Dakota Beacon

Well, the verdict is in:  America has no talent.  And this comes directly from the horse’s mouth - the horse those Americans saw fit to elect as their President.  He should know.  

We’re talking about Trump’s comments in a recent interview with Laura Ingraham, when challenged on the wisdom of choosing H-1B as our future workforce.  Yes - it’s gone from illegal immigrants “doing work Americans won’t do to H-1B guest workers doing the work Americans can’t do.  It seems that the only possible use for Americans is to be led to the polls to vote into office the wizard who can point this out.

One of the (many) reasons I objected to putting Donald Trump, real estate developer and game show host, on the Republican ticket was his brag about using H-1B himself, as a “businessman”.  What kind of American “patriot”, businessman or not, feels it justified to deny employment to a qualified American worker in favor of a short-term foreign worker?  Well, one that is not morally qualified to be our President.  Character does matter.

`It’s time - no,  it’s long overdue - that we have a serious discussion about why it’s time - no,  it’s long past time - to do away with these guest worker visas - especially H-1B.

The argument is that these wonderful, highly educated foreigners bring with them superior education and a great “work ethic”.  Translated, that means they are trapped.  H-1B workers are the 21st Century version of the indentured servant.  Just as some Europeans came here in servitude to a master and subject to his every whim, so now is this relationship of an American employer to his H-1B “employee” (or servant).

There are a lot of misconceptions and untruts  swirling around  the question of H-1B.  Some of them being spread by the vacant-eyed national security guru, Kristi Noem from under her essential bill cap.  It’s good to have a firm grasp of what is the letter of this program.  These are the main points:

1. The worker is sponsored and attached to one employer.

2. He is here at the pleasure of that employer, not entitled to quit the job or take any other employment.  If he leaves the sponsoring employer he will be returned to his country of origin.

3. He does not vote.

4. He is not (ever) a citizen of the United States.

5. An H-1B visa is limited to five years.  At the end of five years he may apply for a maximum two-year extension.  Again:  he will not be eligible for citizenship - there is no pathway here to citizenship in the U.S.

6. He is a constituent of no representative in the United States - he has no spokesman here and no advocate.

Basically, the same goes for the unskilled worker imported under H-2B.  We have an example of H-2B abuse in Springfield, Ohio, where Haitians were imported in bulk to do work that was never advertised as available to American workers.  In both cases we have a captive worker, whether picking oranges, turning wrenches in a factory or working in a white collar “tech” job for Trump and his friends.

So - sounds great for employers (in the short term, that is), right?  But in a free market economy, certain rules follow in order to allow that invisible hand to work its magic, the magic that turned a ragamuffin country of rebels into the world’s greatest economical powerhouse that it has been.  One of these vital elements is the bargain - freely entered into - between employer and employee.  Here is where the reward for study and training and ambition meets with a task and the benefits in undertaking the task - decent working conditions, fair pay and free will.  This is all undermined by guest worker visas (as well as tolerance of illegal aliens).

If you were a pragmatic “businessman” like Trump, and one with extreme short-sightedness, and no moral compass - would you sooner hire an employee you pick from a foreign talent pool, bring over here on a short-term basis under threat of deportation, one living in the shadow of immediate termination with or without cause and exile to Bombay if he fails to please, one who you know will never bring up unsafe working conditions or low pay, or would you opt to hire some Jim Sullivan type, a native born in Louisville, Kentucky, perhaps, whose granddad served in Vietnam, whose parents, owners of a mom-and-pop print shop, are homeowners and taxpayers, and support their church and local charities?  Jim has earned a 3.5 average in college, studying stem subjects and has offset some of his student debt doing part-time work on campus in the engineering department and summers at a mattress factory in town.  

Jim comes with some built-in handicaps.  He is a citizen of the United States, registered to vote.  He can’t be deported if he raises a workplace safety issue.  He is free to leave to go to work somewhere else if offered better conditions, better pay and advancement.  Or he might decide to do as his parents did and work for himself.  If you are Donald Trump or one of his friends, it’s no contest.

There are, despite all of these “pluses” for a cheapskate employer, long-term downsides.  These miserly employers will, in time, be affected, and not in a positive way.

There is a moral question here, as well as a purely long-term practical one.  The first is obvious - it’s not moral to use some government-facilitated program to bring in disadvantaged foreign workers who have no path to citizenship, no stake in our country, nor even in the company to which he is indentured.  There is a problem in bringing in people who have no motive to assimilate.  This worker is captive.  He has no rights under our Constitution, no freedom of speech, no whistleblower possibility, no freedom to travel, no freedom to ever say “no’.  He is a fungible element in the foreign worker system.  Throw him back, get another.  And all the time, this system keeps young Americans unemployed, perhaps keeps them from establishing their claim on America, buying a home, marrying and starting a family.  It undercuts American education by depriving it of its raison d’etre.

On the purely practical side it keeps wages low for everyone, skilled or otherwise.  It breeds apathy and cynicism.  It deconstructs America and it refutes American values.  Whatever is “good enough” for a captive slave will end up having to be “good enough” for an American worker.  

We have, in America, at least, been devaluing American males already.  Our colleges and universities have a majority of female students now.  We have encouraged young women to pursue the stem subjects once the general arena of male students.  What are we doing to encourage young men in America?  We call them “toxic” if they behave like normal men.  Now we deny them opportunities in favor of some foreign worker who not only won’t but can’t claim a real stake in our country.  Someone who cannot logically form any loyalty to America or aspire to a place in America beyond the five-year plan.  

What does this do to our economy?  It leaves a large segment of American workers out in the cold, turned down for the jobs they are educated and trained to take.  Down the road a mile, Americans will understand that they have no place in the economy and will not attempt to succeed in school, will shy away from the enormous kind of debt we impose on anyone who wants to go to school.  Instead of Jim Sullivan we will have some "Rakesh Singh" for five years or so, and then the next guy, and then the next.  Jim will never get his foot in the door.  

The guest worker will return to India, China, wherever, equipped with experience and learning in an area of technology that might make him useful back home, to our detriment most likely.  Just as the Chinese university students we import go back home with science and technology (sometimes a jar of microbes) to use against us when the time comes.  And it’s coming sooner that we want to believe.  While we deny opportunities to our own, dash their dreams, delay or deny their success, drive them out of technological fields where we need them most.  

All of this is for nothing but to make the rich richer, make Donald Trump and his “friends” richer and more smug as they sneer at the people who put Trump in office, the silly rednecks from Kentucky or Ohio or your state or mine.  The Americans.  The people who have no talent.  

It is time to abolish all guest worker visas.  Let’s just see if Americans will pick oranges.  Let’s see if they will apply for a factory job.  Let’s see if their resumes get them jobs in the tech fields.  We might have a painful adjustment period ahead while we disengage from this debilitating and destructive pathway that our major companies are taking.  The Trumps and their friends might have to pay more, improve working conditions to meet standards set by our own government agencies, they might have to compete in other ways for the American workers.  That factory in Springfield might find that it has to actually advertise its local jobs locally.  The citrus farmer might have to treat his workers like human beings instead of like insects that don’t matter.  

In 2025, after all of the wars in which we have fought, the American Civil War, fought ostensibly to “free the slaves” was far and away the most costly in human lives.  We spilled the blood of 600,000 dead and many more horribly injured, not to mention the economic devastation to a fledgling nation, on the pretext of ending slavery.  Here we are now, bringing it back in all but name.  And stealing the opportunities of our own people.  

Trump is not always right.  In fact he usually is not right.  This is an example of that.  There is no point in clustering about his coat, sucking up because the bad guys tried to put him in jail.  Too many people voted for this guy without really knowing him.  Trump is a user of big government.  He loves big government - it is obvious in everything he does.  He emphasizes it every day.  If big government offers him a dirty dollar, he will grab it.  But it’s not just him - it's all of his “friends” - all those who are so grasping and greedy that they will sell their birthright for a foreign worker on a short leash.  In the long run it’s not good for America’s business.