Dunno if anyone’s said this already, but here it is:
Category: Bad News
Horrible, unpleasant stuff
Americans Second
Looks like the fix is in again:
U.S. employers keep roughly 600,000 foreign H-1B visa workers in jobs throughout the United States, according to an unprecedented report released by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.
The total number of resident H-1B workers has successfully been kept secret for decades, mainly because Fortune 500 companies do not want voters to recognize the massive outsourcing of jobs for themselves and their college graduate children.
Based on personal observation, I think that about a quarter of the above number live within a square mile of my apartment, but that’s a topic for another time.
Whenever people show faith in the powers of “the market”, I want to kick them in the balls. Here’s why.
In the normal course of events, “the market” can and should address the problem of shortages by creating a price increase — in this case, if there are apparently not enough Americans to fill the skilled positions needed in Corporate America, the pressure is put on salaries so that existing skilled workers can change industries to take advantage of the higher wages, or (in the longer term) prospective employees can adjust their training from, say, a university-centric Women’s Studies major into an IT profession.
But that would Cost The Companies Money; and gawd forbid that costs rise, affect the balance sheet and, most importantly of all, jeopardize executive management bonuses. So said companies lobby the government saying, “Oh we need skilled workers, and these lazy idle Murkins don’t wanna do the jobs so please pretty please O Benificent Government, can we import furriners to save us from going out of business?”
Whereupon Congress, whose members are all either stupid, unpatriotic or else beholden to Corporate America for campaign contributions (I know: massive overlap) will turn around and say, “Sure thing. Get these H-1Bs from anywhere you like — say, India or China — and just add a zero to your next contribution, will you?”
The fact that these foreign workers stay a while then go back to their home countries taking their expertise with them, is, of course, irrelevant. (I should point out that I myself was one of the above H-1B workers back in the 1980s, except that I had skills which my sponsoring company did not possess at all, AND I was coming over as a senior executive to implement a brand new business model which I had created back in the Old Country and made successful. Also, I stayed and became a U.S. citizen, and the rest you know.)
So “the market” works fine, mostly — except where the sticky and incompetent fingers of Gummint get placed firmly on the scale of surplus : scarcity, and the results are what we see now.
There’s another part of the article which engendered a scowl from me:
The USCIS report admits that “no unique identifier exists for all H-1B petitions in the USCIS electronic [system of record, so] we use a methodology of statistical inference.”
For those not familiar with bureaucrat-speak, “statistical inference” means “we took a wild-ass guess”. Or, to be more polite:
For years, [DHS] has deliberately not stored [visa worker] information into their databases. They only enter selected information into the computers. That was deliberate so that no one could know what is going on. We have sent in all kinds of [Freedom of Information Act] requests, and often the response is “we don’t keep track of that.”
And to make matters still worse:
“Close to a quarter of the records — dealing with workers who often make $100,000 a year or more — there is no Social Security number.”
In other words, we let them in, and allow a situation where people don’t necessarily have to pay taxes. How charming. But it gets worse (and I’ve added emphasis):
The failure to track legitimate H-1B documents and workers — or to punish groups for using fake H-1B documents — is routine. For many years, business advocates have kept legislators in the dark by splitting and subdividing oversight of the visa-worker economy between the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Labor, he said.
This fragmentation has helped to minimize awareness of the scale among journalists and the public. For example, very few reporters describe the scale of the H-1B population to their readers, and most rely on talking points from business advocates who say the program brings in 65,000 or 85,000 “high skilled” workers each year when companies cannot find U.S. workers.
In reality, up to 85,000 H-1B visas are given out to companies each year, while roughly 15,000 are provided to non-profit groups, including hospitals, research centers, government agencies, and hospitals.
Now let’s add a little “China is asshole” to the mix:
The new USCIS report does not estimate the number of fake H-1B documents in circulation despite myriad cases of fraudulent work permits and made-in-China green cards.
And in India, procurement of green cards is an entire industry, catering to U.S. corporations — I’ve seen it in action at first hand.
Several years back, I posited the situation where if one won a large foreign lottery (e.g. Euromillions), whether it would be better to bring the earnings back to the U.S. and pay the 40% tax, or just to vanish into a European tax haven like Monaco with the (untaxed) millions. My conclusion was that I wouldn’t do that, because I am of course a loyal American citizen. As I read stuff like the above, however, I’m starting to think that “loyal American citizen” is rapidly approaching the status of “sucker”.
Change my mind.
News Roundup
Powered by Short&Pithy Commentary Engines.
…leading to the question: why the fuck did they get stimulus checks to start off with? (This is the same government that the Left wants to run healthcare and pretty much everything else.)
…to which my response is: fuck off, Dumbledore.
…which is what happens when you give low-level flunkies power over other people by over-broad restrictions.
…and whoever is making these claims should be flogged in the public square. Especially if they’re non-Europeans wearing jeans and using cell phones.
…which is okay. We Murkins have other places we can visit, until the Euros come to their senses and decide they can’t do without out Yankee tourist dollars. And we may or may not come back, because if we want to see anarchist punks rioting in cities, we can do that right here by visiting Seattle, Austin or New York.
And now three related headlines:
…and to paraphrase some other smart guy: Don’t trust Pakistan. Pakistan is asshole.
…yeah, I know it’s satire. Fake, but accurate.
…somebody needs to remind me why we don’t impose mandatory execution of people convicted of this. Maybe that would shut these fucking perverts up.
…to the surprise of precisely… nobody.
And now, one example of how to do things properly:
…and another way which will lead to failure:
…which would be like going to a restaurant, but not being allowed to eat or drink anything. Morons.
News Review
Good grief but the news is getting boring these days. No wonder the New York Times is creating fake news left, right and center (mostly about the Right, but that’s a story for another time).
We persevere nevertheless, just like Olympic athletes (two links):
…just as absolutely nobody expected they would. [/maxi-sarc]
…oh great; your mediocre products don’t suck enough already, but now you’re going to bugger them up even more by inviting under-qualified tokens to work on them.
…right, Noam. And your old asshole buddy Josef Stalin was just a peach of a human being. You Commie fuck.
…wait: weren’t lack of pollution and fewer vapor trails supposed to be a good thing? So the “good” things are now going to cause a “bad” thing. Unless, of course, the “experts” who came up with this warning are as full of shit as all the other “experts” we hear from nowadays. Ummmmm I’ll take that option for $400, Alex.
…funny, I thought that the Brits were kinda the masters at this game. And speaking of mastery:
…and Augusta National is doubtless going to fold like a damp shirt in the face of this bullshit, just like they did when they allowed women to join the club.
One of Monty Python’s old sketches involved a group of contestants trying to answer questions about the writings of Marcel Proust. As none of them could satisfactorily explain the rococo intricacies of Proust’s prose [sic], the judges instead gave the prize to the lady in the front row with the big tits. That’s what I’m going to do now, by ending with some news that’s so irrelevant, so pointless and so silly, it is a perfect summation of how bored I am with the whole business.
…it’s not my fault; society’s to blame. [/Monty Python]
News Roundup
Commentary that’s a lot shorter and even less sweet.
…I dunno; maybe it’s because we don’t like being lied to by a bunch of incompetent, power-hungry assholes? And speaking of which:
…I’d like to believe you, Dottore, but I have a policy of not believing anything Italian unless it contains “Ferrari” or “Maserati” in the sentence, and sometimes not even then.
…I’m generally not a fan of unions and strikes; but I can’t help thinking they have a legit grievance, here.
…Chinkvirus hates Jews AND Arabs? But wait:
…what: it’s raaayyyycisss too? No cure or vaccine needed: just cancel it! (No links because bullshit)
…and the rest think he’s in the LATE stages of dementia.
…just shows how out of touch he is. Nikes don’t need no shining, fool; they gets dirty, we jus’ take a brick an’ go get some more.
…well, that’s Minnesota fucked, then. And this just in:
…and next, all books will be banned from Minnesota schools because printing is White supremacist — who decided that all paper should be white, anyway? #GutenbergWasANazi
…but who was this thug who got all stabby?
…no doubt he was feeling left out because BLM and Pantifa were getting all the headlines.
…so what you’re saying, Fuckface, is that you and yours will launch a revolution against a legally-elected president? Challenge accepted.
…he’s dead, so he can’t defend himself, so nobody cares about some has-been tart’s ramblings. And for those Readers who don’t know who this washed-up whiner is, here’s what Cassidy saw, back in the day.
Now I’m not saying she asked for it, but I can understand a young man’s hormones going into lift-off.
News Roundup
With commentary short and sweet, like Ariel Winter.
…actually, NOT buying a gun in the face of Wokist riots and BLM looting is madness, but it’s the LA Times.
…and the Boy Scouts finally become the Pussyboys.
…not that I was ever planning to go there, mind you, because Third World Shithole. Also, three grand will buy you an awful lot of teenage hookers in next-door Thailand, Cambodia’s main competitor for tourism dollars.
…coming from a nation founded on convict settlements. Irony so thick it’s bullet-proof. And speaking of Aussies:
…I don’t even want to start working out the math in this one.
…ah, just add it to the trillions of acre-feet of dust we already have; we won’t even notice it.
…I look forward to the the mega-ironic defacement of the statue of Nelson Mandela, just a few yards away. Oh wait; he was a terrorist? Ain’t gonna happen then, unless someone discovers that he once raped his secretary #MeToo.
…until the Wokist pussies in the new Fox News management team cancel his show because virtue-signaling is more important than ratings.
…okay, quit that giggling , you lot. The only way this could be funnier is if all the ones throwing Mazel Tov cocktails [sic] somehow set themselves on fire too.