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The Lies at the End of the American Dream
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Counterpunch - Dec 4, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12042007.html
The Shortage Myth:
The Lies at the End of the American Dream
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Last June a revealing marketing video from the law firm, Cohen &
Grigsby appeared on the Internet. The video demonstrated the law firm's
techniques for getting around US law governing work visas in order to
enable cor****ate clients to replace their American employees with
foreigners who work for less. The law firm's marketing manager,
Lawrence Lebowitz, is upfront with interested clients: "our goal is
clearly not to find a qualified and interested US worker."
If an American somehow survives the weeding out process, "have the
manager of that specific position step in and go through the whole
process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this position--in
most cases there doesn't seem to be a problem."
No problem for the employer he means, only for the expensively educated
American university graduate who is displaced by a foreigner im****ted
on a work visa justified by a nonexistent shortage of trained and
qualified Americans.
University of California computer science professor Norm Matloff, who
watches this issue closely, said that Cohen & Grigsby's practices are
the standard ones used by hordes of attorneys, who are cleaning up by
putting Americans out of work.
The Cohen & Grigsby video was a short-term sensation as it undermined
the business propaganda that no American employee was being displaced
by foreigners on H-1b or L-1 work visas. Soon, however, business
organizations and their ****lls were back in gear lying to Congress and
the public about the amazing shortage of qualified Americans for
literally every technical and professional occupation, especially IT
and software engineering.
Everywhere we hear the same droning lie from business interests that
there are not enough American engineers and scientists. For mysterious
reasons Americans prefer to be waitresses and bartenders, hospital
orderlies, and retail clerks.
As one of the few who writes about this short-sighted policy of
American managers endeavoring to maximize their "performance bonuses,"
I receive much feedback from affected Americans. Many responses come
from recent university graduates such as the one who "graduated nearly
at the top of my class in 2002" with degrees in both electrical and
computer engineering and who "hasn't been able to find a job."
A college roommate of a family member graduated from a good engineering
school last year with a degree in software engineering. He had one job
interview. Jobless, he is back at home living with his parents and
burdened with student loans that bought an education that offshoring
and work visas have made useless to Americans.
The hundreds of individual cases that have been brought to my attention
are dismissed as "anecdotal" by my fellow economists. So little do they
know. I also receive numerous responses from American engineers and IT
workers who have managed to hold on to jobs or to find new ones after
long intervals when they have been displaced by foreign hires. Their
descriptions of their work environments are fascinating.
For example, Dayton, Ohio, was once home to numerous American
engineers. Today, writes one surviving American, "I feel like an alien
in my own country--as if Dayton had been colonized by India. NCR and
other local employers have either offshored most of their IT work or
rely heavily on Indian guest workers. The IT department of National
City Bank across the street from LexisNexis is entirely Indian. The
nearby apartment complexes house large numbers of Indian guest workers
filling the engineering needs of many area businesses."
I have learned that Reed Elsevier, which owns LexisNexis, has hired a
new Indian vice president for offshoring and that now the jobs of the
Indian guest workers may be on the verge of being offshored to another
country. The relentless drive for cheap labor now threatens the foreign
guest workers who displaced America's own engineers.
One software engineer wrote to me protesting the ignorance of Thomas
Friedman for creating a false picture of American engineers being
outdated and for "denouncing American engineers and other workers as
'xenophobes' for opposing their displacement by foreign guest workers."
The engineer also took exception to the "willful ignorance or cynicism
of Bruce Bartlett and George Will" who he described as "bootlicks for
pro-outsourcing lobbies."
On November 6, 2006, Michael S. Teitelbaum, vice president of the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, explained to a subcommittee of the House
Committee on Science and Technology the difference between the
conventional or false ****trait that there is a shortage of US
scientists and engineers and the reality on the ground, which is that
offshoring, foreign guest workers, and educational subsidies have
produced a surplus of US engineers and scientists that leaves many
facing unstable and failed careers.
As two examples of the false ****trait, Teitelbaum cited the 2005
re****t, Tapping America's Potential, led by the Business Roundtable and
signed onto by 14 other business associations, and the 2006 National
Academies re****t, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, "which was the
basis for substantial parts of what eventually evolved into the
American COMPETES Act."
Teitelbaum posed the question to the US Representatives: "Why do you
continue to hear energetic re-assertions of the Conventional ****trait
of 'shortages,' shortfalls, failures of K-12 science and math teaching,
declining interest among US students, and the necessity of im****ting
more foreign scientists and engineers?"
Teitelbaum's answer: "In my judgment, what you are hearing is simply
the expressions of interests by interest groups and their lobbyists.
This phenomenon is, of course, very familiar to everyone on the Hill.
Interest groups that are well organized and funded have the capacity to
make their claims heard by you, either directly or via echoes in the
mass press. Meanwhile those who are not well-organized and funded can
express their views, but only as individuals."
Among the interest groups that benefit from the false ****trait are
universities, which gain graduate student enrollments and inexpensive
postdocs to conduct funded lab research. Employers gain larger profits
from lower paid scientists and engineers, and immigration lawyers gain
fees by leading employers around the work visa rules.
Using the biomedical research sector as an example, Teitelbaum
explained to the congressmen how research funding creates an oversupply
of scientists that requires ever larger funding to keep employed.
Teitelbaum made it clear that it is nonsensical to simultaneously
increase the supply of American scientists while forestalling their
employment with a shortage myth that is used to im****t foreigners on
work visas.
Teitelbaum recommends that American students considering majors in
science and engineering first investigate the career prospects of
recent graduates.
Integrity is so lacking in America that the shortage myth serves the
interests of universities, funding agencies, employers, and immigration
attorneys at the expense of American students who naively pursue
professions in which their prospects are dim. Initially it was
blue-collar factory workers who were abandoned by US cor****ations and
politicians. Now it is white-collar employees and Americans trained in
science and technology. Princeton University economist Alan Blinder
estimates that there are 30 to 40 million American high end service
jobs that ultimately face offshoring.
As I predict, and as BLS payroll jobs data indicate, in 20 years the US
will have a third world work force engaged in domestic nontradable
services.
[Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
]
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