[ale] Why we need H1-B professionals (Correction to response)

[Ricardo Davis]

At 11:10 AM -0500 2/3/03, D. Alan Stewart wrote:
>Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger! An article on ZDNet: 
>http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-983066.html

< sound of bullet loading in rifle >
DAGNABBIT!

In all seriousness folks, this is short sighted.

Our Libertarian friends and their fellow travelling neo-Conservatives 
have been beating this drum for a while.

I cannot stand the xenophobic mania that sometimes emerges in 
anti-immigration discussions.  But there is a place for rational 
discussion past the race baiting and mushy multiculturalism that goes 
on.  Mr. Caroll makes an attempt to do so.  Allow me to make a 
rational response.

Let me poke a big hole in Mr. Caroll's thesis.  He equates our 
current situation with the immigration of highly skilled and educated 
immigrants in the 1800s.  This is comparing apples to oranges.  For 
one, the people coming to America came to a land far different than 
we live in today.  There was no federal welfare state bureaucracy 
that kept the cost of labor high through taxation and regulation 
(Social Security, Income/Wage Taxation, Federal and State 
Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, OSHA, ad nauseam).  Regular 
international travel was not within the reach of the average person 
then, and there was no such thing as a global information technology 
infrastructure.  Corporate espionage from foreign nationals was not 
an issue to American businessmen then, neither was international 
copyright infringement and patent theft.

But most importantly, in the 1800s the movement of people was one 
way.  They didn't come here to go back home a year or so later, nor 
to become "hyphenated Americans" (i.e. Indo-Americans or 
Russian-Americans), but to become Americans!  The issue wasn't mutual 
cultural understanding!  They knew the culture from whence they came 
would not give them the liberties and opportunities afforded them in 
America.  They also used the capital they generated they created to 
build businesses in America!  Not so today ... they can easily take 
their capital "back home" and create businesses that will compete 
with American IT businesses.

What is called for is a level playing field policy regarding 
immigration that takes into account the big picture.  Otherwise that 
great sucking sound that Ross Perot talked about a decade ago will 
not be the manufacturing plant across town closing down and moving to 
(China|Mexico|Malaysia|...) but rather the (software development 
firm|agency|...) where you work.


-Ricardo Davis
President, PowerSystems Information Management, Inc.
Chairman, Constitution Party of Georgia
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