An article written by de Blasio appeared in Wired the same day, titled Why American Workers Need to [...]]]>
An article written by de Blasio appeared in Wired the same day, titled Why American Workers Need to Be Protected From Automation which is a topic more leaders should be addressing. The article is decent, but if anything, it underestimates the effect that the permanent removal of perhaps the majority of workers from the economy will mean. The adjustments to society will take decades.
The mayor’s Wired article cites only one study (from Brookings) showing why automation is a threat to the nation’s future, but there are many out there. Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. The consultancy firm PwC published a report last year that forecast robots could take 38 percent of US jobs by 2030. In November 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute reported that automation “could displace up to 800 million workers — 30 percent of the global workforce — by 2030.” Forrester Research estimates that robots and artificial intelligence could eliminate nearly 25 million jobs in the United States over the next decade, but it should create nearly 15 million positions, resulting in a loss of 10 million US jobs. Kai-Fu Lee, the venture capitalist and author of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, forecast on CBS’ Sixty Minutes about automation and artificial intelligence: “in 15 years, that’s going to displace about 40 percent of the jobs in the world.” A February 2018 paper from Bain & Company, Labor 2030, predicted, “By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs.”
So now there are two 2020 candidates who are discussing human job loss caused by smart machines in the future — the other is Andrew Yang. This development is real progress from the 2016 election when there were no discussions of the approaching employment breakdown: despite the endless of hours of pre-election debates and discussions, the issue was absent.
The good news about the de Blasio interview was Tucker’s question to the mayor: “If you really believe that automation is a threat to low-skilled jobs, why are you for mass immigration?”
Which de Blasio dodged.
The bad news is how Tucker became distracted from the important discussion about America’s future under smart machines to badger de Blasio about his terrible management of New York City: one topic is of a transitory nature; the other is world changing.
At least there were several good minutes before the important topic of automation was mostly lost:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: So in the three or so years the show has been on the air, we’ve taken a bunch of different positions on a bunch of different topics, but one thing we’ve always been consistent about from the first day until today is making fun of Bill de Blasio, the Mayor of New York — on every topic. If you watch this show, you’ll know.
Then the other day, it came to our attention that de Blasio has raised an issue that too few in either party are talking about. It’s the question of automation. He has got a piece in “WIRED” magazine on it.
De Blasio, as you as you know is also running for President. Something else we’ve made fun of. But his position on automation really struck us is pretty interesting, so yesterday, we arranged a phone call and we talked about a very friendly conversation, invited Mayor de Blasio to come on the show to talk about that and other things and he was gracious enough to respond.
And so we’re happy to have Mayor Bill de Blasio join us tonight live. Mr. Mayor, thanks a lot for coming on.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY): Thank you, Tucker and I appreciate that you care deeply about this issue of automation because it’s bearing down on all of us.
CARLSON: It is, it is and my praise of you on this question is totally sincere. Very few people are taking this seriously. Andrew Yang is one of them, you’re another. I can’t think of many others who are, and so God bless you.
So you’re basically saying that companies ought to have to — and I’m not sure how much of this I agree with, but I think I’m phrasing this correctly. You say companies ought to have to bear some of the cost of helping workers transition to something else when they lay them off in favor of robots.
DE BLASIO: That’s right. Tucker, right now, let’s just get the magnitude clear for all your viewers.
Middle-class Americans, working-class Americans whose jobs are not going to be there if we don’t do something different. Because right now, the recent estimate I saw, 36 million jobs that could be made obsolete. We’re talking as early as 2030 — 12 years ahead. Eleven to twelve years from now.
So here’s the reality. Right now, in fact the Federal Tax Code rewards companies that invest in the kind of technology that actually sheds jobs, destroys jobs.
Our tax dollars are helping companies — incentivizing companies to get rid of more and more American workers. So my plan is simple, it says, end that. We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that we could use to actually address our bigger issues in this country and employ a lot of people.
CARLSON: I am completely with you on that one right there. I’m sure there’s a lot of details we disagree on, but I agree with you on that, for sure.
DE BLASIO: And by the way, South Korea is doing that right now. They recognize that if they don’t stop incentivizing companies, a lot of times these companies are making the decision simply because it’s better for their tax reality rather than what’s better for working people or even productivity.
The second point of my plan is, let’s institute something — Bill Gates actually was the first one I think to call for — which is a quote unquote “robot tax.” It says simply, you know a worker pays income tax. You take away millions and millions of workers, that’s a lot less revenue to take care of all the things we need in our society and it means of course, millions and millions of people who don’t have a livelihood.
I believe in work. I think you do, too. I believe we need a future that’s based on work. So if a company is going to put thousands of people out of work, they should bear responsibility for making sure that those folks get a new job, either in the same company or elsewhere.
But that tax is both an incentive to keep people on the job in a good way, in a productive way, it also provides money to help foster from the Federal level the kinds of things we need a lot more of. We need a lot more investment in renewable energy and recycling and environmental restitution. There’s all sorts of this.
CARLSON: Well, let me ask you this question though, okay, so I’m not sure I think of the second, but I don’t think it’s totally crazy. You know, I am happy to read and think about it more. So we’re together up until this point, but if you really believe that automation is a threat to low-skilled jobs, why are you for mass immigration?
What are all of these people going to do, we’re importing with your help?
DE BLASIO: Look, Tucker, I’m not finished on the point about what we’re trying to achieve here and I certainly want to answer that question, it’s an important one. Let’s just be clear about the central point here.
Right now, there is no American strategy, no Federal government strategy to address automation and it could be the single most disruptive force in our society that we’ve ever experienced.
If you talk about tens of millions of working-class and middle-class Americans who no longer have work or the prospect of work, that’s unacceptable.
So the Federal government has to step up. There is no strategy now. There’s no candidate in my opinion who is offering a coherent strategy. I respect Andrew Yang for raising the issue.
CARLSON: So I agree. I would say that immigration — immigration is a close second as a force to transforming the country and the two are at cross-purposes. So immigrants come here overwhelmingly to work in low-skilled jobs, a lot of those jobs no matter how hard we try are going away. This is crazy, why are we doing this?
DE BLASIO: Well let’s face it, there’s a huge number of jobs right now and let’s take agriculture as an obvious example. We’re in the worst of all worlds. We don’t have enough workers to do the work among the people already in this country and we don’t have a coherent immigration system including something as obvious as a guest worker program, a legal guest worker program.
CARLSON: Okay, but Ag is a small sector.
DE BLASIO: That could actually take this some place.
CARLSON: Okay, Ag is — and that’s a separate debate. I disagree but that’s not — I mean, the much bigger picture is jobs in the service sector are going away that immigrants fill. We continue to import immigrants at over a million a year, why are we doing that?
DE BLASIO: Although I appreciate your point, the magnitude here speaks otherwise. Again, let’s take that number of 36 million and there are estimates that go a lot farther than that, Tucker.
CARLSON: Right, I know.
DE BLASIO: We’re not talking about — we’re not talking about the impact to immigration compared to that. We’re talking about something absolutely seismic and imagine, I think you and I share this concern. I bet a huge percentage of your viewers do, too.
How do we have a threat to our security, to our stability as a country, to our social fabric and there’s no strategy whatsoever? In fact, the recent tax legislation made it worse. Encouraged companies to lay off more workers and to put the money into new machines.
CARLSON: So what you’re saying — and I agree with you — is that we have this massive problem that everyone is ignoring and I want on that point to transition to the city that you run — New York, where I was yesterday.
The city is dirty and it’s getting dirtier. One of my producers told me just yesterday that he was in a crowded subway car and a man dropped his trousers and defecated in the middle of the car and no one did anything about it and that’s a metaphor for what’s happening.
I go there regularly — and I have my whole life — and every time I go under your Mayorship, it is dirtier. There’s filth on the sidewalks. Do you notice any of that?
DE BLASIO: Tucker, look here’s what’s going on in New York City today. We have challenges, no doubt, and I don’t accept a situation like that. I’m someone who believes the quality of life has to be addressed aggressively. I believe in quality of life policing, I always have. That kind of situation is unacceptable. (Continues)
The founder of Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, appeared on Fox Business recently and remarked, “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cab for [...]]]>
The founder of Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, appeared on Fox Business recently and remarked, “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cab for couple of years. We’re now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida.”
Still, the Starsky boss says is is not ignorant of the job threat posed by self-driving vehicles, as he described in a June 11 interview:
Seltz-Axmacher explained to Freightwaves, “While others are trying to build fully autonomous trucks, we are building a truck that drives with no person in it and is remote-controlled for the first and last mile and that’s a completely different mindset. We are not eliminating drivers’ jobs. Instead, we are moving them from a truck to a safe and comfortable office where they utilize years of their long-haul trucking experience, but remain close to their families and go home between shifts.”
Perhaps. We’ll see how long that strategy lasts when other companies compete with cheaper hauling rates by deleting drivers entirely.
Below, a Daimler self-driving truck near Hoover dam in 2015.
I thought that trucking would go first for the intermediate strategy of platooning, where a driver pilots the lead truck with two or three vehicles following electronically. But Starsky is going for the big enchilada of full automation straight away. Perhaps they want the publicity of being first.
Keep in mind that driving is a major employment category for Americans. A 2015 Department of Commerce study said that one in nine US workers is employed as a driver:
So Washington won’t need to import any immigrants to work as drivers, since
Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete
Here’s a report from central Florida about the self-driving trucks:
]]>Driverless big rigs could be hitting Florida highways next year. Are you ready, good buddy?, Orlando Sentinel, June 13, 2019
Driverless semi-trucks could be sharing Florida highways as early as next year, and there will be no requirement that surrounding motorists know it.
Nor will autonomous driving systems need to be tested, inspected, or certified before being deployed under a new state law that takes effect July 1.
10-4?
Starsky Robotics, a San Francisco-based startup company that’s been testing its driverless trucking technology in Florida and Texas, has put out a call for job applicants who one day want to pilot big rigs remotely.
Starsky envisions its remote drivers logging onto computers in an office environment to take the reins of its trucks during the first and last miles of their long hauls.
That means the trucks will be on autopilot for the vast majority of their highway journeys.
Driverless deployments should begin in Florida by the end of 2020, Starsky says.That’s much sooner than 2027, the year consulting firm McKinsey & Company projects fully driverless trucks will be ready to hit the highway.
This brave new world is brought to you by a new state law authorizing driverless transportation networks to operate on public roads without the presence of human drivers in the vehicles.
On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill enacting the law in a ceremony at SunTrax, the state’s new autonomous vehicle testing track in Auburndale.
While the law will also open the door for ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to deploy fleets for commuter use, DeSantis’ signing ceremony was staged in front of a Starsky-branded semi-truck. Starsky demonstrated its technology during the event, the company said.
Co-sponsored by Rep. Jason Fischer, a Duval County Republican, and Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, the new law replaces an existing one that required a human driver be present and able to take over driving chores in autonomous vehicles operating on public property for any other reason than testing.
Brandes, Fischer and other proponents of driverless vehicle technology say automated systems will make transportation safer by removing the potential for human error. Driverless technology proponents envision a day in the not-too-distant future in which most driving becomes automated, freeing commuters to stare into their smartphones or their dashboard video screens.
Safeguards in the new state law are limited.
Companies will be allowed to deploy their systems with no state inspection or certification.
“Companies [that] wish to operate in the state can do so as long as they are in compliance with any applicable federal regulations and the insurance requirements outlined in state law,” said Beth Frady, communications director for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Owners of autonomous commercial vehicles will be required to carry at least as much liability insurance as the state requires for commercial vehicles driven by humans. Currently, that means a minimum level of $300,000 in combined bodily liability and property damage coverage for trucks with a gross vehicle weight of 44,000 pounds or more, and lesser amounts for lighter vehicles.
Autonomous vehicles used for “on-demand” networks must be covered for at least $1 million for death, bodily injury and property damage, the law states.
Autonomous vehicles also will be required to achieve what’s called “minimal risk condition” — such as coming to a complete stop and activating their hazard lights — if their operating systems fail.
Existing traffic laws requiring drivers to promptly notify law enforcement agencies of crashes and then remain on scene to provide information or render aid will be exempted if law enforcement is notified by a vehicle’s owner or by the vehicle’s automated system.
After a Senate committee hearing in March to consider the new law, Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, prevailed in her push to require owners of autonomous vehicles to carry insurance and be held responsible when vehicles fail to operate as intended.
But she was unsuccessful in her call for a requirement for some sort of signal to passengers and surrounding motorists that the vehicle is operating in the autonomous mode. (Continues)
It’s a popular proposal, according to a Rasmussen poll published May 20, titled, Voters Still See Skills-Based Legal Entry As Immigration Fix:
Voters [...]]]>
It’s a popular proposal, according to a Rasmussen poll published May 20, titled, Voters Still See Skills-Based Legal Entry As Immigration Fix:
Voters continue to believe the U.S. immigration system is broken and still tend to favor shifting to the skills-based system that President Trump is proposing.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters agree with Senator Lindsey Graham’s assessment last week that “we have a perfect storm brewing at the border because of a series of broken and outdated laws related to asylum and children.”
Tucker Carlson recently presented some observations about “merit” as a value in immigration after the Democrats had the predictable reaction of squawking “Racist!” at the president for common sense. Rep. Maxine Waters reflexively described the Trump immigration policy as “very racist” last week for requiring knowledge of English among newbies.
Some noticed that the Trump plan contained no overall reduction of immigrant numbers — something strongly indicated by the anemic wage growth among US workers. NumbersUSA released a video on May 6 expressing the worker viewpoint:
Another reason to decrease immigration is the increased use of worker-replacing robots. For example, Walmart (America’s largest company by revenue) is turning to automation to save money and increase efficiency:
Plus there is no discussion anywhere of the enormous factor of world population growth — now over 7.7 billion persons, more than double the 3.7 billion residents of the planet on the first Earth Day in 1970. Nearly all of that growth has occurred in the Third World which is now happy to send its excess people to America’s open border — remittances to follow, bringing billions of dollars to alien-sending countries south of the border and beyond.
Heres’s Tucker on the argument for merit-based immigration:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening, and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” This week, the Trump administration revealed its proposal to overhaul America’s immigration system. The proposal would not by itself build the often promised wall on our southern border, nor would it cut current levels of immigration despite the fact that most Americans would like to see that happen.
The one big thing the administration’s proposal would do is give priority to immigrants who might actually help America — skilled workers with English proficiency. It’s hard to see an argument against a system like that — there isn’t really an argument against that system.
For years, Democrats have argued that immigrants make vital additions to our economy. They’re smarter than we are, they’re harder working, they do better in school. They found more companies.
Well, the President has decided to take Democrats at their word; he says he wants all of those good things that immigrants bring. Watch:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We want immigrants coming in, we cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill.
CARLSON: Well, much of the world would move here if they could — hundreds and hundreds of millions of people. So why wouldn’t we pick the absolute best immigrants with skills in English who would fit in better here, their kids would do better in school, they’d be more likely to contribute to social programs instead of draining them.
So are Democrats rejoicing in this change? Of course not. They’re outraged. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke for the party when she declared that really merit is a bad word because everybody has merit:
REP. NANCY PELOSI: I want to just say something about the word that they use, “merit.” It is really a condescending word. Are they saying family is without merit? Are they saying most of the people who have ever come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit, because they don’t have an engineering degree?
Certainly, we want to attract the best to our country and that includes many people from many parts of society.
CARLSON: What a shame we can’t staff the Democratic Caucus in the Congress using the same criteria the Speaker would like to fill our country. “We want to attract the best for many parts of the world,” she says. But of course by that, Pelosi doesn’t mean what she says. She means just the opposite because what exactly is best about immigrants who have criminal records or middle school education, or no ability to hold a job?
The answer is, there’s nothing “best” about that. Immigrants like that might be nice people, but they’re much more likely to burden the United States than to benefit, at least economically. Harvard doesn’t admit students who can’t speak English. It says so right on their website, so why should our country?
The left doesn’t want to answer questions like that or even have the conversation. “Shut up racist.” It is said and is declared that the current system is great. No evidence necessary. Watch this former Obama official make her fact-free case on MSNBC yesterday:
RUTGERS ECONOMICS PROFESSOR JENNIFER HUNT: What’s less obvious is that medium and even the least-skilled immigrants also contribute to the U.S. economy. They come in and they do different things for natives and they allow everyone to specialize more in what they’re doing best.
It’s that contribution of the unskilled immigrants that I think people overlook when they really push the so-called merit-based or as it is called in other countries, the point system.
CARLSON: So what Professor Hunt and so many on the left, including the Speaker of the House are arguing for is a feudal system where foreign-born worker bees toil to support a smug and pampered managerial class, of which they of course are part.
There’s no other explanation for our current policies. We don’t need more low-skilled workers in the United States, we have plenty of low skilled workers. Their unemployment rate is higher than the national average. Their wage growth has been abysmal for decades — generations. So how do those workers benefit from having more competition? Of course they don’t.
How does the country benefit by having more low-skilled workers when technological changes may soon render millions of them permanently jobless? The answer, of course is that we won’t benefit.
But for the left, whether the country benefits is not the point. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar herself a symbol of America’s failed immigration system, if there ever was one; someone who hates this country coming here at public expense, spent yesterday demanding the abolition of ICE, the decriminalization of illegal immigration itself and an end to all deportation programs.
She demands open borders, the unlimited arrival of anyone who wants to come to America whether they have anything to contribute or not. And by the way, you get to pay for it. And if you don’t want to, you’re a bigot.
You know what this is really about, of course, it’s not about civil rights. It’s a joke. It’s about money and power — their money, their power.
The left has aligned with business interests that profit from cheap, obedient workers. Low-skilled immigrants have a harder time assimilating into the American mainstream. They stay poor. They learn English more slowly. They’re more likely to remain an ethnic underclass, all of which makes them much more likely to vote Democratic long term. That’s the point, obviously.
Skilled immigrants might assimilate and become less reliable Democratic voters. They might even compete with the children of our ruling class. That’s not allowed. It’s safer to import serfs, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. Don’t let them tell you, it’s about civil rights, it’s not; it’s about their convenience and their power.
Top leaders like President Bill Clinton and California Governor Jerry Brown have shamefully changed their positions entirely, from protecting [...]]]>
Top leaders like President Bill Clinton and California Governor Jerry Brown have shamefully changed their positions entirely, from protecting American citizens to recruiting foreigners who prefer the big government freebies that Ds provide. Plus a big amnesty from Democrats will leave many recipients feeling grateful at election time.
For example, Cesar Chavez is remembered by the left as an icon, but he acted to keep illegal aliens out of the United States.
Around 1975, Gov. Jerry Brown objected to a mass influx of refugees because Americans needed help. (Lately not so much.)
Here’s a transcript of the video, with Tucker Carlson narrating:
]]>Illegal Immigration — It’s about Power, Prager University, October 29, 2018
I recently watched a group of protestors, most of them young, denouncing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. They were waving Mexican flags and shouting: “¡Si, se puede!”—”Yes, we can!”
This is now the rallying cry of the open-borders left, but it wasn’t always. In fact, I wondered if a single person at the protest knew where it came from.
The slogan first became famous fifty years ago, thanks to Cesar Chavez. He was the founder of the United Farm Workers union. When Chavez said “Si, se puede,” he meant something very different: “Yes, we can… seal the borders.” Cesar Chavez hated illegal immigration.
He was Hispanic, obviously, and definitely on the left, but he fought to keep illegal Mexican immigrants out of this country. He understood that peasants from Latin America will always work for less than Americans will. That’s why employers prefer them. Chavez knew that. “As long as we have a poor country bordering California,” he once explained, “it’s going to be very difficult to win strikes.”
In 1969, Chavez led a march down the center of California to protest the hiring of illegal immigrant produce pickers. Marching alongside him was Democratic Senator Walter Mondale, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the longtime aide to Martin Luther King.
Ten years later, Chavez dispatched armed union members into the desert to assault Mexican nationals who were trying to sneak across the border. Chavez’s men beat immigrants with chains and whips made of barbed wire. Illegal aliens who dared to work as scabs had their houses fire-bombed and their cars burned.
Chavez wasn’t embarrassed about any of this. He bragged about it.
No matter. Chavez remains a progressive hero. President Obama declared his birthday a commemorative federal holiday. It’s an official day off in half a dozen states. There’s a college named after him, and dozens of public schools.
Cesar Chavez’s life is a reminder of how much the left has changed—and how quickly.
Until recently, most Democrats agreed with Chavez. They opposed unchecked immigration because they knew it hurt American workers. And they were right.
One study by a Harvard economist examined the effects of the mass migration of Cuban refugees to this country in 1980—the so-called Mariel boatlift. He found that American workers in Miami with a high school education saw their wages fall by more than thirty percent after the refugees arrived. If you believe in supply and demand, this is not surprising.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown opposed letting Vietnamese refugees into California on the grounds that the state already had enough poor people. As he put it at the time, “There is something a little strange about saying, ‘Let’s bring in 500,000 more people’ when we can’t take care of the one million Californians out of work.”
First term Senator Joe Biden of Delaware agreed; he introduced federal legislation to curb the arrival of the Vietnamese.
Two decades later, leading Democrats were still wary of mass immigration, especially illegal immigration. As Bill Clinton put it in the 1995 State of the Union address, “…Americans… are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.”
No prominent Democrat would say anything like that today without being denounced as a racist. Clinton got a standing ovation.
As late as 2006, there were still liberals who cared about the economic effects of immigration, legal or illegal. “Immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants,” explained economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times. “…We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skilled immigrants. Mainly, that means better controls on illegal immigration.”
That same year, Senator Hillary Clinton voted for a fence on the Mexican border. So did Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and 23 other Senate Democrats. Not anymore.
Twenty years after Bill Clinton told Americans they had the right to be upset about illegal immigration, his wife scolded the country for enforcing border controls.
So, what changed?
Not the economics of it. The law of supply and demand remained in effect. It’s not a coincidence that as illegal immigration surged, wages for American workers stagnated. What changed is that Democrats stopped caring about those workers. About the middle class, really.
Why?
Here’s the answer, in four simple facts.
One: According to a recent study from Yale, there are at least 22 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.
Two: Democrats plan to give all of them citizenship. Read the Democrats’ 2016 party platform.
Three: Studies show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
Four: The biggest landslide in American presidential history was only 17 million votes.
The payoff for Democrats: permanent electoral majority for the foreseeable future. In a word: power.
That’s the point, no matter what they tell you; American workers be damned.
I’m Tucker Carlson.
Despite being a “third-generation Mexican-American” as characterized in the piece, Cantu is expected by hispanics to be loyal to his race, not to his nation of citizenship. This attitude should alert us to a strain of disloyalty among hispanics who come for the dollars and little else. According to a 2012 Pew poll, only 21 percent of hispanics say they frequently use the term “American” to describe their identity:
Interestingly, Cantu is an unlikely target of Mexican racists, since he is not a great enthusiast for the border, US sovereignty or anything American. A February 12 PBS Newshour report (How this former Border Patrol agent learned to see through the eyes of those trying to cross) revealed him to be more an academic observer than a friend of law enforcement:
CANTU: “I still have a lot of the same questions that I came into the Border Patrol with. I really see the border as, like, a microcosm for all of these huge issues that we’re grappling with as a nation and as a global society. And so I have no urge to look away from the border.”
What is completely missing from Cantu or the Times is any concern with the mission of the Border Patrol, namely to protect the United States from enemy jihadists and an invasion of job thieves. American workers have suffered decades of lowered wages and outright job loss because of excessive legal and illegal immigration — where’s the sympathy for them? There’s none at the New York Times, where traditional Americans are regarded as an inconvenient block to a diversity utopia run by Democrats.
The New York Times title for the piece is “Border Patrol Memoir Ignites Dispute: Whose Voices Should Be Heard From the Frontier?” while the reprint below emphasized the tribal angle — which reflects how liberals have so many complaints about borders and sovereignty.
]]>The Latino Who Hunted Latinos, WRAL.com, May 19, 2018
By SIMON ROMERO, New York Times
TUCSON, Ariz. — Writer Francisco Cantú, who spent years as a Border Patrol agent, braced for the fury of anti-immigration figures and his former colleagues when he published a haunting memoir this year delving into authorities’ frequent abuse of immigrants in the Southwest borderlands.
But when such reactions were muted, Cantú wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of criticism he received from the other end of the political spectrum, including undocumented writers and artists around the United States who view the Border Patrol as a paramilitary force inciting fear and destroying families.
Some called Cantu, 32, a third-generation Mexican-American, a “Nazi” and “traitor” for joining the Border Patrol in the first place. Others appeared at readings of his book in California and Texas, drowning out the events by screaming “vendido” — sellout — in his direction. Critics suggested boycotting Cantú’s book, “The Line Becomes a River,” branding him a quisling who profits in others’ blood.
“I don’t see why Cantú gets to be absolved and celebrated by saying he paid witness to the tragedy he was complicit in upholding,” said Jesús Valles, 31, a playwright and public high school teacher in Austin, Texas, who was among those protesting when Cantú recently traveled to Texas for book signings.
“It’s hard to even explain the fear that the Border Patrol instills in people like me,” added Valles, who was smuggled into Texas as a child before obtaining, years later, legal authorization to remain in the country. “It’s a dread of being hunted down like an animal, of seeing your siblings deported. And Cantú gets a fancy book deal after being one of the guys holding the guns.”
The simmering tension around Cantú and his book is igniting an energetic debate over who gets rewarded for telling stories of life along the border, highlighting quarrels between Latinos born in the United States and those who were brought illegally to the country as children as President Donald Trump’s polarizing border wall starts to take shape in the Chihuahuan Desert.
In a twist to the wrangling over his book, Cantú has caught some of his most strident critics off guard by thanking them and siding with them. In public appearances, he has asked that protesters be allowed to speak derisively of him and his book. And in an interview here in Tucson, where he lives, Cantú said he agreed with some of the charges leveled against him.
[. . .]
Still, an overriding influence for Cantú was his own mother, a former park ranger in the Guadalupe Mountains near El Paso. She tried to dissuade him from joining the Border Patrol, and when that didn’t work, she questioned her son about the cruelty of agents who allow migrants to die in the desert.
“She was concerned for the health of my soul,” Cantú said.
(Continues)
The RAISE legislation as submitted begins:
A BILL — To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish a skills-based immigration points system, to focus family sponsored immigration on spouses and minor children, to eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, to set a limit on the number of refugees admitted annually to the United States, and for other purposes.
I am impressed that the senators included the vile Diversity Visa for the dumpster along with the bigger stuff. The program is often overlooked but shouldn’t be, because choosing immigrants from a random drawing based on diversity is double bad. A visa to increase diversity is simply insane at this point.
The most appealing aspect of the bill is of course the reduction of legal immigration by half. A larger decrease would be better because of the automated future workplace, but half is a good start.
Below, Bloomberg reported in May that the number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. rose to nearly 27 million in 2016, up about 700,000 from the previous year and a new high (America’s Labor Force Is Made Up of More Immigrants Than Ever).
The senators appeared with President Trump on Wednesday in the White House to present the bill to the public (transcript here).
Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue discussed the legislation with Tucker Carlson later in the day:
SPARE AUDIO:
]]>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces our low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a green card. This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy.
TUCKER CARLSON: Senators Cotton and Perdue join us now; thanks to you both. Senator Purdue to you first. When you hear that, the precepts, the principles behind it sound non-controversial; they sound pretty basic. You guys work in politics. I know you’ve polled this. What’s the public opinion of those ideas?
SENATOR DAVID PERDUE: Well this is the the big learning here in Washington; the people out there and the rest of the country get this. Seventy-two percent believe it should be the primary worker plus their nuclear family or less. Eighteen percent, it ought to be just the the worker. So people out there in the real world get this: it’s pro-worker, it’s pro-growth, and it’s been proven to work in Canada and Australia.
CARLSON: What’s interesting, Senator Cotton, when you say this this bill is pro-worker — our current arrangement seems anti-worker. If you look at the effect on wages, working-class people in the country when the Kennedy Act became law, they’ve gone down and remained stagnant. Do you think there’s a direct connection between mass immigration and low wages?
SENATOR TOM COTTON: No doubt, Tucker. I mean the law of supply and demand applies to labor market just like it does to every other market hasn’t been repealed, even though some Republicans feel like it doesn’t apply there. Look, over the last 40 years, my lifetime, you’ve seen a quadrupling of the number of foreign-born residents in our country. The vast majority of those — 14 out of 15 — today come here not based on their skills or their education or their English language ability on some other category. They’re by definition unskilled and low-skilled.
In that 40-year window, if you have high school degree or less, your wages have fallen. If you have more than that, so if you’re not competing with those very same immigrants, your wages have increased. So there’s a direct correlation between the mass unskilled low-skilled migration we’ve seen over the last few decades and stagnant wages and standards of living for working Americans.
CARLSON: Wouldn’t it be clarifying to import — I don’t know — lobbyists for example from abroad who would work for less than our lobbyists? Maybe that. Or United States senators? I think that might change some ideas. [EDITOR: Or how about journalists? Why is there no journalist work visa?]
COTTON: Lobbyists, lawyers — there’s no end of this, that you could import people to compete directly against people in Washington DC and then they sing a different tune.
But there’s just simply no doubt that people who come here who are unskilled and low-skilled have a direct impact on the wages of Americans, whether their ancestors came over on the Mayflower or whether they just took the oath of citizenship, who are competing for those very same jobs.
CARLSON: So Senator Perdue, about 60 million Americans speak a language other than English at home. That’s a dramatic increase over the past 50 years, and it’s getting bigger every year. And it’s bad obviously, it divides the country. Do you think your bill would do something to change that?
PERDUE: First of all, there are several categories that we use in a merit-based system. This is what the president talked about in this campaign: it’s one of the reasons quite frankly I think he got elected, and I gave him high marks for making this a priority in this new administration. But when you look at the categories in here, somebody could come in here and be a PhD with no English skills and still qualify potentially. So this is not about English speaking only, this is about a diverse group of people to come in and help grow our economy.
CARLSON: So what are the criteria?
PERDUE: Well first you’ve got education, you’ve got job, if you’ve been contributory in terms of accomplishment, if you want to start a business or something like that. English is one and then compensation.
CARLSON: So if you want to invest a lot of money, you’re here. So who are the forces arrayed against this?
COTTON: A of people, once they learn about the bill, are actually pretty pleased with it. Again this only focuses on green cards, the million green card recipients every year. It doesn’t focus on temporary visas which can be controversial or anything else. And I would say that it’s better to make a citizen out of someone who comes here rather than just use them as a temporary laborer.
CARLSON: Where’s the Chamber of Commerce on this?
COTTON: I think a lot of them are going to be very supportive of it. Again, if you’re sitting in Silicon Valley and you depend on H1-b visas, wouldn’t you rather have someone who’s going to be a citizen of the United States and be here forever?
CARLSON: Are you all going to make this case publicly? Are you going to force the opponents of this bill to explain why they are against it?
PERDUE: We saw it today, we started a debate today, and we’re going to continue that. I can’t understand why anybody who wants a pro-growth effort in America to oppose this. I mean today, the system is so broken that only one out of every 15 who come in America come in with a skill. This is a broken system and it penalizes people who are who’ve been here and who just got here
CARLSON: Senator Cotton, can you give us the timeline for this?
COTTON: Well immigration’s obviously a complicated and controversial topic, but David and I are committed for the long haul to making this bill a reality. Again, the president campaigned on immigration as a single distinctive issue that separated him not just from Hillary Clinton, but from 16 other Republicans, and the American people expect him to deliver on that. This is one piece of the immigration puzzle. I think as more senators and congressmen learn about it, as they see what it would do for our working citizens and across the country what it would do for economic growth as a whole, I’m hopeful that we can get consensus. Even if there’s still a lot of other things that divide us on the immigration issue.
CARLSON: I think that’s right. You always are welcome here to explain how it’s going because we’re interested, our viewers are.
(Interestingly, it’s reported that Africans residing in India don’t feel safe there and encounter “racism at every turn.”)
What a rapid transformation. For years, Indians couldn’t wait to immigrate here and perhaps get a job in tech even when it meant working cheap as an H-1b to replace America workers. Now we’re not good enough for them. Oh, well!
Indians have a decent rep as immigrants because many are hard-working and don’t tend to rob Seven-Elevens. But as I wrote in a 2007 Vdare article (Dogs, Frogs and Dalits: The Indian Model Minority Has A Dark Side), there are problems. One is sex-selection abortion because Indians don’t value girls. Even though India made the practice illegal in 1994, it continues, and one NGO estimates that five to seven million sex-selective abortions are performed in India every year. As a result, the gender ratio is 89 females to 100 males, and a number of men cannot find a wife.
Another cultural practice that’s a bad fit in America — where we strive for an egalitarian society — is the discriminatory caste system. One quote from my 2007 article spoke volumes about snotty arrogance:
Caste in America is justified into more acceptable terms, like the computer programmer quoted by the NYT as saying, “That’s why I went into the Brahmin group, because I wanted to give my children the same values.” But the fact remains that Indians come to America, a society with minimal class distinctions, and see no problem with bringing their discriminatory caste system with them.
So if Indians don’t immigrate to America, that’s not a bad thing at all. Citizens have gotten tired of the oppressive diversity hectoring from elites and seeing their communities transformed into something foreign. That attitude is a big reason why Donald Trump was elected.
America could use a long time-out from immigration because we have plenty now, thanks anyway. Not to mention that automation will be doing an increasing amount of the work in coming years, so immigration really should be retired.
]]>For Indians, Donald Trump’s America is a land of lost opportunity, Straits Times, April 24, 2017
MUMBAI (NYTIMES) – Generations of Indians have admired the United States for almost everything. But many are infuriated and unnerved by what they see as a wave of racist violence under President Donald Trump, souring the United States’ allure.
The reaction is not just anger and anxiety. Now, young Indians who have aspired to study, live and work in the United States are looking elsewhere.
“We don’t know what might happen to us while walking on the street there,” said Kanika Arora, a 20-year-old student in Mumbai who is reconsidering her plan to study in the United States. “They might just think that we’re terrorists.”
Recent attacks on people of Indian descent in the United States are explosive news in India. A country once viewed as the Promised Land now seems for many to be dangerously inhospitable.
Further alienating Indians, especially among their highly educated class, is the Trump administration’s reassessment of H1-B visas given mostly for information technology jobs. More than 85,000 are granted a year, the majority to Indians.
This year, undergraduate applications from India fell at 26 per cent of US educational institutions, and 15 percent of graduate programs, according to a survey of 250 US universities by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
The number of applications for H1-B visas also fell to 199,000, a nearly 20 per cent decline, according to data kept by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Like many others, Indians were offended by Trump’s promises to block the Mexico border with a wall and bar people from six predominantly Muslim countries. Some took solace that India was not targeted.
But they soon saw that anti-immigrant rage in the United States did not discriminate.
In February, two Indian immigrants were shot, one fatally, at a bar in Kansas by a man who witnesses said had shouted ethnic slurs and told them they did not belong in the United States.
About 3.2 million people of Indian descent live in the United States, slightly more than 1 percent of the population, a Pew Research Center report found.
Most hold green cards and H1-B visas, and are far more affluent and educated than the average American.
Indian-Americans play an outsize role in Silicon Valley, where some, including Google Inc.’s chief executive, Sunder Pichai, have founded or run some of the most successful companies.
How gimmicky is it? Well, the English-speaking desk clerk is a bizarro dinosaur robot. Really.
The Japanese-speaking clerk is a cutesy humanoid [...]]]>
How gimmicky is it? Well, the English-speaking desk clerk is a bizarro dinosaur robot. Really.
The Japanese-speaking clerk is a cutesy humanoid robot. The Japanese people seem attracted to humanoid robots, and the more life-like the better.
Despite the appearance of a publicity stunt in this case, the robot hotel is partially here. Check-in has been computerized for years and doesn’t require much human help. The bellhop robot can act as room service to deliver items to guests (pictured). However, the bed-making robot has yet to be invented, so humans are not completely obsolete in hotel biz.
If we think about future labor needs as hinted by the robot hotel, they will be greatly reduced. You certainly won’t need an immigrant from Mexico to tote luggage up to your room in the hotel of tomorrow. The scenario of fewer human workers is playing out across the economy from unskilled jobs like bellhop to professions in finance and medicine.
Keep in mind that two Oxford University researchers estimated in a 2013 report that nearly half of American jobs are vulnerable to automation. America is lucky that citizen outrage stopped the Gang of Eight amnesty bill from becoming law, since it mandated a doubling of legal immigration going forward.
Even so, Washington is snoozing through the revolutionary upheaval in the workplace caused by technological inventions in robots, software and automation. Political hacks like Paul Ryan preach that the retirement of the boomer generation creates a worker shortage, requiring the importation of millions of foreigners to do the jobs.
Meanwhile in the real world, the actual workforce is shrinking. As Steve Camarota observed in a May 7 opinion piece in USA Today, Labor shortage? Are you kidding?:
Today, about one out of three Americans ages 16 to 65 is not working; in 2000 it was one out of four. At the start of this year, 68 million working-age Americans (excluding prisoners) were not working — 19 million more than in January 2000. Many of those not working are not even looking for work and have left the labor force entirely. There is clearly no shortage of potential workers in America now or in the foreseeable future.
Certainly the increased regulation of business by the administration accounts for some of the workforce shrinkage, but so does the tech transformation of the smart machine workplace. And the latter cause is not a part of economic discussions in the big capitol city. The willful ignorance is dangerous.
]]>Robots do check-in and check-out at cost-cutting Japan hotel, Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 15, 2015
SASEBO, Japan — From the receptionist that does the check-in and check-out to the porter that’s an automated trolley taking luggage up to the room, this hotel in southwestern Japan, aptly called Weird Hotel, is “manned” almost totally by robots to save labor costs.
Hideo Sawada, who runs the hotel as part of an amusement park, insists using robots is not a gimmick, but a serious effort to utilize technology and achieve efficiency.
The receptionist robot that speaks in English is a vicious-looking dinosaur, and the one that speaks Japanese is a female humanoid with blinking lashes. “If you want to check in, push one,” the dinosaur says. The visitor still has to punch a button on the desk, and type in information on a touch panel screen.
Henn na Hotel, as it is called in Japanese, was shown to reporters Wednesday, complete with robot demonstrations, ahead of its opening to the public Friday.
Another feature of the hotel is the use of facial recognition technology, instead of the standard electronic keys, by registering the digital image of the guest’s face during check-in.
The reason? Robots aren’t good at finding keys, if people happen to lose them.
A giant robotic arm, usually seen in manufacturing, is encased in glass quarters in the corner of the lobby. It lifts one of the boxes stacked into the wall and puts it out through a space in the glass, where a guest can place an item in it, to use as a locker.
The arm will put the box back into the wall, until the guest wants it again. The system is called “robot cloak room.”
Why a simple coin locker won’t do isn’t the point.
“I wanted to highlight innovation,” Sawada told reporters. “I also wanted to do something about hotel prices going up.”
Staying at Henn na Hotel starts at 9,000 yen ($80), a bargain for Japan, where a stay in one of the nicer hotels can easily cost twice or three times that much.
The concierge is a doll-like hairless robot with voice recognition that prattles breakfast and event information. It cannot call a cab or do other errands.
Japan is a world leader in robotics technology, and the government is trumpeting robotics as a pillar of its growth strategy. Robots have long been used here in manufacturing. But interest is also high in exploring the potential of robots in human interaction, including helping care for the elderly.
Robotics is also key in the decommissioning of the three reactors in Fukushima, northern Japan, which went into meltdowns in 2011, in the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.
One area Henn na Hotel still relies on human beings is security.
The place is dotted with security cameras, and real people are watching everything through a monitor to make sure guests stay safe and no one makes off with one of the expensive robots.
“And they still can’t make beds,” said Sawada, who has also engineered the rise of a popular affordable Japanese travel agency.
He has big ambitions for his robot hotel concept and wants to open another one soon in Japan, and later abroad. He is also eager to add other languages, such as Chinese and Korean, to the robots’ vocabulary.
A block-shaped robot that was scuttling around in the lobby had been brought in to do room service, delivering beverages and simple snacks. But it wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Outdoors, Sawada also demonstrated a drone that flew in to deliver a few small jars filled with snacks. He said he wanted to eventually have drones perform in shows for guests.
In the hotel’s rooms, a lamp-size robot in the shape of a fat pink tulip called Tuly answers simple questions like, “What time is it?” and “What is the weather tomorrow?”
You can also tell it to turn the room lights on or off. There are no switches on the walls.
Sawada is keeping the hotel half-filled for the first few weeks to make sure nothing goes wrong.
He also canceled at the last minute the overnight stay planned for media. The robots simply weren’t ready.
Obama has courted the billionaires of Silicon Valley to be supporters, and the tech bosses like [...]]]>
Obama has courted the billionaires of Silicon Valley to be supporters, and the tech bosses like open borders for IT workers so they can make even more money. A major tool is the H-1b visa for foreign tech employees who are supposed to be used only when a citizen cannot be found to do the job.
On Friday, Fox News journalist William La Jeunesse reported on the current state of H-1b visas with a timely example: Southern California Edison has brought in hundreds of Indians to replace citizen employees.
LA JEUNESSE: The president talks a lot about protecting the middle class yet 400 American workers here in Los Angeles are losing good middle class jobs to foreign workers on visas approved by the administration. Laid off workers at SCE, Southern California’s largest utility are furious because they must also train replacements from India. [. . .]
The Immigration and Nationality Act requires the hiring of a foreign worker not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of US workers comparably employed, but experts say the law is routinely ignored. [. . .]
SCE will save about $40,000 per worker, about $16 million a year by replacing American workers with foreigners on an H-1b visa.
Professor Norm Matloff’s newish blog, Norm Says No, has a lot of information about the wrong idea that the US needs to import millions of tech workers because Americans aren’t interested in the occupation. Not so: the wealthy companies just want to save some money.
America’s Senator, Jeff Sessions, read from the Computerworld article below, concerning SCE’s use of H-1bs, starting at around 2:35, on the Senate floor on Thursday as part of a talk about Washington’s attack on the American worker.
]]>Southern California Edison IT workers ‘beyond furious’ over H-1B replacements, By Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld, February 4, 2015
About 500 IT jobs are cut at utility through layoffs and voluntary departures
Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.
The employees are upset and say they can’t understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.
The IT organization’s “transition effort” is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with “another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily,” SCE said in a statement. The “transition,” which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said.
“They are bringing in people with a couple of years’ experience to replace us and then we have to train them,” said one longtime IT worker. “It’s demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company.”
SCE, Southern California’s largest utility, has confirmed the layoffs and the hiring of Infosys, based in Bangalore, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Mumbai. They are two of the largest users of H-1B visas.
The utility has a large IT department. In 2012, before any layoffs, it had about 1,800 employees, plus an additional 1,500 contract workers.
Computerworld interviewed, separately, four affected SCE IT employees. They agreed to talk on the condition that their names not be used.
The IT employees at SCE are “beyond furious,” said a second IT worker.
The H-1B program “was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill,” this worker said. “But we’re doing our job. It’s not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill.
“Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn’t already performing,” he said.
SCE said the transition to Infosys and Tata “will lead to enhancements that deliver faster and more efficient tools and applications for services that customers rely on. Through outsourcing, SCE’s information technology organization will adopt a proven business strategy commonly and successfully used by top U.S. companies that SCE benchmarks against.”
The employees say that some of SCE’s U.S. workers have been training their replacements, either in person in SCE’s IT offices or over Web sessions with workers in India. The IT workers say the Indian tech workers do not have the skill levels of the people they are replacing.
The SCE outsourcing “is one more case, in a long line of them, of injustice where American workers are being replaced by H-1Bs,” said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University, and a researcher on offshore outsourcing. “Adding to the injustice, American workers are being forced to do ‘knowledge transfer,’ an ugly euphemism for being forced to train their foreign replacements.
Americans should be outraged that most of our politicians have sat idly by while outsourcing firms have hijacked the guest worker programs.”
“The majority of the H-1B program is now being used to replace Americans and facilitate the offshoring of high wage jobs,” Hira said.
SCE said Infosys and Tata were selected through a competitive process that began “with eight potential vendors, some of them United States-based.
“The decision made to contract with Infosys and TCS was made following vendor site visits, some in India, and in-depth reviews of prospective vendors’ operations,” the utility said.
SCE employees said that since August, when the layoffs began, the composition of the IT workplace began to change. “I see a lot of Indian people walking the halls, and less Americans,” said a third IT worker interviewed.
Employee observations of an increasing number of foreign workers in their workplace is backed up by U.S. Labor Department filings. Employers have to file wage data of foreign workers and their workplace location with federal authorities in a form called a Labor Condition Application (LCA). In Irwindale, California, where SCE runs a major part of its IT operations, the two offshore companies had as many as 180 LCAs, and in a random check of these applications, every address matched an SCE location.
Displaced IT workers have long protested and complained about the use of H-1B workers, but they are overshadowed by large tech companies that lead H-1B lobbying efforts in Washington. IT workers are also effectively silenced through severance agreements that include non-disparagement clauses and confidentiality provisions, as well as fears that public complaining may hurt re-employment prospects.
Replacing U.S. workers with H-1B workers violates the spirit if not the letter of the law. Hira pointed out that as a part of the application process to obtain H-1B approval from the Labor Department, an employer is required to attest to the following: “Working Conditions: The employer attests that H-1B, H-1B1 or E-3 foreign workers in the named occupation will not adversely affect the working conditions of workers similarly employed.” This statement is in Form 9035CP of the LCA.
Further, Hira noted that the Labor Department states, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires that the hiring of a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed.
“The SCE case is clearly one where the hiring of the H-1B is adversely affecting the wages and working conditions of American workers,” Hira said. “There isn’t a clearer cut case of adverse impacts – the American worker is losing his job to an H-1B.” Hira believes that the U.S. Secretary of Labor has the authority to investigate these cases.
The use of H-1B workers has other implications as well. They are mostly young, under 35 years of age, according to government data, and the SCE workers interviewed said many older workers were being laid off. H-1B workers are also overwhelmingly male. The IEEE has estimated that as many as 85% are males.
Although H-1B workers have to be paid prevailing wages, a data analysis of wages that Hira conducted found that H-1B workers cost employers less. The national median wage for an Infosys worker over a recent three-year period was $60,000 per year and for Tata it was $64,900, he said. These are figures that are lower than what appear in salary surveys, including Computerworld’s annual survey. H-1B workers employed by offshore outsourcing companies are less likely to become permanent residents. Infosys sponsored only 2% of its workers for permanent U.S. residency over a three-year period and Tata, none, he said.
Northeast Utilities in Connecticut last year made a similar decision to SCE’s and brought in foreign contractors on visas. More than 200 U.S. IT workers lost their jobs.
Some of the SCE employees say the outsourcing move is linked to a 2012 report that found fault with the IT management culture. The report, by a consulting firm’s incident management team, followed a December 2011shooting, where an employee fatally shot two IT managers and wounded two other workers before taking his own life. The gunman worked in the IT department.
The consultants interviewed IT workers who told them that some managers were “autocratic, authoritarian and draconian in their approach.” Full-time employees complained of working excessive hours, including weekends and holidays. The report said that “these difficult and exhausting conditions are reportedly having adverse consequences on employees health, including increased stress and irritability.”
Prior to the outsourcing agreements, the SCE employees said there were a series of layoffs, including managers.
SCE said it is helping affected employees with severance, and other benefits, including “job fairs and other possible opportunities with other organizations within SCE.”
“SCE does not take this action lightly and it is assisting employees through this difficult period,” the utility said.
But the third employee interviewed said it did not appear that the company was interested in keeping any of the IT workers targeted for layoffs, and they weren’t being offered the chance to apply for other jobs. “They just want to get rid of us and clean house,” said this IT worker, who now worries about keeping her home.
At any rate, Sessions now runs two subcoms rather than one biggie. [...]]]>
At any rate, Sessions now runs two subcoms rather than one biggie. I have no idea whether that is an equitable trade-off in the Washington merry-go-round of power. Clearly the Alabama Senator intends to make it work. One gig is running the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee but the more important position for the friends of American sovereignty is as Chair of the newly renamed (by Sessions) “Immigration and the National Interest” subcommittee.
The change reflects his attitude that immigration should do no harm to American citizens, particularly people who work for a living, or try to.
Sessions’ recent paper distributed to GOP members prior to a major meeting, Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority includes a section on effective messaging. One criticism from that paper: “Democrats fight with more passion in defense of illegal immigrants than Republicans fight in defense of American workers.”
Hopefully he will hold many fascinating hearings — immigration is a monster topic that touches nearly every area of society. Here are a few thoughts about possible subjects:
Should America stop immigration from Muslim nations?
When will America be full, population-wise? Is one billion (projected for late in the century) too many?
Given the rapid replacement of humans by smart machines in the workplace, should immigration be ended?
Following is the press release from the Sessions office referring to the committee situation:
]]>Sessions Named Chairman of Two Key Senate Subcommittees, January 22, 2014
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement today after being named Chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on Armed Services and the Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee on Judiciary:
“I am honored to have the opportunity to chair these two crucial subcommittees.
My focus as Chairman of the Strategic Forces subcommittee will include: ensuring a modernized nuclear arsenal, strengthening our ballistic missile defense programs, advancing our space program, producing an American-built rocket engine to end U.S. dependence on Russia’s RD-180, and developing the technology and strategies necessary to deter any aggression, including cyber-attacks, against the United States or her interests.
America faces a litany of global threats and emerging dangers; it is more important than ever to have the most sophisticated and cost-effective defense programs that deliver the capabilities promised.
My focus as Chairman of the Immigration subcommittee will be to advance the core interests of the nation and its people. On no issue have special interests had a tighter grip than on the issue of immigration.
That is why I am renaming the subcommittee ‘Immigration and the National Interest,’ as a declaration to the American people that this subcommittee belongs to them. Senator Vitter, a strong voice for the national interest, will be serving as Republican Deputy Chairman. The financial and political elite have been controlling this debate for years; this subcommittee will give voice to those whose voice has been shut out: the voice of the dedicated immigration officers who have been blocked from doing their jobs; the voice of the working families whose wages have been reduced by years of record immigration; the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers; the voice of the parents who are worried about their schools and hospitals; and the voice of all Americans who believe we must have a lawful system of immigration they can be proud of and that puts their interests first.
Our first urgent task in this regard is for the Senate GOP to rally the nation behind an effort to halt the President’s unlawful amnesty.
Additionally, there is a great deal of misinformation about what actions must actually be taken to create a sound immigration system. Our subcommittee will seek to serve all members, and the public, as a hub for the facts, data, statistics, and evidence they can rely upon for honest information. I became a prosecutor believing that there is a truth, and that a proper analysis of the facts will lead us to that truth. The challenge is large but the task is just, and rests on the solid moral foundation of our citizens’ legitimate demands. I look forward to working with my colleagues towards this end.”