilized U.S. immigration regulations for competitive advantage to accelerate its growth.' Infosys, for example, is one of the leading Indian-owned IT services firms. Between 70 and 80 percent of the company's global revenues in the last few years came from U.S. contracts, and they are staffed mainly by Indian workers here on H1-B and L visas." In addition, she says: "Hospitals and health care services firms are also heavy users of trade pact-guaranteed guestworker programs. At least 50,000 foreign nurses have entered the country in the last 10 years on temporary visas, mostly Canadians, using the TN visa. Nurses' advocates across the country are bracing themselves for the arrival of even greater numbers this year from Mexico with the lifting of the TN cap. One Mexican headhunter has a contract to provide 3,000 nurses to hospitals in four U.S. states. Stephanie Tabone, of the Texas Nursing Association, where the largest number of foreign nurses are working, says that the influx is causing noticeable wage depression for U.S. nurses. 'Hospitals can bring in even very experienced nurses from abroad, and call them entry level, so they can get away with paying them less.'" Immigration and visa critic, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., adds that he will vote against the bill if it makes it to the House. Others are sounding the alarm on the approaching visa debacle. You won't find it, however, in the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News or the alphabet electronic outfits. Immigration and visa expert and columnist Joe Guzzardi recently interviewed Roy Beck of NumbersUSA. Beck related to Joe: "Microsoft is once again running the show up there. The whole plan came from a Microsoft lobbyist whose colleagues are overpowering all the House and Senate leaders this week demanding that the tripling (maybe quadrupling) of employment-based green cards and H-1Bs goes through!" Added Beck, "This is a travesty for American students studying to enter scientific, engineering and high-tech fields, as well as to those Americans who have worked hard to become masters of their craft." On the House side, the budget bill does not raise immigration levels. Instead, the House Judiciary Committee met its budget-cutting goal by increasing the fee for L-1 visas, another temporary-worker program, by $1,500. As I have said before, we have the best government money can buy. It is too bad that post-Cold War multinational corporations have about as much loyalty to this nation and its people as did the international business interests that helped create the industrial goliath of the Third Reich. It's too bad that those who swim in the dank waters of Washington's Iron Triangle (bureaucracies, lobbyists, corporations, military brass, U.S. senators and representatives) are so easily bought. The Whine Is Flowing As it often happens, the interconnected nature of the government and corporate oligarchy makes claims that there is a never-ending "shortage" of workers for high-tech and low-tech jobs. The same people claim that American students are so dumb and poor in math and science, they are hopeless as a source for technological workers or scientists. That particular con is regularly used by Bill Gates and organizations such as Harris Miller's tech association, ITAA, plus various universities, not to mention the congressional India caucus. The caucus seems to represent the needs of foreign governments and business interests, such as India and China, before they do those of this nation and its citizens. As usual, follow the money, campaign contributions, trips and bribes, and sundry perks offered by the international business set and governments. Not surprisingly, after a couple of years of quiet on the visa front, in 2005 the For Sale sign has gone back up on U.S. work and student visas. Attached to the visa effort is the cynical belief that Americans are such consummate suckers and fools that Congress and its corporate clients can continue to get away with this travesty. Using Bill Gates as an example: Gates and the crew at Microsoft, Cisco Systems, etc., have been trying to convince Congress and the American people we are spawning a bunch of morons who can't compete because they are uneducated, particularly in math and science. While there is a certain sector of the American public school population that fits that description, the fact is that a significant sector stands up just fine against students from the rest of the world. In a recent edition of The New Atlantis, Journal of Science and Technology, they ask, "Is American Math and Science Education in Decline?" The response should put Bill Gates and the crock fillers in certain sectors of the IT industry, along with the pygmy brains in the U.S. Congress, to shame. [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/9/soa/education.htm] The article states: "As if coordinated to provoke headlines, top executives at three of the nation's leading technology firms recently issued bleak appraisals of the American education system, criticizing especially how American students are taught science and mathematics. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates minced no words at a summit of the nation's governors: until high schools are redesigned, he declared, 'we will keep limiting, even ruining, the lives of millions of Americans every year.' The chief executives of Intel and Cisco Systems shortly followed suit, suggesting that America's lackluster schools will increasingly force companies to look overseas for talent." Furthermore, "When Bill Gates and others seem to appeal for school reform in the U.S., perhaps they are merely providing their companies with political cover and a post hoc justification for employing foreign engineers who, while not better educated than U.S. workers, are often significantly cheaper." The heart of the Atlantis piece offers the unpalatable, politically incorrect truth: "According to a recent analysis by researchers in England and Italy ... these inequalities is no mystery. The gap in test scores between white and ethnically Asian students on the one hand and black and Hispanic students on the other is a well-known attribute of U.S. schools and is noted ruefully in nearly all cross-national studies. Two University of Pennsylvania researchers recently aggregated scores from a number of cross-national studies and found that white students in the United States, taken alone, consistently outperform the predominantly white student populations of several other leading industrial nations. 'There is compelling evidence,' they write, 'that the low scores of [black and Hispanic students] were major factors in reducing the comparative standing of the U.S. in international surveys of achievement. If these minority students were to perform at the same level as white students, the U.S. ... would lead the Western G5 nations in mathematics and science, though it would still trail Japan.'" I would suggest reading the entire article to discover the complete, albeit politically incorrect, truth about the so-called dismal showing of American students in math and science. America can and does produce enough scientists and engineers. It is only a sector of our population that either seems to be terribly running behind in math and science. That is due to any number of factors that would require a huge book to discuss. At the moment, it only matters that even the opportunities for minority students left behind in the math and science race will be limited or nonexistent because we are absorbing increasing numbers of workers from every nation on earth. The price of a visa for a foreign worker may in the end be the cost of the American lower and middle class. As it is, there are not enough scientific or technical jobs for even our best students to fill. The unemployment rate or underemployment rate among engineers and techies is higher than in most other occupational groups. What Gates and the corporate world are after is cheap, docile labor, or a choice of many to fill a few jobs. What that does is skew the "free" market, making it not so free after all. Regarding corporations and the power they wield, particularly in the United States: The late Chief Justice Rehnquist repeatedly attacked the invention of corporate constitutional rights. In his dissenting opinion from Bellotti (a case that helped establish giving corporations the same rights as an individuals), Rehnquist warned of "special dangers in the political sphere" that result from granting political power to corporations. But despite Rehnquist's take on the power of corporations, corporate executives and multinationals, like Bill Gates and dozens of others, they wield vast power. When they aren't intimidating Congress they are buying it. That means the balance of power, the status of the individual in relation to the corporate, the state, and their cozy engagement, is in trouble. This is so particularly when no help is forthcoming from elected representatives in either or both houses of Congress to address the imbalance. It should be up to our representatives to achieve a balance of interests that do not make corporations or their power supreme over our individual or national interests. We are more than corporate America. We are a culture and nation that prides itself on our careful attention to a healthy balance between the state, the corporate and the needs of citizens. Some of us still pay attention to the concepts contained in the Constitution of the United States, our laws, traditions, and we retain a sense of revulsion at the misuse of power by our elected representatives. In fact, unless we get this problem and imbalance under control and soon, American communities, the body politic, our ultimate survival as a free and prosperous nation will be in even more jeopardy than it already is. Therefore, if you still care about your job, your nation and the future of your children and grandchildren, you'd better rock their tidy little congressional world with enough phone calls and letters to shut them down. Personally, I think that would do us all a lot of good and give the U.S. Senate in particular a much-needed trip to the woodshed and a drubbing they richly deserve. As the great political philosopher and wag P.J. O'Rourke mused some time ago, "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." Please check out my new Web site: www.dianealden.com. You can get expanded versions of policy analysis on the Web site. Find out how and why corporate and government power got away from the system and who is responsible for it.
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