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The Los Angeles Times reported on December 26th that some illegal aliens currently in the U.S are telling their friends and relatives back home to stay put because it isn’t worth the hassle and risk to come here anymore.  One reason cited by the Times is the slump in the American housing market and the resulting decline of jobs in the building trades. 

Immediately prior to the slump in the American housing market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that there was a nearly 30% increase in construction jobs over the preceding 10 years.  Oddly enough, they also noted that while the number of production industry jobs only increased by a mere 10% in the same period of time, the demand for production workers forced the wages of production workers up by nearly 33% while the wages paid to construction workers barely managed to keep up with the 25% rate of inflation.  In a market driven economy an increased demand for workers results in higher wages paid as companies are forced to compete for workers.  The 10% increase in production jobs resulting in a 33% increase in production worker’s wages is absolutely normal in every respect.  However, a 30% increase in construction jobs resulting in no significant wage increase for the workers employed in that field is improbable in a market driven economy until you factor in the huge numbers of illegal aliens employed by the construction companies. 

Building contractors struggling to stay afloat in the highly competitive world of new home construction threw their sense of ethics to the side and satisfied the 30% increase in available skilled construction jobs with semi-skilled illegal alien laborers at a lower than average wage.  While this shift in honesty allowed the building contractors the ability to remain competitive, it forced the entire industry into a general average wage decline for legal as well as illegal workers and the overall quality of their finished product declined.  Furthermore, as the practice of hiring illegal alien workers to work in new home construction increased the competitiveness between building contractors increased even more and the employment of illegal alien workers quickly went from being a stop-gap measure to being a preferred practice.  The blue collar jobs of the construction industry which historically served the non-college graduate, middle class American citizens as a means to the economic improvement they desired for themselves and their families quickly began to dry up and the well-paying jobs as skilled carpenters, painters, plumbers and construction laborers, formerly the mainstay of many American middle-class workers, increasingly went to illegal aliens working at greatly reduced rates and leaving millions of American citizens stranded in an economic state of limbo where they can’t even begin to compete with the illegal aliens now filling their former positions.

With one out of every five illegal aliens now in the U.S. working in the building trades, it is clearly evident that, like the agricultural industry, the construction industry has become a magnet for illegal alien workers and the middle-class blue collar American workers who once depended on those jobs for the wages that provided the financial security required to raise their families in comfortable suburban homes have been left out in the cold.    

The illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. are fairly pragmatic.  As the slump in the American housing market grows and their employment opportunities decrease, fewer will be tempted to risk the consequences of illegal entry.  Contrary to what the media editorialists have written and the politicians in Washington might say, the number one motivation for illegal aliens to enter the U.S. is money, and if they can’t be reasonably assured of getting it, they won’t come here.  They are not flooding across the unobstructed southern border because they dream of American liberty and freedom and they are certainly not coming here to become part of the American dream, they come here for money, pure and simple, and if they can’t displace American workers employed in good paying jobs, they will stay home.  The simple minded claim that they were only interested in jobs that American’s wouldn’t do was a bald-faced political lie used to justify weak immigration enforcement policies.

The second reason why the Los Angeles Times claims that illegal aliens are telling their friends and relatives back home to stay put is that stepped-up workplace raids and increased immigration enforcement is beginning to make many illegal aliens feel less than fully appreciated.  While this second reason may have served the editorial needs of a liberal rag openly sympathetic to the criminal invaders of our nation, it is a far cry from the truth because there really hasn’t been any significant increase in workplace raids or increased immigration enforcement in the United States.  Workplace raids have been played up by the American media more than ever before because, in our current hysteria driven political environment, they are more controversial and anything even remotely controversial sells newspapers.  If the federal government actually began to target the employers of illegal aliens there would be “Help Wanted” signs posted outside of every restaurant in the country, 98% of the construction companies in America would be clamoring for skilled workers, janitorial services would be going bankrupt in record numbers and the population of illegal aliens in America would dwindle to practically nothing overnight.  None of this is happening because there is no significant increase in workplace raids.  American businesses continue to give illegal aliens preferential consideration for employment because illegal aliens are a cheap source of labor and this situation will continue until those businesses are held criminally liable for their actions.  The bottom line here is that while the American news media is going nuts over every new incidence of immigration enforcement taking place, workplace immigration raids in the U.S. are as rare as they ever were. The federal government remains very selective about the companies they raid and they refuse to break out their battering rams for even the most egregious and blatant violators of American immigration law unless some political advantage can be gained from their actions.  

The workplace raids that took place in 2006 were nothing more than a distracting propaganda play engineered by Washington’s political elite in preparation for the Senate’s continuation of the immigration debate in 2007.  While thousands of illegal aliens were rounded up during those raids, the simple fact is, that most of those apprehended were quickly released to return to their illegal jobs and only a handful of those apprehended were actually deported from this country. 

The 2006 workplace raids by American immigration authorities were initially widely reported as proof of the federal government’s increased immigration enforcement policies, but as the illegal aliens apprehended in those raids began to be released inside the U.S. and the political pressure of immigration’s special interest groups came into play, the news media switched the focus of their reports to make it look like the federal government was cracking down on identity theft by illegal aliens.  Little media coverage was wasted on the fact that labor unions were conducting successful organizing campaigns at the majority of businesses targeted.  The labor unions don’t want the attention of their American members drawn to the fact that the Unions have sold them out in favor of lower paid illegal replacements and anything the labor unions want to avoid, the Democratic National Party wants to avoid because their primary source of income is derived from the forcible extraction of union dues from the paychecks of American workers too ignorant to realize they are being screwed by the labor organizations that are supposed to represent their best interests.  Nobody seemed to question the simple fact that the laws against identity theft are not enforced by the immigration agencies and despite the fact that the economic well-being of thousands of American citizens was being jeopardized by the illegal alien identity thieves that were apprehended, none of the American identity theft victims were ever notified that their identities were being illegally used, and despite the destruction of people’s credit as well as the multitude of problems they will encounter later when they try to apply for Social Security benefits, the federal government essentially ignored the ultimate impact the American citizens who are the unwitting victims of this identity theft will inevitably have to deal with at some point in the future.

The simple truth is that an illegal alien in the United States today has about the same chances of being apprehended as he or she has of being eaten alive by a pig.  Furthermore, even if they are apprehended, the odds of them being released inside the U.S. are distinctly in their favor.  Despite the obvious fact that their illegal presence in the U.S. clearly demonstrates their contempt for American law our elected representatives in Washington have intentionally created a multitude of loopholes through which these criminal invaders can become American citizens regardless of what the majority of American voters might think on the matter.  Increased immigration enforcement in the United States is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by self-serving politicians trying to appease the American voters alarmed by the obvious fact that they no longer control the direction of their government.

If anything is slowing down the invasion of the United States by the impoverished masses of Mexico and South America it is most likely to be the hysterical left wing news coverage in those countries.  After all, the U.S. has not cornered the market on biased news coverage even though it might seem that way, and sensationalism works as well to sell newspapers in Nicaragua as it does in Chicago.  Whatever the case may be, we need more of it because our federal government certainly isn’t doing anything to stop this invasion.

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December 20, 2007

Speaker: Representative Tom Tancredo, (Republican-Colorado)

“It is with my heart full of gratitude and a touch of sadness that I write today to tell you of my intention to end my campaign for the presidency.

As a loyal friend and supporter it is important to me that you understand why I am doing this, even though you may disagree.

For the past ten years I have dedicated my public life to the critical issue of illegal immigration.  I believed then –as I do now—that massive uncontrolled illegal immigration threatens our survival as a nation.  I could not stand by and let open border politicians and corporate lobbyists sell our country out to the highest bidder.

Then earlier this year when I feared that the issue would not be championed by any of the top candidates I threw my hat in the ring.  It was the only way I could be certain that the candidates would be forced to take a stand.

Thanks to your incredible support look what we have accomplished:

Just last week Newsweek declared that “”Anti-immigrant zealot [that would be me] had already won.  Now even Dems dance to his no mas salsa tune.”  This month alone The Economist, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal and a score of other newspapers have written similar assessments, grudgingly crediting our campaign with forcing the issue of immigration to the center of the national stage and—more importantly—with forcing every presidential candidate to commit themselves to an immigration plan that calls for securing the borders, opposing amnesty and enforcing the law.

Of course, many of the candidates need to be pinned down on their understanding of the meaning of amnesty, but we have succeeded beyond my most optimistic expectations of a year ago.  We even have Hillary jumping through hoops on the issue!
 
So with so much success why drop out of the race now, you are probably asking.  For one reason and one reason alone: I believe the cause demands I do so.

The presidential campaign has come down to less than a handful of viable candidates.  Unfortunately several of them have abysmal records on immigration and can’t be trusted to do what is needed to preserve this country if they’re elected.  My fear is that if I were to stay in this race my votes could be the factor in handing victory to a pro-amnesty politician.   Friends, we have done too much, come too far and the stakes are too high to play that hand. And so I am ending my presidential campaign.

I know there are many more battles in our future and you can count on me to stay in this fight with you.  We must continue to build the unquestioned momentum that is fueling our movement today. In the weeks ahead, I will write to you again to share with you my plans for the future, and for the immigration reform movement that is transforming
American politics.

But for now, I just wish to again express to you my deepest thanks and appreciation for your partnership with me in this historic effort.  I also want to wish you a very blessed and merry Christmas!

We have come so far together, and through our efforts we have made a stunning and, I believe, permanent impact on the debate over securing our borders and preserving our nation.

Not a day has gone by in this campaign that I have not thanked God for the dedication of so many Americans like you. I can promise you that as long as He gives me life and strength, I will work hard for our cause and to honor the trust you have placed in me.“

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The 2008 presidential election is a little more than eleven short months away. 

The candidates as well as the elected representatives of both major political parties are successfully waging a campaign to distract the attention of voters away from the serious problems associated with illegal immigration. 

Within a few weeks of disclosing that the federal government’s multi-billion dollar virtual border fence boondoggle is the joke of the century, the United States Congress jerks the rug out from underneath the border fence initiative, which may be the single most important border security measure passed in years. 

A growing body of evidence now indicates that America’s high tech corporations are gaming the H-1B visa program to facilitate off-shoring their workforce and to force down the wages paid to America’s high tech workers. 

A comprehensive report released last Tuesday by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office conclusively shows the disastrous financial impact that parasitic illegal aliens are having on American education, health care and law enforcement. 

The Mexican government acknowledges that the majority (68%) of the Mexicans now living in the United States are illegal aliens.

Of the top five rated Republican presidential candidates, three have stated that they are in favor of amnesty and all five have inconsistent voting records on immigration and border security issues while every Democratic presidential candidate has publicly expressed their desire to promote amnesty, increased immigration quotas and open borders.      

There is now a widespread rumor, coming out of the Tancredo campaign headquarters, that Tom Tancredo, the Republican presidential candidate and staunch opponent of illegal immigration, is giving up the fight and will announce the end of his campaign effort later today.  Tom Tancredo has been instrumental in keeping the American voters focused on immigration issues since he entered the race, and if it were not for his consistent badgering of the other candidates, illegal immigration would have been swept under the rug long ago by Republican and Democratic candidates whose voting records on this issue can only be described as inconsistently embarrassing.  Tancredo’s withdrawal from the 2008 presidential race may very well be the end of illegal immigration as a major issue in presidential debates.     

Tom Tancredo may withdraw from the 2008 presidential campaign, but illegal immigration will continue to plague the American people.  The tax burden associated with it will continue to grow, the public schools and health care services will continue to deteriorate, violent crime and drug abuse will escalate and this country’s limited resources will be stretched even thinner.  Even if he chose to remain in the race, it is doubtful that he could stop, or even reduce the speed, of the inevitable decline as this once great nation hurtles toward the precipice of it’s own destruction.  In or out, in the long run, his presence or absence may have little real consequence, and I suppose that when you get right down to it, the only thing that Tom Tancredo really provided to the American people was hope.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most powerful business lobbying organization, crusher of labor unions and butt-kissing hero of America’s political smoozers is now dedicating a great deal of effort, time and money to ensure that illegal aliens continue to swarm across the border into our land of liberty, and that the criminal invaders aren’t hindered in the slightest by the half-baked defensive maneuvering that numerous pipsqueak communities around the nation have resorted to after coming to the realization that the federal government was not inclined to take any decisive action to protect them.

In the last ten years the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has gone from a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit the business entities it represented to a Republican front group, promoting Republican candidates and acting as a driving force in support of right-wing conservative policies so far as they benefit American business.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions. It includes hundreds of associations, thousands of local chambers, and more than 100 American Chambers of Commerce in 91 countries.  In 2006, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce increased their spending on federal lobbying by 83% and became the single largest federal lobbying interest in the nation with an outlay of more than $73 million dollars.   

Since the January 1, 2007, more than 1600 immigration bills have been proposed in statehouses nationwide, and 244 of them have been passed into law after city and county officials began demanding their state governments take action in the face of the overwhelmingly negative impact the swarming parasites have had on many small cities and towns around the country.  Quite frankly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce couldn’t care less about the negative impact of the illegal alien invasion on the American people, who like the rural small towns and counties burdened to the point of collapse, are a negligibly minute factor of insignificant importance compared to the continued expansion of a global economy and the unimaginable profits they stand to gain as long as everything remains as it currently is.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not about to sit idly by while city, county and state legislators peck away at their bottom line by passing local ordinances and state laws effectively designed to discourage the continued influx of illegal invaders.    

To ensure the continued prosperity of the companies they represent, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has announced their intention to attack the numerous recently passed state laws designed to crack down on businesses employing illegal aliens.   In the meantime they are renewing their lobbying efforts to resurrect the comprehensive immigration bill debate that failed in the U.S. Senate last spring and they are pushing harder for the expansion of numerous visa programs and immigration quotas.

The backbone of their legal fight against state anti-immigration laws is the assertion that the state measures engineered to make it difficult for employers who hire illegal aliens, encroach on an area that is the responsibility of the federal government and are, therefore, unconstitutional.  Their first target is Arizona’s new employer-sanctions law which is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2008.  Arizona’s employer sanctions law will remove the economic incentives for illegal aliens coming into the U.S. by making it impossible for them to secure employment.  The law will punish business owners who knowingly hire illegal immigrants with a 10 day suspension of their business license for the first offense and offenders caught for a second offense of the law would have their business licenses permanently revoked.  Arizona’s law also requires companies in the state to begin using E-Verify, the federal government’s employment verification system.  The initial lawsuit filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against the implementation of Arizona’s new law was thrown out by the court on procedural technicalities but the Chamber quickly filed a second lawsuit after correcting the problem.  The Arizona lawsuit and a legal brief opposing a local anti-immigration ordinance in Pennsylvania are just the beginning of the chamber’s legal effort to stop state governments from implementing immigration laws, and the Chamber of Commerce is hoping that, if successful, the outcome will discourage other states from trying to defend themselves and their citizens from the predatory alien invaders with legislative action.  Concerning legal actions like the Arizona lawsuit and the Pennsylvania brief, Thomas Donohue, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stated, “We’re going to file a hell of a lot of them.”              

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been the primary push for the media’s irrational and fraudulent fear campaign about the shortage of workers in the U.S., continues to state that the expansion of this country’s international population is an economic imperative, and that the continued prosperity of industrial sectors like agriculture, construction, hospitality and high tech is dependent on a steadily increasing flow of immigrant workers to mitigate the shortage of American workers exacerbated by low unemployment and an aging workforce.  The Chamber of Commerce, in a manner similar to the ACLU and numerous pro-immigration advocacy and minority special interest groups, seeks to denigrate and dismiss the strong popular sentiment to stop illegal immigration as the hysterically misguided and racially biased effort of a small right wing conservative xenophobic minority stirred up by overly vocal and sensationalistic talk radio hosts venting their alarmingly extremist views to a wide audience of essentially far too gullible and naively ignorant American listeners.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the American people to believe that the overwhelming and substantial evidence that there is no actual shortage of U.S. workers, and the very obvious truth that 20 million parasitic illegal aliens are a serious economic burden to, not just the American taxpayers who are forced to subsidize them, but the medical facilities the illegal invaders have forced into bankruptcy, the public schools inundated with non-English speaking students to the point that they have been rendered entirely incapable of providing even the most basic of educational requirements and the state budgets strained to the breaking point by the illegal alien invasion, are merely figments of our collective imagination, or if you will, hysteria induced hallucinations indicative of a mass social psychosis.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the American people to believe that having 20 million illegal aliens in this country is the best thing for America’s economy since the launch of The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in March of 2005.  They want you to believe that this country really needs millions of foreign high tech workers, and that companies like IBM Accenture and Wipro and Microsoft aren’t actually using the H-1B visa program to facilitate their outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries regardless of how much evidence there is to support that essential truth.  Ultimately, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the American people to sacrifice their way of life and their continued financial security so that American companies can suck up even higher profits than they already are, and if this means that American workers lose their jobs and the American middle class family is crushed beneath the burden of increasing taxes then it must been seen as something that is necessary for the good of all and not just something that will benefit business.  After all, what’s good for American business is good for the American people and if those people are too damned dumb to realize it, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is willing to shove it down their throats until they learn to acquire a taste for it.

The bottom line here is fairly simple to grasp.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is operating under the mistaken belief that the overwhelming majority of American citizens can’t be trusted to direct the government of the United States properly because they are essentially too ignorant of the impact their desires will have on American business and the continued growth of corporate profits, and when the “will of the people” interferes with the profitability of business enterprise, the people must be put in their rightful place by any means possible.

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Commerce Department data indicates that the share of national income going to wages and salaries in 2006 was at its lowest level on record, with data going back to 1929, while the share of national income captured by corporate profits is at its highest level on record.  After adjusting for inflation, wages and salaries have grown at a 1.9 percent of the average annual rate, whereas corporate profits have grown at a 12.8 percent of the average annual rate.  In previous post-World War II recoveries, wages and salaries grew at an average annual rate of 3.8 percent and corporate profits during equivalent periods of past post-World War II business cycles have shown an average annual growth rate of 8.3 percent.  The Commerce Department data also indicates that while employer contributions for pensions and health insurance have increased at close to the average rate, the share of national income going to total employee compensation in 2006 is at its lowest level since 1968.    

In a market driven economy where the scarcity of any given commodity is directly proportional to increased cost of obtaining it, this is the strongest evidence possible that U.S. businesses are not suffering from a shortage of workers despite what the proponents of increased immigration have been claiming.  In a market driven economy, a shortage of workers would be evident because the increased business competition to hire the workers that were available would result in higher wages and higher total compensation packages designed to attract a larger pool of workers, however, this is obviously not the case, and the data regularly collected by the U.S. Commerce Department exposes the fallacious nature of the claim that a shortage of workers exists in the United States.

Considering the highly emotional and overly politicized discussion of so many immigration related issues currently going on and the increased pressure brought to bear by an infinite number of business association and agricultural corporation lobbying groups, the most obvious question that never seems to be asked is, since we are not facing an actual shortage of workers, why are so many business interests investing unimaginable sums of money in the effort to increase the quota for H-1B visas and relax the requirements for H-2A visas? 

Since there is no evidence to support the claim that a shortage of workers exists in the U.S. the next, most obvious motivating factor for businesses to be spending so much money in their attempts to increase the number of visas available is profit, and it doesn’t take much research to discover numerous ways that American businesses are profiting by hiring foreign workers under the current H-1B visa program, nor does it take a genius to figure out how their profits would increase even more if the cap on H-1B visas were raised and they could hire even more foreign workers.  Furthermore, when it comes to low or no-skill workers coming into the U.S. with H-2A and H-2B visas, the profit factor is even clearer.

Prior to getting into explaining how American businesses profit from hiring foreign workers it would be apropos to point out that their are a large number of increasingly wealthy American companies that are entirely dependent on the visa trade for their income.  Labor brokers, immigration attorneys and various types of consulting companies are racking in huge profits as a result of the numerous immigration visa programs in the United States.  The veritable cornucopia of services they supply include advising companies on current immigration law, explaining how to take advantage of the numerous loopholes available and recruiting services to screen potential foreign employees and providing legal advice to aliens at an hourly rate comparable to high priced divorce attorneys.  On the shadier end of the scale there are airline companies and travel agencies that are selling blocks of tickets to human smugglers, landlords and rental agents who provide homes where smugglers can hide illegal aliens, taxi drivers near the border who are charging three to four times the regular rate to drive illegal aliens to large cities where they can disappear into the woodwork and used-car dealerships that allow smugglers to register vehicles under fictitious names that are never verified.  Immigration, legal and illegal, is a very profitable business and there are a vast number of less than entirely ethical American business and entrepreneurial individuals willing to take full advantage of every profitable opportunity they can.  Furthermore, each and every American business or individual enterprise taking advantage of the immigration situation to increase their profit margin is more than willing to scream loudly and enthusiastically at the slightest indication of any potential change that could negatively affect their continued ability to turn a profit.  The massive profits these operators are pulling in make the services of lobbying firms, spin artists and Washington’s many corrupt politicians easily affordable.

Large American business enterprises are encouraging increases in the skilled worker visa categories because they have found a number of ways to profit by taking advantage of the visa programs.  By law, American companies hiring foreign workers under the H-1B visa program are required to pay the prevailing rate for each specific job they are hiring for.  The prevailing wage guidelines are set by Congress and employer compliance is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) through its foreign labor certification office.  In most cases the prevailing rate is significantly lower than the market rate for the same job.  In other words, the wages an employer must pay to attract an American worker are as much as 20 to 25 percent higher than what the employer is required to pay a foreign worker under the provisions of the H-1B visa program.  Furthermore, there is little standardization among the various wage scales used and employers have been known to change the job titles and employ other tricks to allow themselves the ability to pay significantly lower wages to foreign workers under a visa program in which there is little oversight provided by the federal government.  This provides a huge financial incentive for businesses to hire foreign workers and leave the American workers standing in the unemployment lines.  For those that are quick to point out that federal law protects American workers by requiring employers to offer their jobs to American citizens first there is a great video on You Tube that is a must see.  The film was posted by the Programmers Guild of Summit, New Jersey and it includes excerpts from a seminar conducted by Pittsburgh-based law firm Cohen & Grigsby PC.  In the video, Lawrence Lebowitz, an attorney at Cohen & Grigsby explains a method that can be used for hiring foreign workers under the U.S. government’s Program Electronic Review Management process which stipulates that employers must first take out help wanted ads to fill job vacancies, with the intent of either hiring U.S. workers or showing that no qualified Americans are available.  However, the information that Lebowitz focuses on is aimed at circumventing the potential U.S. citizens than might apply for the job and making it easier for the employer to hire the foreign worker at a much lower wage level.  In the video, Lebowitz openly explains, “Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker,” he said. “And that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it’s what we are trying to do here.”  He added that while “complying with the law fully,” the objective is to get a prospective foreign worker a green card “and to get through the labor certification process.” He and other panelists go on to explain the ways in which employers can legally reject applicants to meet that goal.

The consequences of American employers gaming the H-B1 visa program are numerous. The largest percentage of H-1B employees filling high tech positions is overwhelmingly concentrated at the bottom of the U.S. pay scale.  On the average, H-1B workers in computer occupations earn $13,000 a year less than Americans in the same occupation and state and the overall effect of this is to drive down the wages of American workers doing the same work.  Another very obvious problem is that American workers are being rapidly displaced by companies using H-1B workers and American college graduates are having a harder time finding employment in high tech fields because the employers who would rather hire H-1B visa holders they can pay at a lower rate actively discourage American applicants by advertising jobs at below the average scale.  Because of the decrease in wages and available job opportunities for American workers many young people are discouraged from entering science and engineering fields where they know that their employment prospects are slim.  While the businesses are offering the argument that the H-1b visa program needs to be expanded so that they can take advantage of the opportunity to hire the “best and brightest,” the fact is these companies are hiring foreign workers who are not necessarily the best and the brightest, but who are willing to work for sub-standard wages, meanwhile, America’s best and the brightest are being driven into other fields where they know they can find employment at reasonably competitive levels.  

One of the primary arguments that business leaders us to convince the American people of the need to expand the H-1B visa program is that it enables the companies to avoid outsourcing their jobs to foreign countries, however, the evidence supports the exact opposite, and many companies are using the H-1B visa program as a way to get foreign workers into the country where they can be trained for six months and then sent back home to do the company’s work at their foreign office.

According to data released in May of this year by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), nine foreign-based companies that specialize in off shoring U.S. technology jobs received about 20,000 H-1B visas last year, furthermore, their data indicated that the top 11 (and 15 of the top 20) H-1B requestors are firms that specialize in offshore outsourcing.  IBM, Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Wipro Limited and Microsoft are just a few of the really large companies aggressively taking advantage of this situation.  Accenture is the largest foreign employer in India and currently has more than 35,000 workers in that country and IBM has predicted that they will have more than 100,000 workers in India within three years. A recent Business Week story described Wipro’s use of the H-1B program by saying that “Wipro has more than 4,000 employees in the U.S., and roughly 2,500 are on H-1B visas. About 1,000 new temporary workers come to the country each year, while 1,000 rotate back to India, with improved skills to serve clients.”

Contrary to their own argument in favor of expanding the H-1B visa program as a way to eliminate outsourcing, the very companies who have made that argument are using the H-1B visa program to facilitate the training of foreign workers with the full intention of expanding their future outsourcing capacity which will bring them higher profits but will ultimately result in the loss of jobs for countless American workers.

The American people have heard their political representatives in Washington say that immigration is good for the American economy so many times that many have actually started believing what is very obviously one of the biggest lies of this decade.  Higher immigration quotas may be good for the American business interests that unethically take advantage of them to increase their profits at the expense of the entire nation, and they may be financial beneficial to the politicians who those businesses reward in a variety of different ways, but as far as the American people are concerned higher immigration quotas results in job losses, lower pay, less employment opportunities for American students graduating from college and higher taxes for working class Americans who are forced to shoulder the burden created by the problems created as well as the latest and greatest solution to those problems as dreamed up by our ever inventive elected officials in Washington.

The United States currently has no less than 60 different visa programs operating at break-neck speed to allow foreign nationals entry to this country for any number of reasons.  Federal oversight on the numerous visa programs is nearly non-existent and fraudulent use of these programs is a ridiculously common, everyday occurrence.  In many cases the U.S. Senate which implemented these programs is fully aware of the fraud and abuse going on within the program and does nothing to stop the problems that are being created.  Immigration law in the United States has become a partisan political tug-of-war for votes and power, and while America’s large business interests and immigration’s countless special interest groups may stand to gain significantly, their gains will come at the expense of the American people who are being detrimentally affected in so many ways that it is impossible to describe them all.

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The Arizona Republic reported on November 7, 2007, that the federal government’s 28 mile stretch of “virtual fence” is now operational despite criticism by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, urging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to pause the project and withhold payment to the contractor. 

Chertoff reportedly said he was satisfied with the progress and compared the situation to buying a car.  “Up to now, we did the test drive, but we did it with the salesman in the seat behind us. Now the salesman’s gonna leave and we’re gonna take it home, and we’re really going to drive it around.”

The 28 mile stretch of virtual fence is a pilot project to use high technology to secure America’s borders.  It is part of the Secure Border Initiative implemented, in part, as an alternative to the Secure Fence Act of 2006 which mandated the construction of 750 miles of security fencing along the country’s southern border with Mexico.

The government has already paid Boeing $15 million of its initial $20 million contract before determining that there were problems in the operation of the fence.  Boeing has already spent more than $40 million on the project and it is widely assumed that the American tax payers will end up footing the bill regardless of how well the final products functions.  Republican junior U.S. Senator and Senate Minority Whip, Jon Kyl dished up this particular plate of pork to Boeing which has a large number of facilities in his home state of Arizona. Boeing has been one of the Senator’s major campaign contributors in the past. 

Boeing’s involvement with the virtual fence will not end with the completion of the current 28 mile stretch because the contract allows them another $67 million to administer the project during it’s testing and evaluation period, and in the event that the government is satisfied with the performance of the fence, it is expected to be implemented, over a six year period, on both the southern as well as the northern borders for a total length of 6000 miles and an expected cost starting in the low $2 billions and going skyward from there.

At the present time the sensors used on the virtual fence seem to be overly sensitive to rain drops and wind and with limited personnel to respond to the alarms that are raised, the Border Patrol is likely to run themselves ragged responding to false alarms, furthermore, since these flaws are already well-know, it will be an easy matter for potential illegal aliens and human smugglers to take advantage of them which would ultimately render the virtual fence virtually worthless.

Inasmuch as my credentials as a defense scientist never arrived from the cereal company that promised to send them to me, the credibility of my opinion on this matter is somewhat questionable, however, I still have to wonder why, if this was such a good idea, they never built one around Leavenworth Federal Prison, or better yet, around the White House.

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My Webster’s II dictionary defines “racism” as the belief that some races are inherently superior to others.  This is a fairly short definition and, overall, I believe it’s a definition that it suits me just fine.  It involves no subtle linguistic trickery and there is no visible philosophical warpage.  As definitions go, the definition of “racism” contained in Webster’s II could be considered squeaky clean, and another good reason why it appeals to me as much as it does is because by the Webster II definition, my personal score on the Racism measuring stick (my own personal 1 to 10 scale) indicates a steady 3, which for a white boy born and raised in a predominantly black area of Los Angeles County, is not that bad and certainly shouldn’t condemn me to the fiery pits of Hell forever.

However – The definition of “racism” developed by Sharon Martinas for the Challenging White Supremacy (CWS) workshops and adopted by the University of Delaware for their diversity facilitation training publications has given me some slight cause for concern about those aforementioned fiery pits and my ability to avoid them.  Unlike the squeaky clean definition supplied by Webster II, the people at CWS, and in turn, the administrators at the University of Delaware are supplying the world with a definition of “racism” that is exceedingly broad.  In fact, their definition of “racism” is so broad that it encompasses every single white human being in the United States.  The definition they have come up with for the word “racism” is as follows:  

“A Racist: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system.  The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.  By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination.”

While I have never actually looked in a mirror and thought to myself, “there is the definition the word racist,” according to Ms. Martinas definition, and according to what is being passed along as factual information to the students at the University of Delaware and probably a good many other universities around the country, I am a white person, therefore, I am a racist.  Initially, I was somewhat taken aback by this discovery because I have never seen myself as being a racist, however, after a bit of investigation, research and thought, I have not only managed to put this revelation into perspective, but I have drawn a few conclusions from it as well.

Essentially, I regard the leadership of any social cause, whose struggle for meaning is predicated on the re-definition of common English words, as being suspiciously questionable.  The CWS definitions, adopted by the University of Delaware for their diversity facilitation training publications, are an extreme example of this type of linguistic sleight of hand.  Their definition of the term “racist” includes a number of other terms which they were also required to re-define in order to get their message across, including the term “race,” “white supremacist,” “white people” and “power.”  The CWS definition of the term “racist” is dependent on the other re-defined terms for meaning and substance, and without those similarly re-defined terms, the CWS definition of the word “racism” appears to be nothing more than a derogatory racist stereotype negatively directed against all individuals genetically and immutably predisposed to a lightly pigmented skin color.      

The source of the definitions used in the University of Delaware’s diversity facilitation training publication is identified in that document with the abbreviation CWS.  A bit of investigation identified CWS as the abbreviation for a group of individuals in San Francisco who are affiliated under the name “Challenging White Supremacy.”  Their web site explains that “Challenging White Supremacy (CWS) workshop organizers believe that the most effective way to create fundamental social change in the U.S. is by building mass-based, multi-racial grassroots movements led by radical activists of color. We also believe that the major barrier to creating these movements is racism or white supremacy.”  Furthermore, the site goes on to say, “CWS workshops have been designed by a group of white anti-racist organizers. We believe our special responsibility is to help white social justice activists become principled and effective anti-racist organizers — both to challenge our white privilege and to work for racial justice in all our social justice work.”

The “Challenging White Supremacy” web site says nothing about the credentials of the individuals who create the materials for their workshops.  Despite the fallacious statements, definitions and conclusions, the material is well written and the bibliographies point to a large number of sociological studies focused on racial issues.  Overall, the material is obviously well thought out and it is presented in an orderly step by step method designed to carry an audience through the definitions to the less than logical conclusion that all white people are privileged and are, therefore racists, while people of color are not privileged, and therefore they cannot possibly be racists.  The obvious problem with the conclusion they want their audience to reach is that, unless you accept their re-definition of common English terms, the conclusion is entirely not only illogical, but it is identical to the sort of generalized stereotypical statements that we normally hear coming from the mouths of people who are accurately characterized as racists.  The seriously convoluted statements found in the CWS material have little educational value for anyone studying racism; however, the material would be an excellent tool to train freshmen students how to spot fallacious arguments, because it is loaded with them.  

The bottom line of the CWS argument is that all white people need to face the fact that they are inherently racist because they live in a society that grants them a privileged status over individuals of other races; there is no possible way that a white person can possibly overcome his or her inherent racism because society’s grant of privileged status is indelibly branded into their flesh and the only way to eliminate racism entirely is to eliminate the white people’s domination of the society we live in.  By following this train of thought you can safely assume that the white people’s racism would only come to an end if they all agreed to step aside and let the people of color take over.  Then again, if the people of color became the dominant force in society would they not then be in the same position of privileged status that was formerly held by white people?  The racism of white people would then be supplanted by the racism of the people of color and racism would be as abundant as ever before.  Simply stated, the entire CWS argument is a preposterous insult to the intelligence of anyone who reads it.

Despite the conclusions I’ve drawn from reviewing the documents provided on the CWS Workshop web site, societies as a whole are generally inclined to invest themselves in an inordinate number of delusional concepts and America’s current society is far from being immune to utter nonsense and there is no place where delusional thinking is more apparent than in discussions of race.  American society has affirmed and re-affirmed that all men are created equal and yet we feel compelled to further level the playing field by making some individuals more equal than others by legitimizing blatantly discriminatory practices such as affirmative action.  It does not take any great stretch of the imagination to see American society buying in to the delusional thinking encouraged by CWS, especially in light of the fact that our institutions of higher learning appear to have already been grossly contaminated with their nonsense.

Whatever direction our future society takes gives me little cause for concern.  The whimsical fallacies of society are nothing more than this old man’s cheapest source of entertainment and if I am to be considered a hopeless racist, I for one will not be overwhelmed with guilt in the face of that judgment.

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Under intense pressure from illegal alien advocacy groups for their support in the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats are desperately trying to pay their debt and their latest half-baked SCHIP expansion bill is a clear demonstration of just how stupid they think the people of this country really are.

Under the provisions of their newest edition of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) illegal aliens would not be required to prove citizenship however, they would be required to provide a valid Social Security number.  Of course, there is no intention of verifying that the number they provide actually belongs to them, but that is beside the point.  As long as the number belongs to someone that will be good enough.

The primary target of the Democratic effort to expand SCHIP coverage remains, as it has in the past, at undoing the 1996 welfare policy that restricted most public benefits to legal immigrants who have been in the country for at least five years.  Their latest version leaves that law intact but creates a simple bypass that will enable all but the dumbest of illegal aliens to get around it.   

The Democratic effort to expand SCHIP, like their attempt at passing the so-called DREAM Act is nothing more than a vote buying scheme aimed at the more than 20 million illegal aliens now in the United States, and hopefully, President Bush shoots this one down as quick as he did the last one.

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The Washington Examiner reported last month that the wealthy and heavily Democratic Washington, D.C., suburb of Montgomery County, Md. is undergoing some not so surprising changes.  Apparently large numbers of high-income people are migrating out of the county because of what they regard as a declining quality of life.  The area’s net population is growing, but the growth is made up predominantly of immigrants who do not make the kind of money (and will not pay as much in taxes) as those who are leaving. Foreign-born residents now account for nearly one-third of the county’s population. 

The Examiner reported that, “nearly one in four students in the public school system are now receiving free or reduced-price meals, the largest fraction since 1990; At least four Washington-area charities have established Montgomery County offices since 2003, citing a growing need among the area’s residents, and county officials say they are increasingly receiving complaints about overcrowded homes, a common story in many counties where there are large numbers of illegal aliens.”

There has been a good deal of discussion about these changes because as the wealthier residents leave the area it has created a strain on the tax base and more of the tax burden is now being placed on the lower income working families who live there.  This, in conjunction with the overly politically correct attitude of a liberal dominated school district that would not consider teaching a common language and a common American history is quickly altering the entire character of the county.

What is missing from the Washington Examiner’s observations is the fact that this sort of thing has been going on for quite awhile all across the United States.  Small towns and large are rapidly becoming inundated with illegal aliens in what history will someday point to as the single largest invasion in the history of the world.  We’ve gone way beyond allowing business owners easy access to a cheap source of labor, we are now allowing our political parties to import voters and few seem to realize that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater while foreign invaders and foreign cultures rapidly displace every element of American society and the things that once made this nation great are now being labeled “backwards,” “right wing,” and possible even “racist.”

It has been said many times that the state of California leads the nation in change and the people of the United States would do well to take a long hard look at the so called “Golden State” and take the lesson to heart.

California serves the nation as the doormat of illegal aliens.  Nearly half of this country’s illegal aliens live in California.  California’s currently overcrowded cities and gridlocked highways are a preview of what Mid-town, America has in store for the future.  California’s public schools are among the worst in the nation.  Nearly 40% of California students in grades 1-12 are illegal aliens and 42% of all California’s students in grades 1-12 speak little or no English.  Armed guards are required at many California middle-schools to keep the peace.  Teachers have been beaten, raped and murdered, gang fights are commonplace, students are stabbed, robbed and beaten on a daily basis and drugs are plentiful.  The officers of the Los Angeles Police Department are outnumbered 6 to 1 by the members of more than 407 Los Angeles city street gangs and in Los Angeles County there are more than 1300 street gangs with over 150,000 members.  There are areas in Los Angeles County where the police patrol four to a car for the safety it provides them.  More than half of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens from Mexico, Central and South American countries.  Of the 489 murders committed in the city of Los Angeles in 2004 95% were committed by illegal aliens, and illegal aliens committed 53% of the 22,592 burglaries investigated in the city.  In the state of California 47% of the drivers pulled over by local police and the Highway Patrol have no license, no insurance, and no registration for the vehicle they are driving. Of that 47%, 92% are illegal aliens.  Hit and run accidents caused by illegal aliens without auto insurance are so common in Southern California that most of the local police agencies  don’t even bother to investigate unless someone is seriously injured.  Drive-by shootings, car jackings, home invasion robberies, along with the common run of the mill crimes like murder, rape, child molestation and assault keep most of the wealthy residents barricaded in secure gated communities while the working class residents have all but abandoned the city for housing developments more than 100 miles from their jobs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has described Los Angeles as being the most progressive city in the United States, however, many of the city’s long term residents simply describe the place as a toilet, and it is by far the best example of what the rest of the nation has in store for them as the uncontrolled invasion of illegal aliens continues unabated.  The well meaning but somewhat naive citizens of small towns across America don’t have a clue what is going on in places like Los Angeles and if they did they certainly wouldn’t want to see the same thing happening in their towns. 

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