Just unbelievable. Seems by hook or by crook Obama is doing exactly what his corporate donors demand he do. That's import more foreign workers to take American jobs.
The latest is in a faux pas agenda that is being sold as a manufacturing policy. Contained within Obama's lobbyist white paper being presented as a report we have this:
Expand the number of high-skilled foreign workers that may be employed by U.S. companies.
Let's see, we only have more Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) college graduates than the U.S. can employ and it is well documented foreign workers are used to labor arbitrage U.S. workers. There are currently about 200,000 tech workers needing a job and that does not count the hundreds of thousands forced out of their careers by foreign guest workers and offshore outsourcing.
Even worse, we have policy that one can cut and paste from a Microsoft lobbyist white paper wanting to expose more U.S. Engineers to displacement, age discrimination and layoffs:
In addition, the United States must continue to draw the best talent from abroad. In the near term, steps must be taken to expand the number of available H1B visas for those with advanced education in science and engineering. Due to the stringent constraints on visas, tens of thousands of highly qualified graduates of U.S. colleges and universities return to their home countries each year. U.S. companies have tremendous need for such workers. Moreover, foreign born scientists and technologists greatly contribute to the U.S. economy by starting enterprise here. Roughly one third of startup firms in Silicon Valley are started by foreigners.
It is simply not true that one third of Silicon valley companies, actually making something, are started by foreigners, trying to imply those foreigners come over on corporate sponsored guest worker Visas. Most who are foreign born, came to the United States as children and are de facto, American, U.S. citizens. Additionally, what's missing is the many U.S. citizen inventors laid to waste because they are too busy scrambling to make rent, eat are not supported to form new start-ups, businesses.
Also included in that tally are a host of body shops, where the start up business, is all about displacing U.S. workers and shipping work abroad.
These same corporate lobbyists have been trying to get unlimited Visas into the United States for years. Since comprehensive immigration reform has failed, it seems now they are hiding their U.S. worker displacement program in a so called manufacturing policy. Microsoft, for example, fired 5000 engineers all the while lobbying for more foreign guest workers. G.E., IBM, HP and many others have actually increased their workforce abroad, while laying off U.S. workers or not creating jobs here. Yet here they are, having the President of the United States present a global labor arbitrage agenda as something to help U.S. manufacturing.
Expand the number of high-skilled foreign workers that may be employed by U.S. companies. This can be done by such policies as allowing foreign students that receive a graduate degree in STEM from a U.S. university to receive a green card, allowing each employment-based visa to automatically cover a worker and his or her spouse and children, and increasing the number of H1B visas.
The reality is more and more people were either forced out of their STEM careers or simply won't go into it in the first place. Why? Because while these fields require hard work, brains, years of dedication and study, those efforts are not rewarded. Instead, U.S. STEM are exposed to labor arbitrage, offshore outsourcing and displacement through H-1B Visas. Literally, 53% of all women who graduate in STEM are forced out of their careers in 10 years, 53%! Finding a Black engineer in Silicon valley is an exercise in Where's Waldo.
Instead of demanding U.S. manufacturing hire U.S. citizen workers, we have Obama proclaiming more labor arbitrage, more U.S. worker displacement will create jobs. This is precisely the opposite of what even the GAO has found.
Unbelievable, no wonder we have a 9.1% unemployment rate.
The rest of Obama's agenda doesn't focus on actual manufacturing, instead it's about technology transfer between academia and the private sector. In other words, taking publicly funded research results and handing them over to private companies, or privatizing them. That's not manufacturing.
Manufacturing means we make stuff here. It's production, and one of the few industries that scales to create enough jobs to turn the United States around.
Obama's agenda, on the other hand, is about research and development. Just as Apple offshore outsources the jobs which actually manufacture their products, the same will happen with this new agenda. We will pay taxes and give subsidies to corporations. They offshore outsource the resulting jobs.
That's not a U.S. manufacturing policy designed to invest in America and hire Americans.
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Comments
Good to See Jobs, Outsourcing and Trade Issues Addressed
I'm glad to see that there is a site that addresses the issue of job loss or missed job opportunities that results from race to the bottom low wage competition whether abroad in the form of offshoring or at home in the form of bringing in information tech workers who undercut wages and take jobs from US citizens. This is a form of zero-sum globalization.
This is one of the few sites that addresses both the trade and jobs issue plus regressive macroeconomic policy and predatory corporate behavior all in one place. I believe that unless all of these issues are addressed we are likely to see continued deterioration of living conditions for working people, meaning those who do productive work and live only from wages or salaries. To this I will add making sure that re-industrialization is environmentally sustainable and "green".
Alan F. Fogelquist
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy
Predictions
Being no prophesier, all I can do is give odds based on how it looks to me, everything considered.
I still see Obama, amazingly, as odds-on to survive in 2012.
What could change that?
1. Substantial phenomena around an independent running for president, if pushing some kind of protectionist agenda. This independent could be Donald Trump or Buddy Roemer (currently experiencing a media black-out and also consigned to non-person status by the entire apparatus of both major parties, including his own party), or, it could even be Mitt Romney, if Romney would come forward with a protectionist platform. Of course, it could be Ralph Nader too, although he's worn out whatever little toe-hold he ever managed in climbing up the wall surrounding corporate mass media (including PBS and NPR). It could conceivably even be the Green Party, if they would push protectionism strong enough over their omnibus idealistic platform.
2. Rise of a real alternative party with a protectionist full-employment agenda -- pushing not only a presidential candidate but focused on congressional races too.
3. Real opposition within the Democratic Party to Obama, from a protectionist candidate.
Somehow some national political figure has to raise the issue of tariffs, hit it hard and keep on hitting, tapping popular support. For me, Trump did not hit it hard enough, but he's the only one so far who has a glimmer of the potential popular strength of a protectionist program. That idea can work across all demographics and all political persuasions. But no political figure wants to be identified with it?
2012
The only thing that I'm comfortable predicting about 2012 is that in Dec of that year, I believe, the Mayan long count calendar runs out. The Mayan's attached no significance to it at the time but I'll try here. It's not the end of the world, that would be too easy. It represents the end of presidential politics as we know it.
Obama barely tops 50% in job approval polling but he in the mid to high 50% range on favorability. If he works really hard to close the upper gap with targeted lies to please those who favor him but don't approve of his policies, that's one pillar of his strategy. The other will be the Republican candidate. If it's one of those in the race now, Obama has it made. Romney is the most "presentable" and he's a clown. The ringer is Huntsman. He's got a Jimmy Carter feel to him. Guy from nowhere. Looks "right" and can speak in full sentences. His record as Utah governor is as of yet unexamined. There are, no doubt, ideological skeletons and maybe others in his closed. He'd have an outside chance but would not likely survive the Obama attack crew, which is now experienced enough to take apart most challengers.
So lets say it's Obama. People will vote holding their noses and expect little. There will be an entire campaign that is seen from end to end as a misrepresentation of the people's interest. It will result in an inauguration of a president with a 22-23% plurality (presuming low turnout) of qualified voters, hence represent a small minority of those capable of voting. The Democrats will take back Congress with the public punishing the Republican members this time.
And the conclusion of it all will be more sleepwalking by the Democrats, no action, and worsening economic conditions. I'm happy to be wrong on this but I suspect that the real action will be in 2013 when the people will start something to throw the bums out.
Corporate media and smoke and mirrors can only work so long in the face of undeniable, ongoing hardship.
Michael Collins
Republicans your $$$$ party
I honestly don't think it matters at all. Huntsman is exactly the same as Obama, exactly the same as Bush, all doing whatever lobbyists want them to do.
More we're watching the complete destruction of the United States and it's an inside job.
Downgrading Obama's chances for 2012
Earlier this year, I would have taken Obama if I could get $3 for my $2, but now I would need $4 for my $2, at least.
Mandate of Heaven
Looks like Obama is losing what in the old days was known in China as the "Mandate of Heaven." When an emperor lost the Mandate of Heaven, that reflected failing crops and natural disasters as well as increasing corruption and thievery. It was always the Mandate of Heaven that pulled the Emperor, or at least the Dynasty, through tough times. Or it was loss of the Mandate of Heaven that sunk the Emperor and, often, the Dynasty.
Of course, the Mandate of Heaven is all a matter of perception. It's like putting a sales value on Facebook -- almost entirely intangibles. Analysis based on fundamentals is impossible. It's all about perceived value.
Clinton, in 1996, survived because he held onto the Mandate of Heaven, even as he sacrificed whatever support he may once have had among progressives. Similarly, Bush in 2004 survived with the appearance of the Mandate of Heaven, even though trends could be projected toward loss of the Mandate. Reagan clearly retained the Mandate of Heaven in 1984. Nixon managed it in 1972 ... but then the Mandate evaporated on him.
It's bigger than just Obama, and no one knows how big. When the last emperor of China lost the Mandate of Heaven, it spelled the end of the entire imperial system that had ruled in China for millennia. There had always been transitional times, of course, but the imperial system -- renewed rather than reformed -- was always the objective throughout any transitional period.
A lot depends on whether Obama has any real opposition in 2012. But a lot also depends on developments that cannot be foreseen -- the Mandate of Heaven.
We also must take into account the influence of millennialism or, more accurately, of the many millennialisms that circulate in the American public mind today. If decline is seen as a symptom of some predestined global time-table, then Obama is off the hook ... unless enough people can be convinced that the evil times are caused by homosexuality in the U.S. military.
If a Republican wins by default in 2012, and decline continues to accelerate ... that might pose a threat to established international interests that could only be rated by those interests as much riskier than if Obama wins by default in 2012. "You don't change horses in the middle of a raging stream."
As Michael Collins notes, about the only sure thing is that the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012.
Unelect Washington in 2012
Why wait till 2013 to throw the bums out.
Washington isn't on your side.
Thanks Robert!!!!
Excellent article Robert!! Thanks for your excellent points!
The PhD Factory
Suggest you read a major article in the British Journal Nature, Vol 472, April 2011.
It's called "The PhD Factory" and it outlines in great detail the overabundance of US and global PhDs.
The only people unaware of the glut in US scientists reside in Washington DC!
Goldman Sachs hiring in Singapore, laying off here
Huffington Post cites Fox Business News that "Goldman Sachs, the country's fifth-largest bank by assets, plans to hire 1,000 people in Singapore while laying off a significant number of workers at home."
HuffintonPost.com (27 June 2011)
banks offshore outsourced during massive layoffs
Citigroup signed a $2.1 billion dollar contract, so did Chase. This is what they do, displace Americans are seemingly their top agenda!
Well, rack up another reason to hate Goldman Sachs, as if they are not enough already.
STEM Realities, President Obama's Policies SOS
89,000- PhDs are now in temporary employment postdoctoral positions with no health benefits, etc, according to the National Postdoctoral Association (many of theses are H1Bs receiving PhDs in foreign countries, but need jobs here).
27,000- PhDs- the number of Science and Engineering postdocs (Physics and Engineering) with temporary visas at US universities, as given by the National Science Foundation, tripling from 1985 to 2005.