The big question in my mind, do we really need one more foreign laborer right now in the U.S. as long as we have? We have 9.1% unemployment which is actually 18.2% when you add in under employed and people who have given up. Black Americans have 15.8% which if the "double it to get the real figure" formula applies means blacks actually have 31.6% unemployment. I know there is thought to be danger in putting up financial walls and immigrations walls like president Hoover but then again we had to learn to sink or swim on our own in the post-mass-immigration era of 1927-1967 and we emerged from that era as an economic, cultural, and military hegemony. I'd like to try a long term moratorium on immigration which would give the melting pot a chance to do its thing. Right now it seems overloaded and abused. Everyone that's here in the U.S. should be allowed to stay but no more new immigration for a few decades.
Most labor that comes in (legally) is skilled labor, jobs we need to have filled. If you kill that its actually a double blow, not only are you hampering US companies by not allowing in foreigners, but you are also assisting our competitors who would gladly issue visa's to skilled workers to work for their companies. Just an opinion, I'm open to anything right now. We need to jumpstart this economy.
Shelts, Thanks. Well what if there was an incentive to companies based in the U.S. to hire Americans even if it means conducting a little more training for American workers than they otherwise would have. I hear you and those are valid points but we need to think about the future. We have way to many born and bred American citizens who don't contribute squat to America and the companies just keep hiring foriegn workers, many of whom drive down wages, tolerate lower working conditions and in the end build a home back in India or Latin America and move back to their third world country to retire comfortably. No loyalty. The telecom companies here have figured out that if they hire people from India and promote them to management then they in turn will hire their friends who don't speak English in the work-place and discriminate against Americans and they are OK with it. I tell you I have seen some mistreatment of Americans at the hands of foriegners from the Indian Sub-continent and Latin America, in allegedly conservative places like Dallas, Texas that make my blood boil. To paraphrase Julia Roberts' character from "Charlie Willson's War" - Why is Governor Rick Perry saying one thing and doing nothing? Texas has more Sanctuary Cities than any other state. But that's just one example. Really it's a national problem. Our competitors in Europe can go ahead and keep hiring foreign workers. That's their own grave they're digging. As for Asian competitors like Japan and China I don't see them ever taking in the Indians, Pakistanis and Latinos in large numbers as China and Japan are very "my country first " societies. Sort of how I wish we would be...for a while at least.