SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Adam Davidson at The New York Times has a story debunking the myth of the job-stealing immigrant:
When I was growing up in the 1980s, I watched my grandfather — my dad’s stepdad — struggle with his own prejudice. He was a blue-collar World War II veteran who loved his family above all things and was constantly afraid for them. He carried a gun and, like many men of his generation, saw threats in people he didn’t understand: African-Americans, independent women, gays. By the time he died, 10 years ago, he had softened. He stopped using racist and homophobic slurs; he even hugged my gay cousin. But there was one view he wasn’t going to change. He had no time for Hispanics, he told us, and he wasn’t backing down. After all, this wasn’t a matter of bigotry. It was plain economics. These immigrants were stealing jobs from “Americans.”
I’ve been thinking about my grandfather lately, because there are signs that 2015 could bring about the beginning of a truce — or at least a reconfiguration — in the politics of immigration. Several of the potential Republican presidential candidates, most notably Jeb Bush, have expressed pro-immigration views. Even self-identified Tea Party Republicans respond three to two in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Every other group — Republicans in general, independents and especially Democrats — is largely pro-immigrant. According to Pew, roughly as many people (18 percent of Americans) believed in 2010 that President Obama was a Muslim as believe today that undocumented immigrants should be expelled from the United States. Of course, that 18 percent can make a lot of noise. But for everyone else, immigration seems to be going the way of same-sex marriage, marijuana and the mohawk — it’s something that a handful of people freak out about but that the rest of us have long since come to accept.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday March 28 2015, @03:50PM
The problem isn't immigration as much as temporary workers who rotate into and out of America. No American who lives in this society, wants to put down roots, and have a career can possibly compete with a constant rotation of temporary workers who earn money for a few years, live minimally, and go home. These people don't need to survive for the long term. As long as there is a constant rotation of these people every few years, they'll depress wages and allow companies to have a constant stream of crappy 3-month and 6-month contract jobs. That's really the crux of what is wrong with H-1B visa labor. If the H-1B people had to come to America and maintain lives over the long term, they'd need (and want) more money. But as long as this rotation of H-1B labor keeps happening, then the information technology field is largely closed to natives who need to support themselves and families. Life in America is very expensive when you consider what a native American in a middle-class job has to pay to maintain a residence, transportation, insurance, taxes, and so on. As long as jobs are paying what someone needs to live temporarily in America with no long-term obligations, then Americans can't make it.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)