{"id":6729,"date":"2015-01-19T19:02:44","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T00:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=6729"},"modified":"2015-01-19T19:02:44","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T00:02:44","slug":"blinded-in-the-beltway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/?p=6729","title":{"rendered":"Blinded in the Beltway"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like Richard Blumenthal, but like all politicians (like all people for that matter he's not perfect. Minor mistakes can be forgiven. It is nonetheless distressing to see him buy into an argument that only denizens of the Beltway could swallow. He is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow yet more H1-B workers into the country.<\/p>\n

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In what detractors are calling a “wrong turn” in U.S. policy that could lead to outsourcing more American technology jobs, Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has signed on as co-sponsor of a bipartisan immigration bill that eventually could more than double the number of guestworkers currently allowed into the country on controversial H-1B visas.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal, in a phone interview, defended his co-sponsorship of the bill, saying it gives him a better vantage point from which to negotiate comprehensive immigration reform – including stronger safeguards to ensure that enforcement of guestworker laws are beefed up so companies that engage in H-1B visa abuses are punished. He also said the bill includes a provision to improve science, technology, math and engineering education in the United States to ensure that more American workers with technology skills are available to hire in the future.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

via The New London Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Blumenthal goes on to defend his position on other grounds:<\/p>\n

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Blumenthal said he is concerned about past abuses of the visa program. But his approach is to try to expand the visa numbers – because so many companies in Connecticut, large and small, have approached him complaining they cannot find skilled workers – while at the same time improving and reforming the program.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Isn't it amazing that some of the poorest countries in the world, such as India, are able to supply high skilled workers that just can't be found in the U.S.A. Here's what's really happening. It's not that these companies can't find highly skilled people; they just don't want to pay them. As Dean Baker has pointed out endlessly in his blog, when there is a shortage of something, the price of that something should go up. It's called supply and demand. If the supply of skilled workers were down, their price should go up. It hasn't. Also, in the olden days, if an employer needed people to perform a specific function, the employer would train willing workers to perform that function. Nowadays they prefer to import tractable peons from overseas. <\/p>\n

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine. Years ago I wrote about the fact that The Hartford decided that my sister and her co-workers were no longer skilled enough and\/or were unwilling to perform their jobs. It therefore hired H1-B workers from India to replace them, which they did, once the unskilled Americans whose jobs they were taking trained them. Similarly, the quoted article notes a more recent event here in my backyard:<\/p>\n

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But opponents of H1-B visa increases, citing alleged abuses in the past including the systematic outsourcing of much of Pfizer Inc.'s information technology workforce in Groton starting seven years ago, said the current bill does little to protect U.S. workers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Also, there's this, which is basically what I said above:<\/p>\n

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“The primary, practical function of the H-1B program is to outsource American high-tech jobs,” Harrison said in a statement. “Do the bill's supporters really think that's the direction American immigration policy should go?”<\/p>\n

H-1B critic Hira, in testimony to Congress two years ago, covered the litany of complaints about the program, including a charge that the majority of foreign workers using the visa were being hired as “cheap indentured workers”; that American workers were not being given the first shot at employment before H-1Bs were hired; that American workers with similar or superior skills were being replaced by H1-Bs to save money, and that oversight of the program “is nearly nonexistent.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It seems to me that before passing any bill, a legislator ought to consider how he or she would game it, if it were in his or her interest to do so. In the case of H-1B, we don't need to do that, as it is being gamed before our very eyes. You can talk all you want about rooting out abuses. That's not going to happen. The net effect of this bill would just double the number of abuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like Richard Blumenthal, but like all politicians (like all people for that matter he's not perfect. Minor mistakes can be forgiven. It is nonetheless distressing to see him buy into an argument that only denizens of the Beltway could swallow. He is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow yet more H1-B workers into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-economics","category-inequality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6730,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions\/6730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}