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-Caveat Lector-
Reports are circulating that President Bush has already raised $34 million for his 2004 bid to hold on to the presidency
a war chest that will approach a quarter of a billion dollars by the time all is said and done. Meanwhile, in a related story, the Associated Press is reporting that (surprise!) politicians mostly vote "the way their donors wanted."Some of the biggest check writers in American politics are American corporations, and, for big multinationals, the palm greasing is paying off. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that the Bush Administration is seeking to make its foreign and economic policies "mutually supportive."
If the free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore Zoellick's office recently negotiated are any indication, "mutually supportive" means that global conglomerates make out like bandits at the expense of the American people. The Chile/Singapore free trade agreements will allow "American" corporations to move an unlimited number of "employees" from those countries to ours. Congress, to which the Constitution gives complete power over all immigration matters, will have no way to set restrictions. In other words, multinational corporations
not the American peoplewill dictate the number of foreigners allowed into the United States.As the Federation for American Immigration Reform points out, "making these provisions especially dangerous, the Bush Administration is touting them as a model to be replicated in future trade agreements with numerous other countries."
Rob Sanchez, a long-time critic of the corporate abuse of work visas, was the first to warn of the dangers to the American worker of Bush's "trade promotion authority." "These trade bills," Mr. Sanchez wrote in May 2002, "are unique from other types of immigration laws in one major way: they cannot be repealed by Congress without the consent of the country the agreement was made with. Once these agreements are passed, American workers will be powerless to stop the flood of workers that will arrive to compete with them in the job market."
With eighteen million Americans struggling to find full-time employment, the Bush Administration has no business making agreements with foreign nations to flood the labor market with an unlimited amount of imported labor
Below are some stories by those who have suffered because of our government's refusal to enforce immigration law.
I lost my job with Lockheed Martin when the US EPA awarded the contract to another company so they could lay off the high salaried personnel and force the remaining people to take 14% pay cuts. However, it was the junior analyst to me, an H1 visa recipient, who received another job with Lockheed, despite a very favorable evaluation of me from my manager.
This person had no college degree, was functionally illiterate, and lacked any skills other than the fear of being forced to return to India. Furthermore, we had been subjected to security investigations when we were hired, and I never could fathom how someone from another country could pass such scrutiny.
Of the numerous H1 visa individuals I have encountered while working at the US EPA, US Postal Service, State of North Carolina, and IBM, many were marginally capable, but very few had college degrees.
If Americans are required to get college degrees but are replaced by cheaper workers, regardless of their skill level, what message are we sending to Americans? Education was supposed to be the savior of the American worker as manufacturing jobs were shipped to China.
Here I am with four Masters degrees, twenty years of experience in high tech jobs, several certifications, and I haven't had a single response to any of the hundreds of jobs I have applied for in the last eighteen months.
How do I get an H1 visa?
Robert Pfeifer
West End, NC
I spent 15 backbreaking years building a business only to have it ruined by folks here illegally, and our government not protecting me.
Like many employers across this county, we were forced into making a big decision, violate our laws by hiring illegal aliens or do what is in the best interest of our country, and not hire them. I use to pay my people a living wage back when I could have employees -- it was $15.00 per hour. Since this flood of illegals who will work for poverty level wages, I cannot compete anymore paying those wages, so citizens have lost jobs and I have lost business. Those that employ these folks beat my bids by not having to pay workers comp, taxes, Social Security ETC…
I will not violate our laws, so I am down to me as the only employee. I have lost major income and struggle to pay my bills and take care of my son, as I am a single father.
Alan Culver
Carson City, NV
I am writing to let people know that I was terminated from my job at an international airport in Florida for telling my employer that I was going to report the use of illegal labor at the airport. The employer was an agency operator for one of the major car rental companies, and his use of illegals is typical of so called "drive services" and "independent contractors." If you think that telling the car rental companies management about the illegals will do any good, think again. The middle management of this company (Avis) has its fingers in these drive services--as they are very profitable. So for you people out there who think that the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) would do something about this situation let me tell you, I wrote a letter of complaint (ten months ago) and they ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO ANSWER OR TALK TO ME. This to me is simply amazing.
Robert Packard
Mims, FL
Because of mass immigration, almost all the remaining woodlands on Staten Island have been destroyed and replaced with houses, and strip malls. Our roads are now clogged with more cars, there is more crime, school overcrowding, and more stress, pollution and less a feeling of the home I once knew. My home has been invaded, that is for sure. Now, illegal aliens build houses, mow lawns and walk the streets. They take jobs from teenagers and those in poverty. There is an epidemic of home teardowns. Single-family homes are being replaced with two, three, four or five-family homes. Staten Island is being deliberately overcrowded by greed driven development, which is driven by population shifts. As immigrants flood the inner city, it spills over into my community.
I am tired of being in my own home and hearing foreign languages. I miss the stability of home. I am disappointed in Congress, and the President for betraying the American people, for allowing this invasion. Does anyone care about the dispossessed American? Mass immigration has taken my home and turned it into something no one wanted. It is a disgrace and if it doesn't stop, the American people must make it stop, or we will lose our homes.
Glenn Cronick
Staten Island, NY
In my occupation, warehouse supervisor, wages have dwindled in the past 10 yrs. The reason is that all the companies' shipping departments have been flooded with cheap Mexican labor. Illegal aliens have driven down the wages of numerous occupations--all the way from the fast food industry or restaurant industry to construction. I'm just seeing a lot of corruption around me and it sickens me to see the town I grew up in starting to look like a Third World village in Mexico.
My niece is in a school where there are so many non-English speaking Mexican kids that it is deterring the American kids from learning. I'm writing to say that this is not a funny or passing fad--this is a major problem and all the politicians ignore it.
Jerry Wilson
Redwood City, CA
I am an electronic engineer. At least, I was until I got laid off on April 26 last year. For over one year now, I have been unable to get a new job. I am told that there are about 80 applicants for every engineering job! It is said that Lockheed in Fort Worth advertised 200 openings and got 30,000 applicants! Yet companies continue to scream that there's a shortage of engineers! Congress, dependent on campaign contributions (bribes) from these companies, continues to expand the number of foreigners allowed to enter the country on the H1-B and L-1 programs and take jobs from American citizens.
U.S. corporations no longer have to outsource high-tech or information technology (IT) job to China or India. They just bring your replacement here on an L-1 visa
L-1 visas were created to facilitate intra-company transfers within multinational corporations. Corporations use them to hire Asians at one-third the salary of their U.S. employees. Then the Asians are transferred to the United States, where the "downsized" U.S. employees spend their last employed months training their replacements. It allows U.S. corporations to claim they are paying "prevailing wages" to all employees
L-1 visas get around the legal technicalities that Congress placed on the H-1B visa program According to Business Week, there are now about 350,000 foreigners on L-1 visas who have displaced U.S. IT and high-tech employees. Put this number together with the number of H-1B visas, and Americans have lost 750,000 high-income jobs in the last few years No other country in the world, with the partial exception of the United Kingdom, dispossesses its own citizens in this way
John G Marson
Tampa, FL
I'm a highly educated, experienced and successful engineer in the Silicon Valley region of California. Before 1987, my unemployment rate was 0%. Since 1987, my unemployment rate has been 75%. The causes of this are complex. However, the H-1B, L-1, TN and other occupationally tied visa programs created by Congess have surely been a major factor.
Terry Oldberg
Los Altos Hills, CA
(to read all of Mr. Oldberg's informative message, click here)
Due to a lack of work, my software consulting manager position was eliminated. No one seemed to be hiring middle managers, so I had to revert to my computer programming roots.
There were few openings and the competition was fierce, but after two months I got a job making $25,000 less per year. Now I know why. In just my business unit, 14 of 29 consultants are foreign born or offspring of foreign born--mostly Asian, but also African, Russian, Mexican, and Swedish. I've observed similar trends at the other consulting companies and clients I am working with.
The salaries that especially the foreign born are willing to work for seems responsible for a reduction of the average annual salary for programmers. I'm on the upper end of my pay scale doing something I have not done in years, so I'm constantly worried about being replaced. Something must be done.
Michael Duane Comer
Atlanta, GA
When hundreds of Vietnam immigrants were being brought into the Seattle area by the government after the war, I tried to get hired at a shipyard in Seattle, which had government contracts at that time. It was mandated that some of these people be put to work and due to lack of qualifications their wages would be subsidized. Jobs in the mechanical trade were lacking at that time and I had been laid off. In spite of having years of experience in that industry, there were no openings for me due to the many inexperienced Vietnamese who were put to work there. I, born and raised in this country and a WW11 veteran, was outside looking in. Needless to say, I resented our politically correct congress allowing programs like that.
Charles Cripps
Gig Harbor, WA
I pursued a difficult course of study that ended at age 32 with my earned Ph.D. in Biophysics. I earned honors. I had heard the false employer claims that there was a "looming shortage" of scientists and engineers. Really, there is a shortage of jobs in all technical fields, particularly for experienced American citizens.
I have had my job cut by six different employers, even while I have received special positive recognitions from those same employers. I have experienced many traumas as a consequence of those job cuts. My most recent employer, Genuity, cut my job in August, 2001 and kept its H-1Bs (foreign workers in the U.S. on a special, very profitable kind of visa Congress has given away to some narrow business interests). I am writing a book, An American Scam about the national security harms of these "government subsidy" programs that continue to import tidal waves of foreign technical professionals.
Gene Nelson, Ph.D
Carrollton TX(e-mail the author for a 22 - page special Congressional Summary released in September, 2002)
I lost my job with a large consulting company in April 2002 after over 20 years in the IT profession. I have sent out so many resumes all over this country that I have lost count. I can count the replies or acknowledgements on my fingers. I have had two face-to-face interviews since then.
I have had to sell my cabin, my house and boat are up for sale, and soon the house mortgage will go unpaid. My retirement savings are gone. I had to borrow money to pay my taxes due to the penalties imposed for using my 401(K) money to live on.
I live in a country where my one and only beloved child is in the Marines over in Iraq fighting for his country...a country where his mother can no longer find employment.
I have lost all faith in my government. They seem to be as out of control as the rest of the world.
Soon I may be forced to file bankruptcy and move in with my mother. Thank God I love my mother like a friend.
I would much rather be working - I'm only 45 years young.
I am now seriously looking at re-training for another - lower paying - position just to get back to work, [while the government continues to import IT workers from abroad].
Brenda S Walker
Houston, TX
I have been more and more sickened through the years as I watched an unresponsive Congress diminish the ability of millions of good citizens to keep even a minimal quality of life in this country--all for corporate greed.
When is the outrage of calling people racists, which is only a tool of special interest groups for obtaining cheap labor and boosting the golden parachute funds for corporate fat cats, going to end?
I am still amazed at the audacity of the Congressional slaves of these rich interest groups after 9/11. Thankfully immigration has started to become THE issue!
Bill Moore
Rohnert Park, CA
I have always been able to stay off unemployment because I am a skilled dry-wall finisher, a trade learned in my youth, and one that has often proven very handy. Unfortunately, there are no openings anymore for English-speaking dry-wallers. Two years ago I worked for a company in Dallas and I was the only employee who was American born and that spoke English. (Not to mention that the pay has not moved in 15 years!)
Now needing work again I can't find it. When calling companies they question my qualifications, even though I have years more experience than my young Mexican co-workers (many under 17, which is a violation of Texas law in that they are to be in school). When I worked in Colorado Springs in the late 90's I was blackballed because I blew the whistle to my Congressman and Senators, along with the INS, about the sudden overflow of illegals on the job sites. After the government shut down in 95, the INS was forced to turn a Coyote's (smuggler) troop of illegals lose in Grand Junction because they didn't even have the money to bus them back to Mexico. The word quickly spread and within a year there was hardly any English being spoken on the job sites. I raised a stink with my employer, got fired for it, and then was unable to get hired anywhere else.
John Cobble
Dallas, TX
I am one of 20+ Americans forced to train our foreign replacement workers by Siemens in Lake Mary, FL. Those workers were Tata Consulting (TCS) India employees. TCS India transfers their employees from TCS India to TCS USA using the congressional H-1b and L-1 "intra-company transfer" work visas to take the jobs we did. Our management brought the Americans into a room and told us we would be laid off. "But first," they said, "we want you to train your replacements." They held out a carrot for the Americans, a severance check. "Stay on and train your foreign replacement workers and we'll give you this check when you leave."
Now, Is this fair to American citizens? Believe me, it is happening all over the country and our congressional leaders will not help us. Why? Corporate Campaign Contributions. Our representative, John L. Mica, during the exact timeframe we were pounding on his office door for help (Aug 15-Dec/2002), was cashing campaign contribution checks from Siemens. You can see them right here at http://www.opensecrets.org
Michael T. Emmons
Longwood, FL
I was laid off in 1992 from an accounting job at a hotel in New York City. My salary at the time was $27,000.00 per year. My replacement was an immigrant from India, who happened to be a Muslim. I did not earn as much money again until last year, 2002.
I believe this is important information, because many immigrants are taking professional jobs away from American citizens. The immigrants are not just doing the "jobs we don't want to do," as is commonly stated. They are taking good jobs from us, and lowering our standard of living.
Stephen Clendenning
Bethlehem, PA
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