06-06-2020, 04:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-06-2020, 04:31 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-06-2020, 09:26 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-30-2020, 12:51 PM)David Horn Wrote: And let's admit it: H-1B visas are legalized pseudo-slavery. The visas are owned by the companies doing the hiring. If the person benefitting from a visa complains too much, he or she is merely replaced by a more compliant alternative. If we really need all these educated folks that badly, hand out Green Cards and keep the playing field even for all -- migrant and native.
I agree completely and have argued so for years. And the same thing applies to illegal immigrant agricultural workers.
This benefits the owners of large tech businesses and some not so large - but still not small - agricultural businesses. However, the power in the Republican party shifted starting in 2010 to workers, starting with the affluent workers and now shifting to the working class, too. These are the people who lose the most to immigration.
The owners who benefit are increasingly shifting their allegiance to the Democrats. Google and Twitter are ultraleft, Facebook and Apple are way left of center. The Republican party doesn't own the big businesses any more, so they don't need to be loyal to them.
If we have to look abroad for educated, qualified workers, doesn't that say something about our education system, and the neglect it has suffered under 40 years of Reaganomics?
Those companies may be switching to Democrats, or always were since they are headquartered in a blue state and a very blue area (Silicon Valley). But they are not ultra-left. Facebook refuses to quell the flood of fake news perpetrated by the Republicans, for example, and these companies tend to resist regulation just like others do. Other types of corporations are still largely loyal to Republicans, such as big oil and big pharma. A real progressive president would insist on regulation and even break-up of some of these Silicon Valley behemoths, and then they might not be so loyal. And if Democrats were to change the supreme court and the senate so that political reforms would pass, then these companies might not be able to buy influence as easily, and it would not matter so much what Party they support.
The H-1B visas are a problem for educated middle-class or upper-class workers in high tech. But scapegoating poor immigrants for the middle-class, educated H-1B visa immigration problems misses the point. Scapegoating poor immigrants does fool some working class folks in red and purple states, but they might not be fooled as often in the future when they see what a terrible leader this scapegoating has produced, and how little treating them unfairly accomplishes in bringing back the jobs which their bosses have taken away from them.
Workers need to see that their bosses are their adversaries, and to insist on Democrats getting elected, and insisting that they keep their promise to make unions easier to form and operate, to raise tariffs appropriately, and to raise minimum wages and raise taxes on rich, extortionist CEOs so that money can be redistributed through needed tax credits, grants, social programs, education, investments and infrastructure that help the economy. And regulate them so they don't destroy their environment as they are doing, and ruin democracy and destroy the economy with speculation as they do. And reform H-1B visa systems too.
The class war has been raging all along, and the workers have been losing it. They need to start fighting back and winning the war again. They need to wake up from the delusion that the capitalists are their friends who will pass on their tax breaks and benefits from lax regulations to them, and realize that the trickle-down theory is false. They need to start voting on the basis of the class war, and not on false values like gun rights and religious-right discrimination, or blaming ethnic groups who get welfare; values which the Republicans benefit from at the ballot box and use them to keep them down with their economic policies.