Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute has a new op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, advocating an alliance between the Stupid Party and the Evil Party on immigration. These two parties, with the concurrence of labor unions and big business, plan to legalize some illegal immigrants, while importing some guest workers, while also ensuring, by some as yet unspecified means, "that the initiative did not undercut U.S. workers." ["Lift Shadow From Illegal Immigrants: Observers on the right and left agree the migration status quo isn't working," By Tamar Jacoby, LA Times, October 15, 2003.]
Yawn. There's no argument in this piece that we haven't answered previously. See A Reply to Tamar Jacoby's Pro-Immigration Essay in Commentary by me and Peter Brimelow, or Tamar Jacoby Does 9/11 Damage Control At Reader's Digest, by Sam Francis for details.
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Einstein is one of the "arguments" used by immigration enthusiasts for mass immigration. He was an immigrant, wasn't he? Another such argument: we need foreign tech workers to do jobs that Americans are "too stupid to do." Or, as Norm Matloff points out, jobs that software companies don't want to pay American salaries for.
But, obviously, any rational immigration policy can make exceptions for a known genius. (Einstein was world famous long before he came to Princeton). And, equally obviously, the average Hispanic busboy is unlikely to discover a Unified Field theory.
In the latest issue of The Public Interest, demographer Michael S. Teitelbaum asks if the US is in need of the scientists who are being allowed to immigrate now. [Do we need more scientists? By Michael S. Teitelbaum, Fall 2003] Under the subhead, The politics of shortages he has this to say, with VDARE.COM emphasis added:
"Whether or not such motivations underlay that episode, we can certainly appreciate the various incentives that may currently spur some to endorse such claims [of shortage]. Universities want to fill their classrooms with undergraduates who pay their fees and finance their research with external funding, and to do so recruit graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to teach undergraduates and to staff their research laboratories. Government science-funding agencies may find rising wages problematic insofar as they result in increased costs for research. Meanwhile, companies want to hire employees with appropriate skills and backgrounds at remuneration rates that allow them to compete with other firms that recruit lower-wage employees from less affluent countries. If company recruiters find large numbers of foreign students in U.S. graduate science and engineering programs, they feel they should be able to hire such noncitizens without large costs or lengthy delays. Finally, immigration lawyers want to increase demand for their billable services, and especially demand from the more lucrative clients such as would-be employers of skilled foreign workers.
"None of these groups is seeking to do harm to anyone. Each finds itself operating in response to incentives that are not entirely of its own making. But a broad commonality of interests exists among these disparate groups in propagating the idea of a 'shortage' of native-born scientists and engineers. Moreover, claims of shortages in these fields are attractive because they have proven to be effective tools to gain support from American politicians and corporate leaders, few of whom would claim to be experts on labor markets. As noted earlier, the dubious reports from the ITAA were used successfully to convince the Congress to triple the size of the H-1B visa program in 2000. In late 2002, a leading lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, responding to criticism that shortage claims cannot be supported by credible evidence, put the matter succinctly: 'We can't drop our best selling point to corporations,' he explained.
You don't need to be Einstein to see that there is something wrong with today's immigration laws.
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Herbert London of the Hudson Institute has a must-read piece about trying to ask for directions to Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois. [Looking for America in Chicago, Townhall.com October 14, 2003] It wasn't easy.
You see, Mr. London doesn't really speak Spanish, and there was no one for miles and miles of Illinois highway who could communicate with him in English.
"After traveling in the wrong direction for about five miles I decided to ask for help at a gas station. As soon as I started to speak, I realized the attendant did not speak English. I went on to another gas station where I encountered the same problem, then another and another. After seven stops, I finally relented. In pidgin Spanish, I pleaded for assistance…. All through this experience I kept asking myself in what nation was I traveling. I am persuaded I was actually in Little Mexico, a colony of Big Mexico."
This is an experience many people have had, (Janice Barton of Michigan was sent to jail for complaining about it) but Herbert London, because he's a professional social critic, can back it up with figures.
"Although proponents of immigration contend diversity is a healthy consequence of the new immigration, it really doesn't exist. Diversity has dramatically declined among new immigrants. During the last decade – as my experience indicates – immigrants from Mexico account for more than 30 percent of the foreign born in the United States. Moreover, Mexicans accounted for about 43 percent of the growth in the nation's foreign born population.
"In Illinois, for example, the Mexican population increased from roughly 275,000 in 1990 to 680,000 in 2003, almost all of these Mexicans are in the Chicago area."
Read the whole thing, as they say.
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