(05-15-2019 01:33 PM)Uprising Wrote:(05-15-2019 05:38 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote: I don't want to answer for TBK but try to avoid thinking about it in terms of autistic moral quibbles which have no capacity to come about in a real geo-political jungle.
The reality is that a state or group of states would sue for secession and everyone in them when the curtains came down would be part of that new country. In all likelihood those who wished to leave would be allowed to do so while those who wished to enter would have to make their case on a basis of lineage or local holdings or perhaps merit.
Most minorities would be looking to exit rather than enter. They've gotten used to having a vast raft of welfare and legal/workplace/college protections that wouldn't exist by default in a new nation. Given that it would also be a time of extremely heightened tensions in-group preferences for hiring/service would be savage.
But tedious moralising about "is my 1/1024th black friend not invited" is a waste of time. Any secessionist movement is going to built on practicality, not moralistic autism, and any purges are almost guaranteed to be religiously based rather than racially.
Come on Leonard. See, I even said I wasn't talking in absolutes when I suggested that perhaps this new "Peaceful Separation" state might involve a 15% minority population, but you went ahead and threw the 1/1024 crap in there as if I was talking in absolutes. Don't do that Leonard.
...
Quote:Ten-Minute Summary of the H-1B Work Visa
Note: Throughout this document, the term American refers to U.S. citizens (including naturalized ones) and permanent residents.
Age is a core H-1B issue. Most H-1Bs are under 30, and since younger workers are cheaper than older ones (in both wages and health care costs), employers use the H-1B program to avoid hiring older Americans. (Note: "old" is age 35!)
Key to this LEGAL age discrimination against Americans is the four-tier structure for prevailing wage, the legal wage floors for H-1Bs, which is based on four levels of experience, in essence four levels of age.
Another major attraction for employers, especially in Silicon Valley, is the "handcuffed" status of H-1Bs. In practical terms, foreign tech workers have serious mobility issues. In particular, if the worker is being sponsored by the employer for a green card, the worker dare not switch jobs, as that would entail starting the multiyear green card process all over again. Employers value this immobility very highly, since the exit of an engineer in the midst of an urgent project is very harmful. Immigration lawyers extol this as a major "benefit" of hiring H-1Bs. Thus employers tend to give preference to the foreign workers over similarly-qualified Americans when hiring,
In addition, two congressional reports and a number of academic studies have shown that H-1Bs are often paid less than comparable Americans, i.e. those of the same age, education and so on.
Some other studies claim to show that the H-1Bs are not underpaid, but they suffer from methodological problems. In any case, one can readily see the underpayment, by noting that the H-1Bs are largely unable to move freely (see above) in the labor market--if one cannot move, one cannot find the best salary among competing employers. Thus the H-1Bs are on average paid below-market wages. Note also the material on prevailing wage below.
As mentioned in the overview of this site, even H-1B advocate and former tech CEO Vivek Wadhwa has admitted underpaying H-1Bs himself.
Underpayment of H-1Bs is usually done in full compliance with the law. The problem is primarily NOT one of lack of enforcement or fraud. Instead, recall from the overview of this site, that even Vivek Wadhwa and Rep. Zoe Lofgren--two extremely vociferous suppporters of foreign worker programs--admit that abuse of the H-1B program is legal, due to gaping loopholes in H-1B law.
For example: The law and regulations require that employers pay H-1Bs the prevailing wage--but the latter does NOT account for "hot" technical skills, say Android programming. These command a premium of 15-25% in the open market. Thus one can see immediately that the legal prevailing wage is typically lower than the true market wage. This is what Rep. Lofgren was referring to in the above quote on loopholes (though her numbers are not quite correct).
The law also requires the employer to pay the "actual wage," a misnamed term that refers to the wage earned by other "similar" workers employed at the firm, in the same job. Clearly this is rife with loopholes too. The employer can claim the foreign worker is unique in terms of skills, experience and job, so the actual wage is actually his wage (Dept. of Labor written policy recognizes this). And of course if most or all of the "similar" workers are foreign too, the statute loses all meaning.
Furthermore, the DOL PERM data (for green card applications, which operate with the same wage rules as H-1B) show that most employers pay only the prevailing wage or very near it, NOT the actual wage. Since the legal prevailing wage is below market rates, it is clear that most employers are underpaying their H-1Bs.
Abuse of foreign worker programs pervades the entire tech industry, INCLUDING the large, mainstream U.S. firms, and INCLUDING the foreign workers hired from U.S. universities. It is NOT limited to the Indian "bodyshops." The large U.S. firms do tend to hire better-qualified workers than do the bodyshops, but BOTH the mainstream firms AND the bodyshops are hiring at a discount relative to their respective market sectors.
Legal fees are tiny compared to the wages savings the employer accrues by hiring the foreign worker. H-1B sponsorship costs about $2,000 in legal and other fees; for a green card, it may be $10,000. But these are one-time costs, compared to the employer's saving tends of thousands of dollars EVERY YEAR, FOR THE 6 YEARS OF THE H-1B PERIOD.
There is no tech labor shortage.
No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage.
Wages, both for new graduates and established professionals, have been stable in the engineering and programming fields. Starting salaries for new computer science graduates were up about 3% in Spring 2011, according to NACE; a 2011 DICE report, in spite of claiming a shortage, concedes that overall tech salaries are up 1%; a San Jose Mercury News article in July 2011 reports a strong job market in Silicon Valley, but also states that wages are up only 3% since 2009. None of these figures indicates a labor shortage.
Low unemployment figures are not good measures of a shortage. The real issue is underemployment, occurring for instance (a) when an engineer or programmer is forced to leave the field, becoming "employed" elsewhere, typically at a lesser wage, or (b) when those who work as independent consultants (a large chunk of the programming profession) find contracts hard to get and rates lower than before. None of this shows up in unemployment data.
A 2007 Urban Institute study found that the universities are producing more than enough graduates at the bachelor's level in STEM.
Figures for students graduating with computer science degrees cannot be used to determine whether we have a shortage of people qualified for computer science jobs. Most people in the computer field, including those in software development, have their degrees in fields other than computer science.
In 2012 congressional testimony, Texas Instruments admitted that they have plenty of American engineering job applicants at the bachelor's level.
Concerning the doctoral level:
American STEM bachelor's degree holders tend not to pursue graduate study because the pay is not high enough--and that in turn is due to the large influx of foreign STEM graduate students.
This was actually forecast in an NSF internal report back in 1989. (More on this below.)
A blue-ribbon commission appointed by the federal National Institutes of Health found that there is a huge glut of workers in lab science research. Moreover, the commission found that the glut was largely due to a heavy influx of foreign workers, and that it has led to dismal working conditions that has caused talented young Americans to avoid lab science.
A study commissioned by the Computing Research Association concluded that the computer science field has matured, and there will be perennial difficulties for new PhDs to find suitable employment.
Employers hire only a tiny fraction of those who apply. HR departments routinely exclude CVs of applicants they deem "too expensive"--those that are over age 35. (So managers never see these CVs, and mistakenly believe there are no applicants.)
Shortage arguments based on analysis of American K-12 math/science scores to those of other nations are red herrings, based on misleading averages. It is also rank hypocrisy, since the same employers who claim that "Johnny can't do math" are laying off tens of thousands of Americans who had been top math/science students when they were kids.
Indeed, as noted above, Texas Instruments, stated that there is no shortage of American engineers at the bachelor's degree level. (For a point about the graduate level, see NSF material below.)
The world's "best and brightest" should be welcomed, but only a tiny percentage of H-1Bs are in that league. Even among the former foreign students now in the worforce--the group the industry claims are especially talented--the immigrants on average produce fewer patents per capita, are less likely to work in R&D, and have their U.S. degrees from lower-ranked schools than Americans of the same education, age and so on.
Meanwhile, the H-1B program results in many of our own best and brightest U.S. citizens and permanent residents being squeezed out of the market once they accumulate 10 years or so of experience, and worse, many top college students are discouraged by H-1B and offshoring from pursuing the field in the first place.
In other words, H-1B is causing an internal brain drain of the best and brightest American talents. This has been explicitly recognized by UC Berkeley researchers, and as noted earlier, by a blue ribbon commission in the National Institutes of Health. The latter focused on the PhD level.
Though the industry lobbyists claim that the importation of H-1Bs avoids the offshoring of work, the visa is actually used to facilitate shipping the work abroad. Moreover, many types of work cannot be offshored well; employers still want to save money, though, so they fill these kinds of jobs with H-1Bs, who are cheaper to hire than the Americans.
In any case, if you are an American victim of the H-1B program, it doesn't make any difference whether a job is filled by a foreign worker who is brought here, or by a foreign worker doing the work offshore. EITHER WAY, YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THAT JOB. Thus, the issue of the connection between H-1B and offshoring is a red herring.
The industry lobbyists claim that the industry needs H-1Bs because 50% of engineering doctorates in the U.S. are awarded to foreign students. But almost no jobs in the computer industry need a PhD; even Intel recruiters have told me that their firm has very little interest in hiring PhDs.
Moreover, an internal report in the National Science Foundation, a key government agency, actually advocated the use of the H-1B program as a means of holding down PhD salaries, by flooding the job market with foreign students. The NSF added that the stagnation of salaries would push domestic students away from PhD study, which is exactly what has happened. Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan has also explicitly advocated the use of H-1B to hold down tech salaries.
In other words, H-1B is the cause of the relative lack of Americans getting PhDs, not the solution to that "problem" as claimed by the industry.
The per-capita rates of patents among immigrant engineers have been similar to, or lower than, those of natives. Indeed, Prof. Jennifer Hunt, much cited by the industry, found that
After I control for field of study, in the middle graph, and education, in the bottom graph, both main work visa groups [i.e. H-1Bs who came directly to the U.S.] and student/trainee visa holders [H-1Bs who first came to the U.S. as students and later entered the job market under the visa] have statistically significantly lower patenting probabilities than natives...
(This was in Hunt's working paper. In the final published version, she was asked to delete the visa groups.)
In my own research, I found that similar results in the computer science field. Americans with only a bachelor's degree had the same patenting probability as the former foreign students now working in the U.S. with a master's degree.
This is directly contrary to the industry lobbyists' claim that the H-1B program is needed for innovation. On the contrary, the displacement of the American workers has produced a net loss in innovation.
Proposals to establish fast-track green card programs to retain the foreign workers are misguided. First, in the EB-1 green card category, which is for outstanding talents, waits are already short. Second, and more importantly, the foreign workers are mostly young, and would still crowd out American workers of age 35+ even with green cards.
A rallying cry of those who promote the "automatic green card" proposals is "If we send the foreign students home, they'll work for our competitors!" This is a bizarre justification for displacing American workers. Moreover, even if the foreign students do acquire green cards and stay in the U.S., many will STILL "help our competitors"; research by UC Berkeley professor AnnaLee Saxenian showed that most Asian immigrants were involved with tech firms back home, through consulting, investment and so on.
Other than a minuscule exceptional category, H-1B employers are NOT required to try to fill the jobs with Americans before hiring the foreign workers.
The claims that each H-1B creates four new jobs are based on fallacious statistical analysis. This has been exposed by the Wall Street Journal, and the claims are obviously invalid anyway--filling the jobs with qualified Americans would have the same job-generating effects.
The foreign STEM students at U.S. universities are generally NOT being "sent home after they graduate," contrary to political rhetoric. Among those who wish to work in the U.S. after graduation and have an American employer willing to hire them, the overwhelming majority do stay.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE: The bipartisan Durbin/Grassley bill in the Senate is an excellent bill. However, note that some parts are extremely useful while others are rather useless. The most useful provision would redefine the legal term prevailing wage so that it would reflect the true market wage, which is NOT the case currently. The provision extending the H-1B-dependency restrictions to all employers would also be of value. By contrast, the portions of the bill dealing with fraud and enforcement are NOT useful, since (as stated earlier), the problems with H-1B are loopholes, not enforcement. In addition, for reasons give above, green card programs should NOT be expanded or liberalized; the IDEA Act by Rep. Lofgren would be a step backwards, not forwards.
(05-16-2019 10:55 PM)Graft Wrote: Surprised no one is talking about Alabama's new abortion law:
I hope Trump gave these politicians a stern talking to. This is not the type of law to be passed before the 2020 elections.
(05-17-2019 02:01 AM)LeBeau Wrote:(05-16-2019 10:55 PM)Graft Wrote: Surprised no one is talking about Alabama's new abortion law:
I hope Trump gave these politicians a stern talking to. This is not the type of law to be passed before the 2020 elections.
Regardless of my own views on your post, or the issues at hand, let's examine that last section.
Isn't lack of action one of the roots of why so many people are fed up with establishment Republicans?
You could re-write your statement many different ways to justify inaction:
"We shouldn't pass a bill to build the Wall before...."
"We shouldn't pursue immigration reform during..."
"We shouldn't renegotiate trade deals until after..."
When is the timing ever perfect and the future crystal clear?
Quote:President Donald Trump is planning on using the Insurrection Act to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, The Daily Caller has learned.
According to multiple senior administration officials, the president intends to invoke the “tremendous powers” of the act to remove illegal immigrants from the country.
“We’re doing the Insurrection Act,” one official said.
Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president has the authority to use the National Guard and military in order to combat “unlawful obstruction or rebellion” within U.S. borders. The act was last invoked in 1992 by George H.W. Bush to quell the Los Angeles riots, and was also used by Eisenhower in 1957 to enforce school desegregation in the south.
An official expressed concerns that Trump’s use of the act’s powers would face legal challenges, pointing to the lawsuits against the president’s travel ban from majority-Muslim countries. However, as the official noted, the travel ban ultimately prevailed in the Supreme Court.
In addition to the Insurrection Act, the president is also considering declaring the country full and insisting that the U.S. can no longer handle the massive influx of illegal immigrants. 2019 is currently on pace to reach the highest levels of illegal immigration in a decade.
“If you take a ship and it holds 1,000 people maximum — one more person and the ship is going to collapse,” the official explained. “The country is full.”
“Our hospitals are full, our detention centers are full,” they added.
ICE facilities were forced to release 100,000 illegal immigrants in the first three months of 2019 because of overcrowding in detention centers.
Separately, the president unveiled a new immigration plan Thursday that focuses on border security and merit-based legal immigration. The plan, which was co-authored by top aides Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, would increase the proportion of visas granted to highly-skilled immigrants and also establish a self-sustaining border security fund.
![[Image: tenor.gif?itemid=7170801]](https://media1.tenor.com/images/258f019bc94ca9f33c040bb904d502dd/tenor.gif?itemid=7170801)
(05-15-2019 01:21 AM)Uprising Wrote: Can you expand on this, The Black Knight? I'm geniunely curious as I like reading your posts, what should "Peaceful Separation" mean?
That anybody with American citizenship who is "conservative" should be allowed into the new country that the GOP will control after their "Peaceful Separation" is successful?
Or is your view that people of European descent should make up the vast majority of the population?
![[Image: cGcgCFc.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/cGcgCFc.jpg)
Quote:Local officials in two of Florida's most heavily Democratic counties have reportedly been briefed on plans by the Trump administration to release hundreds of migrants in South Florida every month for an unknown period of time.
USA Today reported Friday that officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties say the federal government plans to release 1,000 migrant families per month, split between the two counties, with no apparent plans to house or feed the hundreds of families bound for Florida every month.
“The blatant politics, sending them to the two most Democratic Counties in the state of Florida, is ridiculous,” state Sen. Gary Farmer (D), of Broward County, told Politico. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Friday on the plans.
Farmer told Politico that his county did not fit the Trump administration's previous threats to release immigrants in so-called sanctuary cities, which prevent local law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities.
“That is so typically Trump,” he told the outlet. “When the facts don’t fit the narrative, you slightly adjust the narrative.”
Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen, who was reportedly briefed on the plan, told USA Today that he expected the plan to create a "homeless encampment" in his county if immediate resources were not allocated to help the displaced migrants, adding that the plan was "irresponsible."
"To bring hundreds of people here every week without providing the necessary resources to house and feed them is inhumane," he told the newspaper.
Local law enforcement authorities criticized the proposal, with Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw remarking that the Trump administration had "no plan" for providing for the migrants after leaving them in state custody.
"No accommodations for transportation leaving [detention facilities]. No accommodations for shelter or a place to live," Bradshaw told USA Today. "Just no real plan on what's going to happen to these ... people."
The Trump administration began releasing migrants from detention facilities in groups of hundreds at a time in several Texas cities earlier this year, citing overcrowding amid a surge in apprehensions for illegal border entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.

(05-17-2019 08:34 AM)MOVSM Wrote: Good news!
TRUMP PLANS TO INVOKE INSURRECTION ACT TO BOOT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
President Donald Trump is planning on using the Insurrection Act to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, The Daily Caller has learned.
According to multiple senior administration officials, the president intends to invoke the “tremendous powers” of the act to remove illegal immigrants from the country.
“We’re doing the Insurrection Act,” one official said.
Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president has the authority to use the National Guard and military in order to combat “unlawful obstruction or rebellion” within U.S. borders. The act was last invoked in 1992 by George H.W. Bush to quell the Los Angeles riots, and was also used by Eisenhower in 1957 to enforce school desegregation in the south.
An official expressed concerns that Trump’s use of the act’s powers would face legal challenges, pointing to the lawsuits against the president’s travel ban from majority-Muslim countries. However, as the official noted, the travel ban ultimately prevailed in the Supreme Court.
In addition to the Insurrection Act, the president is also considering declaring the country full and insisting that the U.S. can no longer handle the massive influx of illegal immigrants. 2019 is currently on pace to reach the highest levels of illegal immigration in a decade.
“If you take a ship and it holds 1,000 people maximum — one more person and the ship is going to collapse,” the official explained. “The country is full.”
“Our hospitals are full, our detention centers are full,” they added.
ICE facilities were forced to release 100,000 illegal immigrants in the first three months of 2019 because of overcrowding in detention centers.
(05-17-2019 03:54 PM)The Black Knight Wrote:(05-15-2019 01:21 AM)Uprising Wrote: Can you expand on this, The Black Knight? I'm geniunely curious as I like reading your posts, what should "Peaceful Separation" mean?
That anybody with American citizenship who is "conservative" should be allowed into the new country that the GOP will control after their "Peaceful Separation" is successful?
Or is your view that people of European descent should make up the vast majority of the population?
It's a complicated topic and I will probably start my own thread on it but in short:
I don't think pushing for certain demographics is the right course although SS and others have made an argument in the past that societies start to crumble once a majority group gets below a certain level. I think there is a valid discussion to be had at a minimum.
(05-17-2019 04:56 PM)Belgrano Wrote: Trump to release hundreds of migrants in South Florida: report
Quote:Local officials in two of Florida's most heavily Democratic counties have reportedly been briefed on plans by the Trump administration to release hundreds of migrants in South Florida every month for an unknown period of time.
USA Today reported Friday that officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties say the federal government plans to release 1,000 migrant families per month, split between the two counties, with no apparent plans to house or feed the hundreds of families bound for Florida every month.
“The blatant politics, sending them to the two most Democratic Counties in the state of Florida, is ridiculous,” state Sen. Gary Farmer (D), of Broward County, told Politico. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Friday on the plans.
Farmer told Politico that his county did not fit the Trump administration's previous threats to release immigrants in so-called sanctuary cities, which prevent local law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities.
“That is so typically Trump,” he told the outlet. “When the facts don’t fit the narrative, you slightly adjust the narrative.”
Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen, who was reportedly briefed on the plan, told USA Today that he expected the plan to create a "homeless encampment" in his county if immediate resources were not allocated to help the displaced migrants, adding that the plan was "irresponsible."
"To bring hundreds of people here every week without providing the necessary resources to house and feed them is inhumane," he told the newspaper.
Local law enforcement authorities criticized the proposal, with Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw remarking that the Trump administration had "no plan" for providing for the migrants after leaving them in state custody.
"No accommodations for transportation leaving [detention facilities]. No accommodations for shelter or a place to live," Bradshaw told USA Today. "Just no real plan on what's going to happen to these ... people."
The Trump administration began releasing migrants from detention facilities in groups of hundreds at a time in several Texas cities earlier this year, citing overcrowding amid a surge in apprehensions for illegal border entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Black pill or not, let's just enjoy this for a moment and have a laugh.
(03-22-2019 03:42 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: [...] "Israel gets what it wants and you get jack" is a hard pill to swallow.
(05-15-2019 05:38 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote: [...]a state or group of states would sue for secession and everyone in them when the curtains came down would be part of that new country[...]
(05-18-2019 08:04 AM)felix_vagabondo Wrote: Israel is actually a pretty nationalistic, conservative country, so Trump is their natural ally. Israel is Red Pilled, actually--the people themselves, not necessarily the money pockets that bankroll the military operation. People are fiercely bitter towards Arabs, and no matter how many bad news stories they get, you know they're not going to stop blockading the shit out of Gaza until that place surrenders unconditionally. They're attempting to reinforce traditional gender norms in many cases. You could see Obama pulling away from Israel at the end of his Administration--choosing not to veto a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements. What an ambitious nation, the regular citizens themselves, living and fighting to survive in that little corner of the world. Plus those guys invented everything from the microwave to the semiconductor... definitely no neckbeards.