Many business executives and public officials seem proud of their presumably idealistic perspective. But their expressions of sympathy for foreign workers is just lip service. What they really yearn for is a workforce who they can pay the lowest wages they are able to get away with. Business works hard at attempting to undermine the interests of working people and their families even if it involves being deceptive and cruel. Take for example the federal H-1B program ,which according to federal guidelines, allows businesses to hire foreign workers provided that they cannot find qualified American workers. But the evidence is overwhelming that there is no shortage of educated and trained workers. In fact, American high tech workers are often required to train their replacements, which can take several months before they are laid off.
Although this is hard evidence that the lack of qualified employees is not the motive for hiring foreign workers, the Department of Labor, whose Wage and Hour Division oversees the H-1B program, looks the other way. The soon to be laid off American employees agree to train their replacement despite the humiliation because they need the money and a recommendation when they apply for other jobs.
According to testimony in Congress many companies save from 25 percent to 49 percent in wages. Yet lower wages is not the only advantage to hiring aliens. Also, because foreign workers can be easily dismissed, they are at the mercy of their employers. Moreover, they don’t have the negotiating power of a U.S. citizen. Since American workers seem to lack the same “advantages” of alien labor, the CEO’s are not expressing similar affection and commitment even though many of them have been working for these firms for a long while.
Despite the propaganda of the corporate community and its allies, among the problems these laid off workers confront is there are not enough good paying jobs to accommodate unemployed workers. Incredibly, a leading California economist, Robert Kleinhenz claims that “The Bay Area and California are now at full employment”. But that’s preposterous. According to the California state labor officials, who tend to underestimate the extent of unemployment, the Bay Area last month shed 4,700 jobs and California lost 8,200 jobs. Indeed, the job situation is becoming more worrisome for displaced and laid off workers.
The additional and irresponsible admission of thousands of more foreign workers, then, to compete for the increasingly scarce number of jobs, particularly good paying jobs, is economically devastating to almost all workers. It is accelerating the race to the bottom. In fact, the middle class has already become a working minority.
