Dumping the Third World on the West

Part One

by Diane Alden
www.aldenchronicles.com

This article is the first in a five-part series on immigration in America.
The movie "Gangs of New York" paints a bleak picture of 19th-century America. "Gangs" takes place immediately before and during the American Civil War.

In the recent Martin Scorcese film, a tidal wave of poor immigrants overwhelms society and the infrastructure of New York City. They also convulse the tenuous economic and social position of poor native-born Americans.

In fact, as depicted in the movie, pitched battles occurred between "nativists" who had been in America for some time and new immigrants. Both groups were poor and the political and economic elite was using both groups for their own purposes: cheap labor on one hand and votes on the other. In the end, the federal government opens fire on both gangs during the Draft Riots of the 1860s.

Immigrants were often used to fill the ranks of the Union Army during the Civil War and later in the western Indian wars. It is not a secret that the son of an elite Northeast family could buy his way out of the army for $600 if they chose. That money was used to draft recent immigrants. The newly arrived Irish, especially, were called into service in this manner.

In addition, as the cemeteries near the Civil War battle fields of Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain and Gettysburg will attest, the ranks of the Union forces were filled with many thousands of poor farm boys from Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Only occasionally did the sons of well-to-do New Yorkers or Bostonians volunteer for service. When they were drafted there was a way out.

In the 1800s, the battle lines in the immigration wars were drawn between ethnic and religious groups of white Europeans pitted against the needs of the establishment elite.

Yet taking all this into account, it would be stupid not to recognize that the problems of rich and poor, native and immigrant in 19th century America, is also a history of continuing progress and upward mobility. The citizens of the nation found the freedom and opportunity to move from class to class and place to place. In addition, the big country that was America offered nearly limitless horizons for expansion, progress, and growth to take place free of regulation and high taxation.

No one was forced to remain in New York in order to succeed. In the rush of history even the Northeast elite lost some of its clout, but not all of it. It is so until this day.

Since Ted Kennedy’s Immigration Reform Act of 1965, however, and most particularly since the mid-1980s, the immigration problems facing America have to do with the influx of immigrants from the Third World. The issue is so involved the complexity suits the agenda of the political and economic establishment to a T.

The Ties That Bind

Most immigrants of the 1800s and early 1900s had a common background in Western tradition. Whether they came from Ireland, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Russia, Czechoslovakia or England, immigrants shared certain basic principles and attitudes. America’s "e pluribus unum" (one from many) developed because the majority of immigrants did have the same basic philosophical, moral and cultural common denominators.

They did not, however, share an economic safety net. There was no welfare system except what was offered by charitable institutions or churches.

Economic progress depended on how smart, how flexible and how quickly the immigrant could adapt to "American ways."

Most of all it depended on how willing they were to work and how best they might make use of their opportunities. The best of them also had to be willing to take big risks.

From the numbers of immigrants involved in westward expansion, to those who saw the value in black gold, or the benefits of farming and ranching their own land, they seemed to recognize all these activities were just as important as accumulating the hard yellow stuff.

Immigrants also understood the necessity for a common language, learning a common history, and building communities of like-minded citizens. They may not have all been on the same page politically; however, they were secure in the knowledge that what they shared was more important than what divided them.

Until recently, there were tests given to new immigrants who wanted to become citizens, which included studying the language and learning American history and the U.S. Constitution. These have been dumbed down.

Nonetheless, the most important factor in the fragile nature of American unity was the common belief pattern inherent in the shared traditions of Christianity and Judaism. That is not the case with many of those immigrating to America today. That reality is impacting our national identity, sovereignty, as well as social and economic cohesion.

Unless these things are recognized and debated we will suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire: an empire that seemingly collapsed over night in one final onslaught of tribes from the hinterlands. In the blink of an eye, mighty Rome was brought to its knees.

In our era, as in the 1800s, America is experiencing the collision of needs of self-absorbed elites and the masses of the world trying to claim a piece of America’s promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Non-elite natives, poor and middle class alike, as always, are caught in between.

Crunching the Numbers and the Culture

The 33.1 million immigrants residing in the United States in 2002 are by far the most ever recorded. Even during the great wave of immigration at the turn of the century, the immigrant population was less than half what it is today. The foreign-born population’s growth rate in every decade since 1970 has been higher than at any other time in history, far surpassing the 31 percent increase between 1900 and 1910.

In Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Virginia, and Oregon, immigration accounts for half or more of population growth. Immigrants and their minor children now account for almost one in four persons living in poverty. The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 24.5 percent, compared to 16.3 percent for native households.

The low educational attainment and resulting low wages of many immigrants are the primary reasons so many live in poverty, use welfare and lack health insurance, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.

In 2002, there were 9.7 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States. (Facts from U.S. Census and Center for Immigration Studies.)

Furthermore, as Joel Mowbray reported in the National Review recently, the federal oligarchy was caught red-handed trying to combine the social security system of Mexico with that of the U.S. The deal would have cost the U.S. billions of dollars. These dollars would come from the taxpayer in an economy that is in the throes of a post-bubble free fall, a crash forged by the excesses and blindness of our financial and federal elite in the first place.

To make matters worse, laws in the various states are being changed to accommodate the cultures of the Third World. In Minnesota, for instance, the legislature passed a law that allows first cousins to marry. The reason for that particular change is to adapt to the customs of the Laotian Hmongs. Marrying first cousins is common practice among the Hmong peoples who began migrating from Laos to the Minneapolis area 15 years ago. Their population has grown to about 70,000. Minneapolis/St. Paul is now home to the largest population of urban Hmongs in the world.

Just recently, Hmongs received their own school in the St. Paul area. The new elementary school is totally geared toward Hmong culture, taught in Hmong language, with Hmong history. Out the window is a primary emphasis on American history and culture taught in English.

On the basis of anonymity one Minnesota teacher related her experience with Hmong children, parents and the goofy system that encourages "diversity" at the expense of unity and integration. She states that from her experience there is no desire among the majority to assimilate. Rather they move heaven and earth to continue in "their" ways while benefiting from the American system.

The establishment does not want to be hit with the immigration lobby's lawsuits, so it complies. Minnesota health care was sued not long ago, and that lobby won major concessions for new immigrants, which will cost Minnesota millions.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported recently that Minnesota now offers special programs and grants so that Hmong children can return to Laos to study their "roots."

The federal government also relocated thousands of Somalians to the region, as civil war drove them from Africa. In Minneapolis, and other cities in the heartland, Somalian youths are being recruited into gangs of disaffected urban youth bent on self-destruction and drug abuse. Many of the others are finding themselves the targets of bigotry by inner-city blacks. (See Part II: Meltdown in the Heartland.)

Another culture cruncher: Because a majority of Somalians are Muslims, their ability to create new business is limited. A recent article in a Minneapolis magazine tells us that as Somalians practice Islam they may not pay interest on loans. Thus, they will either have to obtain business loans through grants or fees from some government entity, or borrow it from other Somalians.

In God’s name, how can any of this be helpful in creating social or economic cohesion in Minnesota or in America? Has America merely become a giant suck hole for the needs of government to acquire taxes or establishing new voting blocs to promote the projects of the elite?

If that is the case, as a sovereign nation-state guided by the rule of law - we are over with.

Ya Gotta Have a Gimmick

The modern uninterrupted flood of humanity to our shores began back in the 1980s and '90s, New waves of humanity, legal and illegal, began to overwhelm the infrastructure and cohesion of the U.S. However, unlike the earlier era of massive immigration, new immigrants used tactics, which had been approved by shortsighted legislatures, as well as national and international courts.

As always, follow the money and the lawyers. The immigration lobby has been a major culprit creating momentous problems for the societies in which immigrants sought entrance. Abuse of the visa system ended with many people staying forever. Abuse of student visas allowed some of the murderers of Sept. 11, 2001 to gain entrance as they studied subjects or learned skills related to killing Americans.

Blaming the federal immigration services for all this is blind and dumb. The blame should really be set at the feet of the immigration lobby, the refusal of Congress to reform immigration laws, the trial lawyers who are always in search of a cash cow.

Most of all blame the social, political and economic elite who don’t give a damn about how all this impacts the country. They only care about how it impacts them.

Add to this to one of the biggest immigration headaches of all times. That is the continuing invasion of illegals from Mexico. This invasion has not slowed since the terrorist attack of 2001. Ballpark figures put together by the Border Patrol indicate about 10,000 a day are still crossing over. Out of that number only 1 in 5 are caught and sent back.

You just can’t help asking, wasn’t the adoption of the economic "fair trade" treaty called NAFTA supposed to remedy this flood of people looking for economic opportunity? Wasn’t the economic lot of Mexicans supposed to improve?

Since imposition of NAFTA under Bill Clinton and sought after by Republicans, the problem of massive illegal immigration has become much worse. The strange economic and political blindness of the elite dare call it the "free market" in action. Meanwhile, America’s manufacturing base is in the toilet. Joining it are skilled white-collar jobs in the computer industry as they go to H1-B immigrants in Silicon Valley or are exported overseas.

It is irrational not to recognize that the biggest beneficiaries of NAFTA were the economic and governmental elite. Most of the jobs generated after NAFTA do not reach the salary or benefit level of what has been lost. Meanwhile, Joe Six-Pack, who once worked for decent wages in the meat-packing industry in Georgia, finds his old job pays half of what it once did, but illegal aliens will take it anyway.

Sarah Six-Pack the Computer Programmer now trains her replacement at Siemens who will work at two-thirds to a half of her salary. (University of California, Norman Matloff study on immigration impact on computer industry.)

Then there is the quandary of secondary immigration. That involves familial chains of relatives who come to the U.S. because a relative is here. There is no apparent end to this practice. In some cases this chain reaction is bringing entire villages to the U.S., as has happened in Minnesota and Georgia and Maine. (More on that in Part II.)

Last but not least are asylum seekers. These are not the Cuban refugees running from Castro’s jails. It is not about Christians caught by the satanic communist regimes of Red China who are flooding the U.S. No, this is about people escaping poverty rather than political oppression.

In fact it is MORE difficult for a white farmer trying to get out of the murderous regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to receive asylum in the U.S. or Canada than it is for a poor Haitian or Somalian seeking economic or political refuge in the U.S. Preferred minority status elevates Third World asylum seekers or immigrants to positions of privilege for which immigration laws were never intended.

Colonizing Britain

America is not alone in this phenomenon of economic immigration from the Third World. Britain in many ways is worse off than we are. In Britain almost anyone who claims asylum for political reasons is allowed to stay. Immigration services meant to keep the system on an even keel are being submerged by the influx of humanity. Their ineptness is legendary in the U.K., Canada and the U.S.

As it is, countries such as Britain may have freed the colonies. However, its former colonies are now colonizing Britain. Sadly, even in some countries where Britain left an infrastructure in tact, including the basic forms needed to put together representative democracies, the native population failed in to apply those basics.

Marxism, tribal and religious warfare, strongman dictatorships, warlords as in Somalia, as well as bands of marauders roam the countryside. Tribal warfare and religious warfare now replace politics as the main element in the horror. Swept away was any positive legacy left by the West.

In Africa, in particular, the evil of white apartheid was replaced by the evil of a Marxists and racists such as Robert Mugabe. There is not one African country that can be pointed out as a model of stability and progress, not one.

The international leftist elite blames colonialism for this. They overlook India and Israel, which used the basics of what the British left behind to build democratic societies. Selective blindness covers a multitude of sins.

Meanwhile, the United Nations should be in the forefront helping the Third World to progress. It has received trillions to accomplish this end. Where it once had some good effect on world health issues, these days it simply offers an expensive, neverending conference and useless meetings so that the world’s butchers and elite can compare notes and live high. This is expensive and destructive foolishness that plays unconscionable games with the world’s poor and middle class.

In any event, the failures of civilization to take root in the Third World have produced the waves of immigration to the West in what amounts to reverse colonialism.

The Empire Strikes Back

Anthony Browne belongs to the British Labor Party and writes for the London Times. Browne attests: "About a quarter of a million people are coming to Britain from the Third World each year: a city the size of Cambridge every six months, an unprecedented and sustained wave of immigration to one of the world’s most densely crowded islands, utterly transforming the society in which we live against the wishes of the majority of the population, damaging quality of life and social cohesion, exacerbating the housing crisis and congestion, and with questionable economic benefits…I know knee-jerk accusations of racism and xenophobia will be fired at me by those who make careers out of suppressing legitimate debate, but I am hardly anti-immigrant or anti-immigration. I am the son of an immigrant, living with an immigrant, from such a family of émigrés that I have virtually no relatives in this country."

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has had to take in a million Indians, almost 700,000 Pakistanis, 260,000 Bangladeshis, up to a million Nigerians, over 100,000 Iraqis. In the past five years the white population grew by 1 percent, the Bangladeshi community grew by 30 percent, the black African population by 37 percent and the Pakistani community by 13 percent.

As Browne points out in a personal aside, one of his neighbors emigrated from Bangladesh 30 years ago. He brought over his non-English-speaking wife while his older son recently brought over his second non-English-speaking wife after divorcing the first. Six months of the year he spends on the family farm in Bangladesh, where they have servants and laborers to help them.

As happens thousands of times to thousands of immigrants, it isn’t just the "one" special case in which secondary immigrants come over to be with families, and it has created a deluge. As his friend relates they will bring over husbands for his two teen-age sisters, and then they will have rights to bring over the spouse’s parents and grandparents.

Brown maintains, "These are all individual private acts that in themselves are perfectly reasonable, but taken by so many individuals they have huge public consequences."

This chain migration will make sure that entire communities will come from the Third World to the U.K., thus, "they have been transplanted whole streets in some northern English towns: little Third World colonies in Britain." (Browne’s complete articles may be found at www.vdare.com)

Immigrants from the Third World are responsible for the entire net immigration of a quarter of a million a year. They have higher unemployment and lower earnings than average and do not pay their way.

Additionally, African immigration has overtaken gay sex as the biggest cause of HIV in Britain. If the 28 million HIV-positive Africans can get into Britain they can obtain "free" treatment for the rest of their lives by appealing under the Human Rights Act.

British officials have concluded that Third World immigration is bringing in such high levels of the lethal liver disease hepatitis B that it was considering vaccinating every child in the country to protect them. As Browne wrote, "Third World immigration is doubling the rates of HIV, tripling the rates of tuberculosis and increasing twentyfold the rates of hepatitis."

Housing illegal asylum seekers costs the British taxpayer $14,000 a person a year. There are upwards of 90,000 illegal refugees in Britain seeking public assistance, besides those already receiving handouts.

A report in the London Telegraph states, "Fake asylum seekers carrying AIDS and TB are draining the British free health service of resources the British taxpayer paid for in the expectation of health care being available for themselves on demand."

Furthermore, "Those who get asylum in Britain, which is the most used method, get a pile of benefits which include housing, full health care (including free plastic surgery) as well as free immigration lawyers who will string your claim out for years. Even when such cases are rejected out of hand as happens 90 percent of the time, asylum seekers are allowed to stay any way."

Gangs Bang

"Gangs of New York" have nothing over the gangs of Britain. For mostly second- and third-generation Third World kids with nothing better to do, dealing drugs is one of the best ways to make a quick buck.

Recently, the Brits conducted raids to crack down on the organized criminal gangs of Third World immigrants who have taken over the drug industry in many British cities. Oftentimes, it erupts into open gang warfare. Americans had better not be too complacent because the same thing is happening in the U.S. (Part II has the hard data.)

Wisely, Brown understands that "mass immigration without integration leads to social fragmentation."

Furthermore, he says, "But we are too polite to say anything about it, too worried about being called racist, just too embarrassed about being British or English or whatever it is, just wallowing too much in post-colonial white guilt."

The same arguments used in the U.S. about the benefits of limitless immigration are used in the U.K. Browne recounts in his article some things that the immigration lawyers and the political and economic elites won’t tell Britain: "… from the Immigration Advisory Service to the United Nations and the European Commission, immigration is no 'fix' for an aging society … immigrants grow old too. There are no generalized labor shortages, rather unemployment of 1.5 million; importing communities who are far more likely to claim all forms of benefit apart from pensions and disability allowances, and who can have startlingly high unemployment rates, does not make Britain a richer country. It is, in fact, importing poverty."

Regarding the high cost of cheap labor, in a comprehensive, documented article appearing in Front Page Magazine, Jan. 24, 2003, writer Ellen Almer concludes, "America was founded on the concept – well understood by Alexander Hamilton and the other economic sophisticates among the founders – of a middle-class society, i.e. a society organized to minimize the number of people who constitute cheap labor. Cheap labor was the proletariat which drove Europe’s class-ridden and undemocratic politics, the nightmare of revolution and reaction America was founded to escape."

Amen!

H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class

Part Two

This article is the second in a five-part series on immigration in America.
Part I: Dumping the Third World on the West

H-1B and L-1 Visas: A Bipartisan Approach for Killing Off the Middle Class Who is the cheap labor lobby? That lobby includes limousine liberals like Bill Gates and nominal conservatives such as Michael Barone. In addition, the lobby involves nice upper middle class people who need inexpensive childcare workers, domestics and gardeners.

In the scheme of things, they are small potatoes. The big fish are the restaurant and hotel industry, unions, the technical industry, especially information technology, insurance companies, corporate agriculture, universities hungry for new money and new blood, the meat-packing industry and sweat shop clothing manufacturers helped along by the abstract and mechanical charitable policies of some American churches.

Then of course the 15,000 immigration lawyers, and public interest law firms for which they toil, do indeed work overtime trying to convince politicians and America that the influx of immigrants has absolutely no negative effects on America or American workers.

The lawyers tell the world that immigrants pay more in taxes than they collect in welfare benefits or social services. After perusing the numbers, I can understand why Shakespeare admonished, "Kill the lawyers."

Immigration lawyers will crunch numbers but they don’t want to discuss the impact of unrestricted immigration on the body politic or the cohesion and future progress of America and those born here.

They also won’t tell you that the rule of law is being twisted and contorted in order to satisfy special interests, the cheap-labor lobby, and the economic and political establishment. As the state of Minnesota discovered in 2000, large public interest law firms will sue state social services for failing to tell people in eight different languages what their benefits and services might be.

The Old H-1B Gimmick

Among the most dishonest techniques the cheap-labor lobby uses to further its agenda is the visa system. Open the big carpetbag containing visas and you will find the H-1B and L-1.

Corporate America seems to chew up and spit out technical people like a reformed smoker chomps gum. Evidence mounts that corporations ask and receive, from Congress and the system, the expansion of these particular visa practices.

The result is a flood of cheap labor into the U.S., with ensuing depressed wages not just for American workers but for immigrants as well. It amounts to indentured servitude for the visa holder and the practice of training their replacements for native-born workers. All this is done at the expense of the American middle class. (More on this later.)

The misuse of the visa system is devastating the computer job market and keeping wages artificially low and the visa holders themselves as indentured servants to the economic oligarchy.

Not a few economic analysts believe that part of our present economic problems is a result of distorting the market by using cheap labor practices to keep wages down. While that may also keep down costs for corporate America, it has absolutely nothing to do with the free market and the economic progress of native-born Americans.

It has everything to do with corporatism, as opposed to free-market capitalism, and the convenient collusion between government and business. While that is nothing new, it is now the middle and upper middle class feeling the pain generated by that collusion.

Technical immigrants on H-1B visas may not receive food stamps or free medical benefits; however, they are replacing American-born programmers and technicians because they will work for a third to half less. When they lose a job, H-1Bs are out of luck because of the way the system is set up. Those who have the money to return to their country of origin are lucky, but most stay on in the U.S. illegally.

Keeping the above in mind, I like to refer to the economic ruling class and political oligarchy as the "let’s kill the middle class" lunch bunch. It is alive and well and some of the names in this bunch would surprise you. It isn’t just Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephardt, Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle who apparently harbor a desire to strangle the middle class.

Among those who think importing cheap labor is peachy-keen is President Bush, at least before Sept. 11, 2001. According to the Washington Times shortly before that fateful day, Bush said, "We ought not to penalize an employer who is trying to get a job done, who hires somebody who is willing to do ‘that’ kind of work."

"That" kind of work is what native-born Americans supposedly don’t want to do. President Bush is misinformed if he thinks immigrant labor simply does what native-born Americans don’t want to do.

There is no shortage of American-born labor, there are just far too many employers willing to support and demand the admission of wave after wave of illegal, legal, asylum seekers and refugees in order to suppress wages to keep down costs and enhance their bottom line.

What that does, however, is to further the meltdown of the middle class. It also disallows the "poor," even the immigrant poor, from a chance to earn wages that keep up with costs and allows them to get ahead.

Well-known conservatives like tax-reform expert Grover Norquist have petitioned the U.S. Congress to expand the appalling H-1B or L-1 visa system. They employ the myth that there are not enough highly skilled technical workers with new skills coming along in the U.S. to accommodate the needs of industry. It is a convenient myth for the Republican establishment to cling to.

Even in the current DIFFICULT economic times the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, under Norquist, is demanding visas to import 115,000 techies per year.

In fact, some of our conservative "saviors" are "meatpacking" American white-collar middle class jobs into oblivion in the same fashion that jobs in meatpacking went the way of the buffalo in the 1980s.

Thus, once relatively high-paying blue collar jobs became benefit-free, low-paying, dangerous jobs that have a turnover rate of 50 percent to 100 percent in 2003. Meatpacking is also the most dangerous occupation outside police and fire service.

According to an AP report, Tyson Foods is facing cheap labor meltdown as the Department of Justice discovered that Tyson actively recruits illegal cheap labor through an employment service. It would seem that the days of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” are returning to the U.S. thanks to the corporate mercenary class and feckless politicians.

What is really scary, however, is that "conservative" leaders who should know better are begging for more H-1B visas. They include Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Frist is guiding an increase in H-1B visas through the Senate.

The immigration apologists and the cheap labor club are either largely ignorant of the facts OR, knowing the facts, they believe that whatever corporate America wants, corporate America should get and by gosh the federal government is there to please.

But to call this the "free market"? I don’t think so.

Evidently, the pack of them have not read the testimony of Dr. Norman Matloff before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration.

Dr. Matloff is a professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of California at Davis. His documented and massive study titled "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage" reveals that the U.S. does not have a "critical labor shortage" in technical areas and that there are enough native-born TRAINED Americans to fill jobs that may be available.

Furthermore, it is the economic immigrant from places like India and Pakistan who suffers the most. Everyone with a computer should read the study, which may be found online. It is devastating.

According to Matloff:

There is a broad consensus that the H-1Bs are indeed exploited in terms of wages and working conditions. This was found in

the study at UCLA, which found that the immigrant engineers were paid 33% less than comparable Americans

the study at Cornell University, which found underpayment of H-1B programmers and engineers by 20-30%

my study at UC Davis, finding that immigrant programmers and electrical engineers were paid 15-20% less than comparable Americans

the report by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which found that the computer-related H-1Bs were paid a median of $53,000 per year, far below the national median of $66,000 for this field

the audit done by the Department of Labor, finding that 19% of the H-1Bs were not even paid the salaries promised by the employers on the visa application forms

the report by the National Research Council, which found that ''H-1B workers requiring lower levels of IT skill received lower wages, less senior job titles, smaller signing bonuses, and smaller pay and compensation increases than would be typical for the work they did''

articles in respected, pro-business publications such as Forbes Magazine (''Indian programmers working in the U.S. on temporary H-1B visas typically earn 25% to 30% less than their naturalized colleagues'') and the Wall Street Journal (''Recruiting foreign talent is cheaper than hiring Americans'')

statements by the H-1Bs themselves, who have formed the national organization ISN (www.isn.org) with a goal of persuading Congress to reform the program
One need not even use data sets to see the problem. Most H-1Bs are de facto indentured servants, unable to switch jobs. Thus they cannot leave for a higher-paying job elsewhere, nor can they negotiate higher wages with their present employers by threatening to leave. So, they have lesser opportunities than do normal workers who are free to move about in the market. Thus it is indisputable, from basic economic principles, that on average they are making less money than they would if they had their freedom.

So it is that in the last 20 years the fiction was created that there is a shortage of American workers to do certain jobs. That fiction benefited the economic and political elite as the importation of cheap labor helped the bottom line, voting blocs were created and, for the most part, states bore the social costs for the federal government’s "big heart."

In fact, we have witnessed the dumping of large numbers of humanity from Third World cultures for social, economic and political reasons.

This is not class warfare; this is about pointing out how the system has been warped by the continued misuse of influence and the law in order to give special privilege to one group of Americans over another. Let’s not mention turning simple justice and the rule of law on its head.

Why does corporate America import cheap labor using the visa system while it creates a class of indentured servants imported from other countries at the expense of the American middle and lower classes? Why does government approve? The corporate bottom line and the benefits and contributions accrued to the political oligarchy is why.

Inside the High-Tech Jungle

The case of Siemens, Inc. is revealing. It exposes the big lie projected by the cheap-labor lobby. It is not merely anecdotal information, as Matloff and Harvard’s George Borjas have shown in their studies on the H-1B visa and various immigration issues that impact the working class and the taxpayer.

Organizations which have a quantity of documented data include FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies. But for those who consider the latter two biased, they cannot quibble with Matloff and Borjas.

Pick a company, Siemens, Aetna or GE Capital, the royal screwing continues apace.

Mike Emmons, formerly with Siemens, Inc., told his story on national TV and on the Barry Farber Show. According to Emmons, his former employer, Siemens ICN and Tata Consulting, an Indian consulting firm, used the congressional L-1 visa to replace 20 American computer techies with Indians.

Specifically, L-1 Intra-company transfer visas were used by Tata Consulting to bring foreigners from Tata Consulting India to Tata Consulting U.S.A. These so-called consultants are then sold off to American businesses, Siemens ICN in Lake Mary, Fla., and San Jose, Calif.

Emmons states: "Management mandated we train our foreign replacements, then Americans were shown the door. It was the most demoralizing thing I have ever experienced." Similar cases at Aetna have recently come to light as well.

Under the L-1 intra-company transfer visa, consulting companies (mainly from India) can import as many "American replacement workers" as they need. There are absolutely NO constraints on the quantities they can import into our country.

There are no salary constraints, as the H-1b is supposed to have.

The INS provides easy mechanisms to bulk import replacement workers using the INS blanket petition. "[U]nder the L-1 ‘intra-company transfer’ visa foreigners can come into the country and then demand that current employees train them."
Mr. Emmons is understandably upset. What one does when one is upset, of course, is to contact one’s political representatives to get some kind of simple justice. This is what happened to Mr. Emmons and others like him when they petitioned for a redress of grievances.

"For five months, every week, I contacted the offices of U.S. Representative John L. Mica (Florida District 7) and Senator Bob Graham. We begged and pleaded with them to help American citizens but they just turned a deaf ear. They don't care about us, they care about one thing and one thing only and that is corporate campaign funds and the possible votes."

Furthermore, "Mica called me in September when my flyer reached a man whose son had been displaced after he trained his Indian replacement (at GE Capital). That man wrote Mica with displeasure in his immigration voting record. Why did Mr. Mica contact me? It's clear now, to shut us up so he could get reelected and continue to get those campaign dollars. Representative Mica and Senator Graham know what they are doing, they have known for quite some time, but helping American citizens is not their business. Their business is the collection of campaign funds."

In the economic and political quest for "globalization" or cheap labor or "diversity" or campaign funds, as the case may be, our elite have exhibited thoughtless disregard for our national well-being and the individuals who make up the body politic once known as the American citizenry.

But what the heck! Mr. Emmons and his 20 co-workers at Siemens are merely collateral damage in the junk bond world of globalization and social diversity.

Meanwhile, a computer engineer who wishes to remain anonymous used to work for the insurance giant Aetna. He wrote: "I'm in the computer programming field. I'd been with Aetna for 4 years, at about the midpoint (nowhere near the maximum) of my salary range. In December, Aetna cut several hundred Information Technical people. We'd been told that "these positions were being eliminated." Of my group of nine, three (including myself) were among those let go in December. As of today, I've yet to land an interview."

Finally he states, "This morning I responded to a blind ad (placed by an agency) for a programmer with medical claim experience. I received a reply this afternoon from the recruiter. Take a guess as to the hiring company. You guessed it, Aetna!"

All this is happening at the expense of American integration, cohesion and prosperity for the vast majority of Americans who are trying to hang on to their niche in the middle class. However, there are class action lawsuits being considered under the RICO statutes.

This is what meatpacking giant Tyson Foods is facing. If the lawsuit is decided in favor of the former employees of Tyson under RICO, they will collect TREBLE damages. Perhaps the American programmers and engineers need to consider something similar against the collusion between the feds and some of the buccaneers of corporate America.

Behind the Corporate and Federal Blarney

According to Dr. Matloff, behind "The hidden agenda … which began in 1997 turned out to be to leverage Congress to increase the yearly quota of H-1B work visas, under which employers were importing tens of thousands of programmers to the U.S. each year. The campaign succeeded, with President Clinton signing the increase into law in October 1998. Yet in 1999 the industry started calling for even further increases in the visa quota, which it attained in October 2000."

Matloff adds: "The fact that the industry cries of ‘shortage’ were nothing more than a political ploy was illustrated by the fact that heavy layoffs in the industry began around January 2001 … two months after the industry lobbyists were insisting to Congress that there was a ‘desperate’ shortage (and nearly a year after the NASDAQ stock index started falling). In the economic slowdown of 2001, employers became even pickier than before."

Notwithstanding, the cheap-labor lobby is still demanding that we import more H-1B techies.

The H-1B visa holders continue to arrive, but don’t blame the immigrant engineers and programmers. Blame corporate America and the federal government as they conspire to take advantage of all of us for their own base reasons.

States of Disunion

Part Three

This article is the third in a five-part series on immigration in America.
Part I: Dumping the Third World on the West
Part II: H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class

Before the Immigration Act of 1965, approximately 250,000 immigrants a year came to the US. Since that time, however, we have added nearly 35 million immigrants, mostly from the Third World and Mexico, very few from Europe. That amounts to an addition of the entire population of Canada or Central America to the United States.

Most of them have arrived within the last 10 to 20 years. To add to a growing imbalance, we have turned well-intentioned efforts like affirmative action, set-asides and social welfare policies into a feeding frenzy for any Third World resident who can get here.

Additionally, if you are wise, don’t fall for the propaganda generated by the open borders crowd that asserts that immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in services.

In his essay “The High Cost of Immigration,” Jon Dougherty reports that “immigrants pay around $95 billion in taxes, they consume about $145 billion in public services. That's a net cost about $50 billion, or one-sixth of the Bush administration's projected budget deficit for fiscal year 2004. Economically speaking, therefore, America derives no benefit by continuing its ‘open borders’ policy.” (Stats from Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform)

The attorney general recently estimated the number of illegal aliens within the United States at between 3 million and 6 million. Other estimates are between 9 million and 13 million. Among those are 300,000 immigrants who have overstayed their visas and whose whereabouts are unknown.

The law is clear: According to the U.S. Code, Title 8, illegal aliens may be “physically expelled” at any time. To use the code’s actual wording, such persons are subject to immediate “removal.” The federal government does next to nothing, however, to implement that law to any lasting effect. There are a few raids here and there, but they do not count as POLICY. The feds are too scared to be effective or they are complicit in setting us up for decline and disintegration.

Meanwhile, the individual states are literally forced to pay the social costs of federal failure to halt immigration, reform immigration or remove those who come here illegally.

The High Cost of Cheap Labor

Much of the national distress over immigration comes from the way in which immigration is impacting the lower and middle classes. Wages are depressed and benefits for everyone, including recent immigrants, are being set back.

In addition, the terrible corruption of the visa system makes the rule of law a joke. The attitude prevails that the same status should be given to legal and illegal “residents” as is due to citizens. The FBI refers to them as “preferred minorities.” This point of view is one of the major factors leading to Sept. 11, 2001. It should be a national scandal.

Meanwhile, we are no longer able to defend our borders or maintain them against the invasion of hundreds of thousands, millions actually, who arrive each and every year. Only last week a Border Patrol agent was found unconscious, beaten senseless by illegals attempting to cross the border. Ranchers and locals in border states have taken up patrolling themselves, since the federal government offers no effective means to do the job.

The rationale for all this is partially based on the fact that our economic and political elite determined long ago that the independent unique nation-state is a thing of the past. In addition, they promote the theme that life is nothing but a series of economic decisions and realities and all decisions hinge on that.

Open borders and markets, which they control, are the mantra. Meanwhile, they feel no compunction about manipulating the law, as they demand repeated waves of immigrants to keep costs down at the expense of wages. What they want includes the expansion of government as well as the creation of voting blocs.

That makes the left, the immigration lobby and Democrats happy, while establishment Republicans receive support and contributions from the cheap labor lobby, therefore giving in to their demands.

In 1999, for instance, corporate America asked for and received the expansion of the H-1B visa. That will bring up to 200,000 unnecessary and CHEAP programmers and engineers into the U.S. per year. They fill the places of fired and out-of-work American programmers and engineers.

There is a surplus of technical graduates in the U.S. However, corporate America claims there is a shortage and continues to ask for more from India and Pakistan, in effect creating a class of imported indentured servants, in the process shrinking the native-born middle class.

The cheap-labor lobby’s next requirement is to bring in low-cost medical personnel, in the form of nurses, to fill one more phony shortage. They say it is to keep costs down, but they simply pass the costs to the taxpayer and the individual states, and forget the high cost as they hurry along the disintegration of the social fabric. (See "H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class.")

Sadly, very few in the economic or political elite are discussing the impact of unrestricted immigration on the middle class or the impact it has on American blacks.

The late Vanderbilt professor, historian and expert on civil rights Professor Hugh Davis Graham wrote a seminal work dealing with the head-on collision between civil rights and immigration.

In “Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America,” Graham maintains that the surge of 35 million new immigrants to America, 26 million of them Asian or Latin American, found themselves beneficiaries of special treatment as “official minorities.” Over a short time in the ’70s, they became preferred minorities who were allowed affirmative action preferences across the board.

Affirmative action was primarily intended for African-Americans. Instead much of the benefit meant for them was transferred to recent immigrants.

Meantime, employers acting under affirmative action and fearing public interest lawsuits hired millions of immigrants while they failed to address high unemployment among inner-city blacks. As Graham reveals in his book, blacks are no longer the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action. In 1995, for instance, they owned only three of the top 25 firms receiving federal set-aside contracts.

Immigration effectively turned affirmative action into a policy that places the status of recent immigrants above that of native-born Americans.

Peter Brimelow, author of “Alien Nation,” writes for Forbes magazine and Vdare.com. In effect, his research supports part of Graham’s contention regarding immigration and affirmative action. Brimelow relates, “Nobel Laureate economist Gary S. Becker's acknowledgement that the welfare state, which did not exist during the last Great Wave of immigration (1890-1920), has fatally altered immigrant incentives, making open borders impractical.”

Nonetheless, President Bush remains a huge supporter of the concept of open borders; never mind that 77 percent of the American people do not accept this as an American priority.

Furthermore, James Fulford reports in his essay, “Why Not Just Give Them a Roomful of Gold? Or: Immigration – Just Another Government Program,” states:

“I found an email in my inbox saying that the reason so many small motels are owned by Indian immigrants named Patel was because the US government was financing them. I didn't believe it. I cynically assumed it was some kind of legend, made up by people who don't like immigrants. … I should have been more careful where I pointed my cynicism. I should have kept it aimed at the US Government, where it belongs.”

Immigrants are using the system, often promoted by federal policy and driven by the immigration lobby, including activist groups like La Raza. A big-ticket item for tax dollars for recent immigrants is the federal home mortgage system.

As Fulford discovered in his research: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been lending to resident aliens too, although allegedly insisting that they be legally resident. And Fannie Mae now has a home mortgage program designed to provide mortgage loans to illegal aliens. Cheap!”

Even affirmative action for immigrant “residents” of the U.S. has a weird imbalance.

In “Collision Course,” Professor Graham writes about what he calls the “Khyber Pass” syndrome. While hundreds and thousands of Indians, Pakistanis and Indonesians will get SBA loans and set-asides, Iranians and Turks may not. It all depends on earlier lawsuits. Immigrant groups winning most affirmative action SBA lawsuits in the past were from the Far East.

Land of 10,000 Confusions

The state of Minnesota is required to take in 16 percent of all federal asylum seekers and refugees. In addition, it has a huge and growing population of uninsured legal and illegal Hispanic agricultural workers who toil for corporate agribusiness for low wages and no benefits. Estimates are that there are 70,000 green card holders and 60,000 illegals without legal documentation working in Minnesota agribusiness. Corporations insist that cheap labor brings down costs for the consumer.

What they don’t say is that the state taxpayer picks up the tab for medical benefit costs and education. Our national Tower of Babel now requires hiring squads of language experts for education and social services in order to accommodate approximately eight to 26 languages and dialects spoken in Minnesota.

In Minnesota, agribusiness Green Giant’s bottom line may be enhanced by the state picking up the cost. However, it doesn’t do much for Tim Olsen and his 3 kids in Anoka. In other words, agribusiness and much of the rest of the cheap labor lobby robs Peter to pay Jose.

Minnesota has approximately 4.9 million people. In the last 12 to 15 years, a state with a relatively small homogenous population has had to absorb over a quarter million immigrants and refugees. Among them are 60,000 Hmong political refugees. The Hmong are one of the most primitive groups of people on the planet.

More recently, Minnesota has had to embrace 15,000 Muslim Somalis who left Africa in order to escape death by crazy warlord. Even more recently, Minnesota finds itself home to Somalis fed up with the lifestyle and gang infighting they endured while they were residents of California.

Just last year, the state of Maine also discovered itself being inundated by Somalis who couldn’t take the way of life as lived in “multicultural” Atlanta. Lewistown, Maine, for instance, found its budget busted by an influx of a thousand Somalis, mostly women and children, in a small town with a small budget. The social welfare and educational infrastructure was swamped.

Thanks to the immigration lobby, new asylum seekers and immigrants quickly discover where the gravy train is still running. Maine and Minnesota, as well as California and Texas, are among the states where this is so.

Additionally, Minnesota has also taken in 6,000 Russians and 125,000 Hispanics, plus numerous legal immigrants who made the Land of Lakes their destination. (Numbers from the Minneapolis Foundation and U.S. Census, and Numbers USA)

Minnesota offers generous benefits and a politically correct climate, chiefly in the Twin Cities. All this attracts what amounts to groups of politicized economic immigrants. Most of them quickly learn how to use Minnesota Care (health care) as well as a vast number of transfer payments available, affirmative action and set-asides, and the education system. There are hundreds of activists and immigration lawyers willing to show them how.

Nevertheless, Minnesota likewise has a really BIG problem. It is a $4.5 billion budget deficit, which extends into the foreseeable future. It doesn’t help that costs for uninsured asylum seekers and refugees along with the costs of educating immigrant children are growing. As it is, Minnesota went from having to address the needs of around 11,000 non-English-speaking immigrant children in 1990 to over 45,600 today.

Moreover, The Uninsured Study Advisory Committee of Minnesota reported last year that African American and Hispanic women in Minnesota under the age of 20 have the highest illegitimate birth rate in the U.S. Hispanics have death rates higher than whites. Their rates of AIDS and HIV are 7 times those of whites, cirrhosis rates are twice as high as whites, their rates of diabetes are 2.5 times those of whites, and Latinos are 3.5 times as likely as whites to be the victims of homicide.

These stats were obtained from an organization trying to help immigrants get access to health care. Groups like this exist to make it easier to find and receive benefits of one sort or another. All these factors do not create conditions for social cohesion, progress, or community OR individual health. Social “justice” and “progress” are seldom obtained by throwing money at people. Only a change in the cultural mindset of a group can do that.

This entire debate is not about race or xenophobia. It is not about whether a particular group of individuals is worthy or unworthy, good or evil, hard-working or lazy. In fact, many “residents” of the U.S. work very hard indeed. This debate also shouldn’t be about merely economics, work or numbers.

In last fall’s issue of Minnesota's Rake magazine, Macalester College history professor Mahmoud El-Kati discussed the problems between new immigrants and those who already live here. According to El-Kati, the larger difficulty is not between Minnesota's white community and Somalis, for instance, but between native blacks and recently arrived black Somalis.

He states, "Conflicts are too often dismissed with comments such as "Why can't black people get along?" Because they can't, says El-Kati. "[They can't get along because most don't know the first thing about each other. How could they? They're from two different worlds."

What's more, race is a myth, El-Kati says. "It's a false consciousness that we've been living under for years. The arrival of so many more black people in this country may finally make it obvious that race is not an indication of who people really are. What unites people is culture. But that's much more complicated to learn about and understand. ... The trouble starts as these new groups assimilate, often finding themselves pitted against this country's poorest citizens in a struggle for leftovers."

"What unites people is culture." Wish our leaders could figure that out.

Gangs of Minnesota

As Minnesotans and communities around the country are realizing, Somalis and Hmong, or any recent immigrant group, for that matter, are not immune to criminal activity. Just as they were in the 1800s and early 1900s, young immigrants are particularly susceptible to gang activity.

Immigrant gang warfare has erupted in Atlanta and Minneapolis, Memphis and Tacoma, as well as Los Angeles and Seattle. Sundry task forces, like the Minnesota Drug Task Force, find that as young people from new immigrant groups become "Americanized" they form gangs of their own. As Minneapolis Police Chief Olson said, “Then the problem becomes more complicated.”

In addition to more traditional black, Latino and white gangs, Minneapolis is also now facing gangs of American Indian, Somali and Hmong youth. The problems are compounded by the addition of new drugs like Khat. That is the drug of choice in the Somali community.

In just the last few years, the U.S. Customs Service has made several large busts at local airports confiscating immense quantities of several prohibited drugs geared toward the tastes of immigrants, drugs originating mostly in Belgium and The Netherlands and imported by the Russian Mafia living as "residents," or legals, in America.

Minneapolis and Minnesota were once relatively crime-free, and murder was rare. Sad to say, however, in the last 25 years that has changed drastically. Thanks to an increase in gang warfare between immigrant gangs and the homegrown variety, Minneapolis became know as “Murderapolis.”

Funny thing – before Minnesota became one of the dumping grounds for Third World’s refugees and before surrounding states sent their criminal and welfare problems, Minnesota was about as peaceful, unified and prosperous as life on this planet gets.

Although the record shows extensive efforts by diverse groups of police and social action agencies, Minneapolis’ murder rate has come down only a little the past two years. However, drug running and drug usage are increasing, and immigrants supply one more market.

And the Beat Goes On

While illegals are not allowed to accept welfare, they do receive medical care at emergency rooms. In addition, Supreme Court decisions like Plyler v. Doe require states to provide illegal and well as legal immigrants with public schooling.

Meanwhile, green card holders, legal residents, make use of affirmative action set-asides that were not intended for them under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming the “long-term discrimination” clause should apply to them.

Far too many are receiving the benefits of citizenship without many of the responsibilities. Others consider milking the system as their birthright or as a game played with the system. The attitude prevails that America is a rich country and can afford it.

According to John Wang, a criminal justice professor at California State University in Long Beach who studied Medi-Cal fraud in Asian communities, "To an immigrant, if there is no official reaction or sanction or punishment, then they consider it legal or implied legal because there is nobody stopping them." (San Diego Union Tribune, Dec. 2, 1999)

Individual states are being hammered, because illegal immigrants do not usually have health insurance. Seldom does the cheap-labor lobby provide it. Therefore, illegals flood emergency rooms in California and border states. Even states like Minnesota and Maine are faced with deficits made worse by hundreds of millions paid out in fees for services for illegal and legal residents, asylum seekers and refugees. This creates a crisis to which the federal government turns a blind eye and which the federal courts make worse.

In California alone, emergency departments operate at a loss. A study by the California Medical Association found that 82 percent of the state's 347 emergency rooms lost money in 2000. Altogether, ERs lost $325 million, while emergency physicians lost another $110 million providing uncompensated care. Farm workers and people working in the tourism, service and retail industries – which often don't provide benefits – make up the bulk of the county's uninsured. (Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel, March 17, 2002)

The National Research Council reports that most government expenditures on immigrants come from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury. The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.

How can this happen, you ask? The fact is legal and illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees may receive some form of social benefit because they are “persons.” Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and through the Supreme Court rulings of extremely leftist judges like William Brenann, they get a free pass.

In fact, the Brennan court created a new weird entitlement in the case of the 5-4 majority in Plyler v. Doe. Even weirder is that fact that a significant factor in Brennan’s decision was based on the fact that the federal government does not have control of the borders, especially the border with Mexico.

In his excellent series of articles at www.vdare.com , Howard Sutherland chronicled the impact of federal courts on individual states, particularly under the reign of leftists like William Brennan.

Sutherland discusses the case of Plyler v. Doe, which was a class action suit brought on behalf of Mexican illegal aliens against the state of Texas, the Texas Education Agency and various Texas school districts. In its finding, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute withholding from local school districts any state funds for the education of children who were not legally admitted into the United States.

The final reason Brennan offers for forcing a new entitlement responsibility on the state of Texas is truly a perversion inflicted on the states courtesy of the federal bench.

Brennan concluded: “Sheer incapacity or lax enforcement of the laws barring entry into this country, coupled with the failure to establish an effective bar to the employment of undocumented [sic] aliens, has resulted in the creation of a substantial “shadow population” of illegal migrants – numbering in the millions – within our borders. … It would of course be most difficult for the State to justify a denial of education to a child enjoying an inchoate federal permission to remain. "

In other words, since the federal government doesn’t do anything about preventing illegals from entering the U.S., nor does it make a viable attempt to remove them, therefore that population of illegals has a fundamental right to an education courtesy of the taxpayers of Texas. We can extrapolate that decision to other areas of social costs.

Because of such decisions, states go on the defensive to prevent lawsuits on other issues. California and Minnesota have already been sued several times by “public interest” lawyers in their quest to accommodate the growing needs of legal and illegal immigrants. (There are nearly 20,000 immigration lawyers and they all have an ax to grind.)

Absurd decisions made by inconsistent federal courts, and public interest lawsuits that benefit recent immigrants, no end to the numbers accepted, mean the states are forced to pick up the costs of unfunded federal mandates.

Keep in mind that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) calculates that there are more than 8 million illegal aliens living within our borders, with more than a million more expected to be here by the end of 2003.

As a consequence, the body politic has to make some serious decisions, one of which may be to pull the teeth of federal courts, as Congress could do if it desired. Federal courts are NOT necessarily the last word. They have the last word because Congress is content to allow them to legislate from the bench. This makes immigration reform, or any reform of regulations and laws, nearly impossible. In light of all that, the major burden of costs for immigration must be picked up by the states.

If you are going to blame someone for the mess, go after YOUR congressman and senators. Continue to pressure the Bush White House to do some serious investigation using outside investigators to study the impact of immigration on the working poor, the states and the middle class.

Forget the federally associated National Science Administration. Government-associated “scientists” crunch numbers in favor of policies that the federal leviathan favors at the moment.

Cracking Up

Wave after wave of immigration disallows sufficient time for assimilation to take place. In addition, the divisive anti-West, anti-white, anti-American attitudes prevalent in a majority of our schools and universities does not bode well for creating cohesion and a unified body politic.

All this comes about because of the widespread supposition that the nation-state is passe and that America and the West are responsible for all the evils in the world. We are also confronted by the shortsighted folks who believe America is nothing but a market for the buying and selling of goods and services.

It is maddening and self-destructive that the establishment of both left and right harbor the conviction that the world is nothing more than one large open economic market or playground of identity group politics. Both sides harbor the notion that human beings are commodities or pawns in group power politics.

At the moment, open-border lobbies from the left and the right and transnational corporations are going to set the agenda. Politicians will simply do their bidding. Going, going, gone is the understanding that America has a unique philosophical, moral, spiritual and social aspect.

Politicians must be convinced that “We are not JUST the economy, stupid!"

While a vast majority of Americans are begging for immigration reform, only a few leaders such as Tancredo, Gekas and Sensenbrenner are facing the issue head on. They are almost alone. Both political parties seem more interested in money or power obtained from special interests than they are in reforming immigration.

At the same time, as a people struggling to remain united, we continue to self-destruct, and THEY call it compassion and the free market.

Call it what you will – but call a halt to it before we are destroyed from within.

(For those who want more info on H-1B visas and potential lawsuits to end the practice, contact: usaworker@hannatroup.com
pete@petebennett.net
www.programmersguild.org
H1BNews@ZaZona.com .

Part Four

References and Sources
FAIR Federation for American Immigration Reform
CIS Center for Immigration Studies
Vdare.com
Dr. Norman Matloff, UC-Davis
Dr. Hugh Graham, Vanderbilt University
Mark Kirkorian, CIS
Stephen Camarotta, CIS
Roy Beck, NumbersUSA
Peter Brimelow, Forbes, Vdare, author of “Alien Nation”
Joe Guzzardi, teacher, columnist, Vdare
James Fulford
Howard Sutherland
Allan Wall
Jon Dougherty
US Census
Minneapolis Foundation
Minnesota Drug Task Force
Migration News

To comment,  visit my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com .
 

America for Sale: Visa Roulette

Part Four

This article is the fourth in a five-part series on immigration in America.
Part I: Dumping the Third World on the West
Part II: H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class
Part III: States of Disunion

V.I. Lenin said that for a profit, the capitalist would sell the rope used to hang him. Cross out capitalist and put in corporatist, federal power structure, immigration lobbyist or trial lawyer, and old Vladmir may have had a point.

You are asking, has Alden flipped and gone over to the dark side? Not on your life. Collectivism in its many forms, from Lenin to Hitler, is anti-human, anti-freedom, as well as soul-destroying, not to mention it doesn't work.

But statism is no better than collectivism, and corporatism is nearly as evil as communism or socialism. In the end, all these forms crush the individual and have the potential for destroying free societies along with it.

More and more often in these United States, justice, citizenship and even residency can be bought for a price. But the price is at a high cost to the best interests of the nation and its people. The anything-for-a-buck philosophy is winning out, corruption is rampant, and the system is busted. Nonetheless, failure by our leaders to reform it is also politically and economically expedient.

It forces us to ask: whatever happened to our ethics and virtue, not to mention our moral fiber? Whatever happened to Adam Smith's moral imperative required of capitalism and good government in order for it to thrive and survive? Has all that been shoved over the relativist cliff as we become globally disconnected whores who will do anything for a buck?

The immigration lobby in the U.S., including the cheap-labor lobby, along with the Pharisaic trial lawyers, politicians and others who benefit, are helping to deconstruct the nation under the guise of globalization, politics, diversity, compassion, or the free market. The taxpayer and the social, economic and political and philosophical cohesion of America are suffering because of it.

So what does all that have to do with visa roulette? Quite a bit, actually. Like Russian roulette, visa roulette is a dangerous gamble. Over the long haul, the odds are not in favor of any of the players.

Cost of Immigration

George J. Borjas is the Pforzheimer Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and author of “Heaven's Gate,” as well as “Wage Policy in the Federal Bureaucracy, Friends or Strangers,” “The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S. Economy, and Labor Economics,” and over 100 articles in books and scholarly journals.

In "Heaven's Gate," Borjas maintains, "Despite estimates that range into hundreds of billions of dollars, net annual gains from immigration are only about $8 billion.

Furthermore, "In dragging down wages, immigration currently shifts about $160 billion per year from workers to employers and users of immigrants' services. ... immigrants today are less skilled than their predecessors, more likely to require public assistance, and far more likely to have children who remain in poor, segregated communities."

Statistics from FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies show that average adult Mexican immigrants will consume throughout their lifetimes $55,200 more in services than they contribute in taxes. The studies show that immigrants without high school educations consume $89,000 more in benefits and services than they pay in taxes. Households in California, where most Mexican immigrants arrive, have to pay on average $1,178 more in taxes each year to subsidize these immigrants.

Remember that a recent, little-publicized study commissioned by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and reported by the Washington Times concluded that between 2.95 million and 5.45 million illegal aliens cross undetected every year into the United States through guarded ports of entry. Only 1 in every 9 of these illegals is detained. This total does not include an estimated 3 million to 5 million illegal aliens who annually cross into our country through unguarded areas along the border.

Numbers aren't the only problem. Supreme Court cases dealing with illegal immigration, such as Plyer vs. Doe, tell us that because the U.S. does nothing effective to keep millions of illegals out, therefore they constitute a shadow population with rights as "persons" under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the 14th Amendment.

Justice William Brennan interpreted the 14th Amendment to include illegal aliens as "persons" who are entitled to certain benefits in the U.S., benefits such as free public education, which is paid for by the states.

Meanwhile, in Texas, public health care expenses are approaching a third of the state budget. In the Harris County Hospital District, the cost of free medical care to illegal immigrants over a three-year period was $330 million.

In California, one year of emergency room care for illegals last year came to $325 million – that is after welfare reform. In 1993, it was estimated that the state paid $1 billion in emergency and pregnancy-related services for undocumented aliens. This figure was up almost 43 percent from the $700 million paid in 1992. (Source: State Department of Health Services)

All across the border states and America, the failure of Mexican culture and society to improve the lot of the Mexican people is being absorbed by the United States, often at the expense of our own poor and middle class. Some hospitals in Texas are turning down local citizens because they are overwhelmed with illegals. Many hospitals nationwide are on the verge of bankruptcy because of the impact so much humanity has on the system.

In addition, California and its regional governments spend more than $500 million a year to arrest and imprison illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes. Total legal costs of crimes committed in California by people who are not legal U.S. residents are estimated to be between $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year. (Source: "The Criminal Alien," a report by the California Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations)

An investigation of California's Medi-Cal program to provide medical services to 5 million poor and disabled Californians has found it rife with fraud. The extent of phony charges to the system may be higher than $1 billion annually.

In fact, most of the costs of immigration are dumped on the states, which must pick up the social costs in increased medical and educational costs, crime and destabilization, not to mention the impact on the wages of America's own lower and middle classes.

Lest we forget, the Center for Immigration Studies says that most taxes paid by legal and illegal immigrants, residents, asylum seekers, or refugees, go to federal coffers. Very little is sent back to the states, which must absorb the cost of yet another unfunded federal mandate.

For many reasons, it is obvious the system is broken and rife with corruption. Last year, a report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) revealed that immigration benefit fraud in the United States is a continuing problem. The report, “Immigration Benefit Fraud: Focused Approach Needed to Address Problems,” was conducted at the request of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. George W. Gekas, chairman of the committee's Immigration and Claims Subcommittee. (Gekas lost his bid for re-election in November.)

It concludes that immigration benefit fraud has resulted in allowing a large number of foreign nationals to reside in the U.S. without legal documentation. The report alleges that applicants who have been denied benefits at one office apply and receive those same benefits at another office. The report states that approximately 25 percent of applications filed at offices around the country are fraudulent.

Visa System Bingo

How many different kinds of visas are there?

Immigrant visas (permanent residence)
These are issued to those who qualify for residence in the United States.

There are various applications for permanent residence; some are listed below:

Family Relations Visa
Lottery Diversity Visa
Religious Worker Visa
Refugee/Asylum/Protected Status
Investors/ Entrepreneur Visa
Temporary Worker (H1B)
Visitor Visa (B1/B2)
Priority Worker
Student Visa (F)
Green Card (DV)
Marriage and Fiancée
Affidavit Support
Investor Visa
Exchange Student
NAFTA Professional
Religious Visa
Advance Parole
Int'l Adoption

The Big Carpet Bag of Visas

The grab bag includes:

A-1. Ambassadors, public ministers or career diplomats and their immediate family members.

A-2. Other accredited officials or employees of foreign governments and their immediate family members.

A-3. Personal attendants, servants or employees and their immediate family members of A-1 and A-2 visa holders.

B-1. Business visitors.

B-2. Tourist visitors. Tourists from certain countries are permitted to come to the U.S. without B-2 visas under what is known as the Visa Waiver Program.

C-1. Foreign travelers in immediate and continuous transit through the U.S.

B-1. Crewmen who need to land temporarily in the U.S. and who will depart aboard the same ship or plane on which they arrived.

E-1. Treaty traders.

E-2. Treaty investors.

F-1. Academic or language students.

F-2. Immediate family members of F-1 visa holders.

G-1. Designated principal resident representatives of foreign governments coming to the U.S. to work for an international organization, their staff members and immediate family members.

G-2. Other accredited representatives of foreign governments coming to the U.S. to work for an international organization and their immediate family members.

G-3. Representatives of foreign governments, and their immediate family members who would ordinarily qualify for G-1 or G-2 visas except that their governments are not members of an international organization.

G-4. Officers or employees of international organizations and their immediate family members.

G-5. Attendants, servants and personal employees of G-1 through G-4 visa holders and their immediate family members.

H-1B. Persons working in specialty occupations requiring at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent in on-the-job experience, and distinguished fashion models.

H-2A. Temporary agricultural workers coming to the U.S. to fill positions for which a temporary shortage of American workers has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

H-2B. Temporary workers of various kinds coming to the U.S. to perform temporary jobs for which there is a shortage of available qualified American workers.

H-3. Temporary trainees.

H-4. Immediate family members of H-1, H-2 or H-3 visa holders.

I. Bona fide representatives of the foreign press coming to the U.S. to work solely in that capacity and their immediate family members.

J-1. Exchange visitors coming to the U.S. to study, work or train as part of an exchange program officially recognized by the United States Information Agency.

J-2. Immediate family members of J-1 visa holders.

K-1. Fiance(e)s of U.S. citizens coming to the U.S. for the purpose of getting married.

K-2. Minor, unmarried children of K-1 visa holders.

L-1. Intracompany transferees who work in positions as managers, executives or persons with specialized knowledge.

L-2. Immediate family members of L-1 visa holders.

M-1. Vocational or other nonacademic students, other than language students.

M-2. Immediate families of M-1 visa holders.

N. Children of certain special immigrants.

NATO-1, NATO-2, NATO-3, NATO-4 and NATO-5. Associates coming to the U.S. under applicable provisions of the NATO Treaty and their immediate family members. NATO-6. Members of civilian components accompanying military forces on missions authorized under the NATO Treaty and their immediate family members.

NATO-7. Attendants, servants or personal employees of NATO-1 through NATO-6 visas holders and their immediate family members.

O-1. Persons of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics.

O-2. Essential support staff of O-1 visa holders.

O-3. Immediate family members of O-1 and O-2 visa holders.

P-1. Internationally recognized athletes and entertainers and their essential support staff.

P-2. Entertainers coming to perform in the U.S. through a government-recognized exchange program.

P-3. Artists and entertainers coming to the U.S. in a group for the purpose of presenting culturally unique performances.

P-4. Immediate family members of P-1, P-2 and P-3 visa holders.

Q-1. Exchange visitors coming to the U.S. to participate in international cultural-exchange programs.

Q-2. Immediate family members of Q-1 visa holders.

R-1. Ministers and other workers of recognized religions.

R-2. Immediate family members of R-1 visa holders.

S-1. People coming to the U.S. to supply critical information to federal or state authorities where it has been determined that their presence in the U.S. is essential to the success of a criminal investigation or prosecution.

S-2. People coming to the U.S. to provide critical information to federal authorities or a court, who will be in danger as a result of providing such information, and are eligible to receive a reward for the information.

S-3. Immediate family members of S-1 or S-2 visa holders.

Visa Roulette or Bombing the Middle Class

In Part II of this series on immigration, “H-1B: Bombing the Middle Class,” we learned that one of the biggest visa scams is the H-1B and L-1 visas. H-1B applies to "Persons working in specialty occupations requiring at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent in on-the-job experience, and distinguished fashion models."

H-1B is used by the cheap-labor lobby as a tool to manipulate the labor market in its favor. They call it reducing costs, but in fact it ends up costing more.

While they constantly moan and complain about a shortage of technical workers, companies like Siemens, Aetna, American Express, GE Capital and Microsoft, to name only a few, actually only hire 2 percent of the thousands of applicants who apply.

What the corporations really want are immigrants who are willing to work for a third to a half less than American counterparts. To add insulate to injury, most of the time they ask the American workers to train their replacements, threatening them with loss of their severance packages if they don’t.

Additionally, the visa holder has the status of an indentured servant, as his visa applies only to the hiring company. If he transfers or is fired, he is deported or must start the process all over again – that is, unless he slips through one of the loopholes.

L-1 visas allow companies from overseas to act as "consultants" who "rent" foreign programmers to American corporations, thus adding more numbers of programmers and analysts to the cheap-labor pool.

L-1 allows companies to outsource without pay restrictions. There are also no caps on the number of workers who can be indentured under L-1, as there are under H-1B. In effect, this practice has crowded out thousands of American-born workers.

When the immigration lobby or your friendly local politician who is in hock to the cheap-labor lobby tells you that H-1B or L-1 visa holders, for instance, take only jobs that Americans don't want, or that they are filling a labor shortage, they are lying through their teeth.

Dr. Norm Matloff, University of California-Davis, maintains that corporate interests and groups like ITAA are manufacturing a technical labor shortage. He says:

"Software employers, large or small, across the nation, concede that they receive huge numbers of résumés but reject most of them without even an interview. One does not have to be a 'techie' to see the contradiction here. A 2 percent hiring rate might be unremarkable in other fields, but not in one in which there is supposed to be a 'desperate' labor shortage."

Matloff says that "American programmers who work with H-1Bs indicate that rather than having work experience in the given skill, many H-1Bs either have only had a quick course or are learning the skill on the job. Ironically, the latter is what I recommend that the employers have older American programmers do, but the difference is that the H-1Bs are much cheaper than the older Americans, so the employers do this with the H-1Bs but not with the older Americans."

In fact, in his treatise, "Debunking the Technical Labor Shortage," Matloff concludes: "Employers are shooting themselves in the foot with their current hiring policies, actually increasing their labor costs rather than reducing them, and increasing time-to-market for their products, rather than reducing it."

Did Dr. Matloff just tell us that the practice of replacing American workers with foreign counterparts is a DUMB way to keep costs down? Go figure, 'cause the corporations can't.

The Price Tag for a Green Card

Jeff Elkins in his report "Greenbacks for a Green Card" notes that in some cases green cards are for sale.

"Congress, which in 1990 created the so-called investor or EB-5 visa program, unwittingly designed an open invitation to bribery and fraud that allows foreigners to purchase permanent green cards by "investing" as little as $500,000 in an American business. Elkins refers to the recent case of federal immigration judge D. Anthony Rogers.

The original story, by Walter F. Roche Jr., appeared in the Baltimore Sun on Jan. 10, 2003, under the headline "Immigration judge sought business with visa vendors. Tape recording seized in U.S. visa fraud probe shows apparent conflict."

Judge D. Anthony Rogers presides in Federal Immigration Court in Dallas. He is in charge of sensitive visa and deportation cases. A sting operation conducted by the feds in 1998 found Judge Rogers seeking a financial partnership with a Virginia firm whose green card seeking foreign clients could end up before him in court. The feds got it all on tape.

The Sun report continued:

In the taped conversation, the judge bragged that his business relationship with an Arab sheik would generate millions of dollars in business and said that a $20,000 fee for referring each potential client to the Interbank Group was not sufficient. The Herndon, Va., firm helped foreign residents gain permanent U.S. residency under a federal program that required them to invest at least $500,000 in an American business.
The tape recording caught Rogers saying to two officials of Interbank, who are now serving time for immigration fraud: "Let me go ahead and just be as abrupt as I can about it. If you think for some reason or other I am going to bring you $30 million worth of potential investors for a $20,000-a-head pop, I'm not interested in doing that. I'm not that dumb."

The Sun article related that "Interbank was one of a handful of companies set up to market a little-known investor visa program created by Congress in 1990. Under the program, foreigners were to invest $500,000 in American businesses in return for lifetime U.S. residency rights. But Interbank clients actually invested just $125,000, with the balance accounted for by what federal prosecutors charged was a phony loan."

Apparently, Judge Rogers was not acting in his capacity as an immigration judge in the federal courts, but rather as one of the approximately 15,000 to 20,000 immigration lawyers practicing in the U.S. Rogers’ complaint with Interbank was that he was not happy with the "usual sliding scale of referral fees that Interbank was offering to immigration lawyers – fees that ranged from $12,000 to $20,000 per referral, depending on volume."

In a taped conversation, Rogers stated, "I believe that we were talking about a more coordinated and partnership approach to a relationship with you all in which we were going to be able, theoretically, to provide you all with a significant amount of investor money."

Judge D. Anthony Rogers still collects his $132,000 salary and he still sits on the federal bench to which he was appointed in 1993. Investigators for the INS express concern and exasperation that he remains on the bench in Dallas.

One bad apple, you say? Or is Judge Rogers just one of many trying to make money off of the immigration and visa system? They include those who smuggle aliens into the U.S. as well as federal court judges, corporate America, trial lawyers, drug dealers – anywhere a buck is to be made.

The cost to Americans, taxpayers, citizens, and the social, moral, economic and political cohesion of the U.S. is immense. When we fail to reform the immigration and visa system, we invite corruption and disintegration.

The late African-American congresswoman Barbara Jordan, co-chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, may have said it best:

"We disagree with those who would label efforts to control immigration as being inherently anti-immigrant. Rather, it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest."


Next time, Part V – Immigration and the Poor: How the states, the poor, the middle class, African-Americans, earlier immigrants are paying for the failures of our immigration policy vis à vis the Third World. How affirmative action and SBA loans benefit immigrants more than blacks. Why is Congress so sluggish in addressing this most serious problem? Why do Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nebraska have to pay for failures of American foreign policy? How did the U.S. fall into a trap based on a distorted view of "compassion" for any person from the Third World who shows up on our doorstep?

To comment, visit my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com .

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