Dear Senator Lott:
I have been a registered Republican for 25 years. . . . I write now to oppose the pending H-1B legislation. Admitting large numbers of additional foreign workers without first curtailing illegal immigration and reforming legal immigration is bad policy and bad politics.
Yes, we have a very tight labor market. My own company has a tough time filling positions. But hasn't anyone noticed that this tight labor market has been accompanied by falling crime and welfare dependency rates? Tight labor markets, which have mostly occurred during wartime, result in higher wages and more employer-provided training for otherwise hard-to-employ Americans, which in turn relieves the pressure for expensive government programs of the kind that keep Democrats in office.
When our armed forces can't recruit enough men and women with needed specialties from the civilian labor force, they recruit from the general workforce and provide the training. If our schools and colleges aren't graduating enough technically trained workers, then the new-economy billionaires of Silicon Valley should downsize their palaces and pay for the training. I think they owe it to the country that made their immense wealth possible.
If there really is a shortage of technical workers, doesn't this prove that our legal immigration policies need to be directed towards more qualified applicants? The Democrats have no qualms about using the H-1B legislation as a platform to debate more amnesties for illegal aliens. Why is the GOP afraid to use the alleged shortage of technical workers as evidence against the immigration laws enacted by Democrat-dominated Congresses, which annually admit hundreds of thousands of immigrants without regard to their education and training?
The GOP's recent habit of surrendering to virtually every demand of the immigration lobby has been tremendously demoralizing to me and to many other rank-and-file Republicans. Keep it up, and the collapse of the GOP in California will be recapitulated in state after state during the next 20 years.
Respectfully yours,
A DEMORALIZED REPUBLICAN
September 27, 2000
