Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!panix!.POSTED.panix2.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Whoops! The Atlantic Makes Trump Look EPIC In Cover Intended as a Smear
Date: 29 Oct 2024 20:53:10 -0000
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <vfrhvm$prn$1@panix2.panix.com>
References: <8ehfhj9jphf08ssafje6l45ugf8dd4gjub@4ax.com> <vfo8s8$11las$1@dont-email.me> <vfp652$16va4$5@dont-email.me> <tV6UO.740250$_o_3.85292@fx17.iad>
Injection-Info: reader1.panix.com; posting-host="panix2.panix.com:166.84.1.2";
	logging-data="19236"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com"
Bytes: 3947

Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>>On 10/28/2024 9:59 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>>
>>> Anyone who has done a honest study on illegal immigration in the US has 
>>> concluded that the American economy is DEPENDENT on the labor of 
>>> illegals.  Our economy would crash without them.

This is likely true.  The food service and agricultural industries depend on
low-wage labour and much of that has been provided by immigrants willing to
take low-wage low-skill jobs.  When immigration started to go wrong in the
eighties and it became impossible for people to legally immigrate to do this
work, it began to be done by illegal immigrants.

Traditionally there were a lot of people from Mexico who came to the US to
work the fields during harvest time, and who moved back to Mexico after
the season was over.  That was disrupted long ago.

People on the right hand side of the aisle will claim that citizens would be
taking these jobs if there were not illegal immigrants to fill them.  But the
fact that in spite of all attempts to restrict immigration, citizens still
refuse to take these jobs, indicate that this is not the case.

>>Nice try, nope.  Illegal immigrants allow employers to cut the salaries 
>>of legal USA citizens.  I have seen it done many times in the 
>>engineering industry, especially software engineering.
>
>There are very few, if any, illegal immigrants in the software engineering
>field.  There are a lot of legal immigrants in the software
>engineering field, and federal law requires they be paid
>the same as domestic engineers.

This is referring to a different and just as severe immigration problem.  The
US has a system called the H1-B visa which exists in order to allow experts
in their field to come to America for work.  This is for people who really
are experts, people who can't be replaced by American citizens because there
are so few people in the world able to do their job.  When it was set up it
was a good system.

However, this system has been hijacked by a number of large companies which
have figured out how to game the system and which are using H1-Bs to bring
in moderately-skilled technical people and hold them hostage with the threat
of removing their visa.  This has caused a total disaster in the software
engineering field.  These people ARE legal immigrants, but if the system was
not broken, they would not be.  What is worse, because large companies with
huge legal departments are stuffing the box as soon as slots open up, people 
who really are experts, the people for whom the system was intended, are 
unable to get the visas that Congress intended for them.

The immigration system is broken, and it needs people on both the left and
the right to be able to sit down and fix it.  Unfortunately there is a small
minority on the right which has found it is to their political advantage for
the system to remain broken and which is doing as much as possible to keep
it broken.  A solution is possible and it does not involve building a wall.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."