More Media Misinformation:
What should America do to solve its long-standing, polarizing immigration system? First, America should strongly encourage the world’s best and brightest risk-takers to come here and work with us, rather than go somewhere else to work against us. Instead of having a visa system based on arbitrary caps set by government bureaucrats, we should construct a visa system on demonstrated need—meaning, each year, employers would inform the federal government how many foreign workers they expect to hire for that year. Prior to receiving a visa for a foreign worker, the employer would need to certify that it first tried to hire an American citizen and detail the efforts to do so.
Next border security should not be aimed at intercepting individuals trying to cross the border illegally to work, the demand for illegal labor will plummet.
It is, of course, true that America is . . . a land of immigrants and their descendants. We should always open our arms to those who want to build better lives for themselves in accordance with our common American values. — Getting Immigration Reform Right, Matt Mayer, www.usnews.com, 7/12/16
Fact Check: Immigration advocates are always telling us that we should lure the world’s best and brightest to come here. Also they tell us that we have a duty to alleviate poverty in poor countries by letting their people come here.
These goals, however, work at cross purposes. Should we be taking the best and brightest of poor countries—which those countries need to improve their situations. To illustrate, there are more Ethiopian doctors just in the city of Chicago than in Ethiopia. Can’t we provide our own doctors without taking them from a country with limited health care? With a U.S. population of almost a third of a billion, surely we have enough talented people to fill our requirements.
As for visas to meet needs of employers, the problem is that a great many employers confuse need with greed. They want cheap compliant foreign labor, and they don’t really care of Americans are available to do the work. The law already requires that employers seek Americans first for jobs, but they have devised innumerable ways to evade that requirement. This mass importation of foreign workers can only have the effect of driving down Americans’ wages.
And, despite Mayer’s claim, it is by no means certain that easily available legal visas would persuade some employers to stop using illegal workers. These could still be paid less and exploited more than visa holders.
The rhetoric about “a land of immigrants” and “open arms” is a typical ploy by immigration advocates to manipulate debate about immigration with maudlin sentimentality. So influenced, we are not inclined to ask if there might be limits on the sheer number of people we invite with “open arms.” Just how many we can admit without harming ourselves is a legitimate question. And Americans who care about their country have every right to ask it.