I didn't say H-1Bs were good for America or Americans, or that what is good for foreigners is good for America or Americans, or that what is good for foreigners should even be a concern for America or Americans.
I said that an American saying that H-1Bs are bad for foreigners is acting arrogantly in deciding what is good for someone else.
If you want to argue against H-1Bs on the grounds they are bad for Americans, that's fine. That's a different argument, however, than saying they're bad for forigners.
Actually, I was accusing the anti-H-1B poster of implicit racism, not expressing a racist opinion of my own. He's the one who thinks H-1Bs are bad for the people who voluntarily get them and stay under them. Such a position implicitly assumes that an H-1B visa worker is too dumb to notice how bad the visa is.
Ah, now here is an intelligent argument, which avoids the condescending racism of those who are trying to protect H-1B applicants from their own decisions.
The real question is, are these older workers people who could do the job if they were hired, or are they mainframe-era equivalents of a Visual Basic jockey? Given that nobody's pointed to any facts on the question one way or another, it's going to be hard to find a good answer to that one.
You want to come to North America and you're skilled? You can get permanant residency in Canada a lot easier, and some would argue it's a lot nicer place to live.
A choice that's still there even when H-1Bs are available. Nobody's holding a gun to the heads of these people to make them come to the U.S. on H-1Bs.
I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more immigrant "code monkeys", but I wouldn't go so far as to say that all immigrants are as lacking in skill as you make them out to be.
Just one question -- what's the point of keeping them in (say) India? Are you not aware of the overseas subcontracting which simply means they'll depress wages indirectly?
If we don't let them in the U.S., they're just going to be working for U.S. companies through subcontractors in India and as immigrants in places like Canada, Ireland, and France.
The result? The U.S. government doesn't get to tax immigrant incomes, our corporations suffer compared to European corporations, and our workers still have wage depression.
Any more wrong than the Mexicans seizing the territory from Spain, the Spanish seizing it from the natives, or each group of natives seizing it from the previous group of natives?
Actually, we did ratify the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, just not the Moon Treaty.
The Outer Space Treaty was the equivalent of the original Antarctic Treaty -- no new territorial claims, no militarization, scientific cooperation.
The Moon Treaty was the equivalent of the equally unratified-by-the-U.S. Law of the Sea, which arranged for international-socialist bodies to coordnate exploitation of the resources of space and the sea, respectively.
We signed an international treaty where Mexico acknowledged out annexation of California and Texas. We have also signed an international treaty forswearing all claims to the Moon back in 1967.
(And before you bring up the Indian treaties -- the Supreme Court ruled long ago that the American Indian polities were not foreign states under U.S. law. Therefore breaking an Indian treaty is not legally equivalent to breaking an international treaty, although it can be considered morally equivalent.)
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I didn't say H-1Bs were good for America or Americans, or that what is good for foreigners is good for America or Americans, or that what is good for foreigners should even be a concern for America or Americans.
I said that an American saying that H-1Bs are bad for foreigners is acting arrogantly in deciding what is good for someone else.
If you want to argue against H-1Bs on the grounds they are bad for Americans, that's fine. That's a different argument, however, than saying they're bad for forigners.
Actually, I was accusing the anti-H-1B poster of implicit racism, not expressing a racist opinion of my own. He's the one who thinks H-1Bs are bad for the people who voluntarily get them and stay under them. Such a position implicitly assumes that an H-1B visa worker is too dumb to notice how bad the visa is.
Ah, now here is an intelligent argument, which avoids the condescending racism of those who are trying to protect H-1B applicants from their own decisions.
The real question is, are these older workers people who could do the job if they were hired, or are they mainframe-era equivalents of a Visual Basic jockey? Given that nobody's pointed to any facts on the question one way or another, it's going to be hard to find a good answer to that one.
You want to come to North America and you're skilled? You can get permanant residency in Canada a lot easier, and some would argue it's a lot nicer place to live.
A choice that's still there even when H-1Bs are available. Nobody's holding a gun to the heads of these people to make them come to the U.S. on H-1Bs.
I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more immigrant "code monkeys", but I wouldn't go so far as to say that all immigrants are as lacking in skill as you make them out to be.
Just one question -- what's the point of keeping them in (say) India? Are you not aware of the overseas subcontracting which simply means they'll depress wages indirectly?
If we don't let them in the U.S., they're just going to be working for U.S. companies through subcontractors in India and as immigrants in places like Canada, Ireland, and France.
The result? The U.S. government doesn't get to tax immigrant incomes, our corporations suffer compared to European corporations, and our workers still have wage depression.
Any more wrong than the Mexicans seizing the territory from Spain, the Spanish seizing it from the natives, or each group of natives seizing it from the previous group of natives?
Actually, we did ratify the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, just not the Moon Treaty.
The Outer Space Treaty was the equivalent of the original Antarctic Treaty -- no new territorial claims, no militarization, scientific cooperation.
The Moon Treaty was the equivalent of the equally unratified-by-the-U.S. Law of the Sea, which arranged for international-socialist bodies to coordnate exploitation of the resources of space and the sea, respectively.
We signed an international treaty where Mexico acknowledged out annexation of California and Texas. We have also signed an international treaty forswearing all claims to the Moon back in 1967. (And before you bring up the Indian treaties -- the Supreme Court ruled long ago that the American Indian polities were not foreign states under U.S. law. Therefore breaking an Indian treaty is not legally equivalent to breaking an international treaty, although it can be considered morally equivalent.)