RUTHFULLY YOURS

The biggest labor story this Labor Day is the trouble that employers are having finding workers across the country. Friday’s report of a modest gain of only 156,000 new jobs in August doesn’t change that reality even though the jobless rate rose a tick to 4.4%

There are many reasons for the shortage, including drug use among the young, the disincentive to work due to easier disability, and the skills mismatch between what employers need and what kids learn in poor K-12 public schools. But the shortage will increase if the economy grows faster, so it’s good news that some in Congress have ideas to mitigate labor shortages in fields like construction and technology.

Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) recently introduced a bill that would allow states to start visa programs for foreign guest workers that are currently managed by the federal government. The State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act would allow for about 500,000 visas, with 5,000 for each state and the rest divvied up by population. The cap would be indexed to GDP growth. States would be free to decide which skill levels or industries would be eligible—and free not to participate in the program. Rep. Ken Buck (R., Colo.) is working on companion legislation.

Such visas might alleviate a shortage of farm hands in places like California’s Central Valley, which is leaving millions in crops to rot unharvested even as employers are raising wages and offering benefits. In Sen. Johnson’s Wisconsin, the unemployment rate is 3.2%, and manufacturers report thousands of openings. Wisconsin’s boat industry is hunting for mechanics; a state vocational school in Ashland reports that employers around the country are bidding for its graduates in marine mechanics.

The Johnson bill would permit workers to change employers, which would force companies to bid for workers. A worker who came from Canada or elsewhere would not be eligible for welfare such as food stamps. Also included: Restrictions for states whose workers are routinely discovered as working illegally outside the sponsor state.

Legislators in Colorado (jobless rate: 2.4%) and Utah (3.5%) have in past years passed measures to start state worker programs, as a Cato Institute brief on the bill points out, though the federal government has refused to grant legal clarity. The American Action Forum’s Jacqueline Varas reports that allowing state programs would create 900,000 to 1.2 million jobs—for American workers. Bringing in workers from abroad allows companies to grow and expand opportunities for U.S. citizens.

Another benefit would be political accountability. Voters could hold their governors and state legislators responsible for success or failure. The idea also concedes the reality that the labor market in Fort Wayne, Ind., differs from the one in Silicon Valley. States are better able to notice which industries need workers, and tailor the visa eligibility accordingly.

Congress has tied itself in knots for years over immigration because the Members insist on trying to move grand bills to settle every issue rather than discrete bills to address specific problems. The bills collapse of their own weight. Sen. Johnson’s idea would be a good start in addressing the urgent problem of America’s labor shortage.

Though there is no shortage of “fake news” appearing in the mainstream media, there are a number of reports claiming that members of the Trump administration are attempting to convince President Trump to renege on his campaign promise to rollback the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for funding for the construction of the border wall.

Before we consider this news, let’s be clear about the absolute need to secure the dangerous U.S./Mexican border. I have frequently compared securing that border with a wing on an airplane. Without a wing an airplane will not fly. However, a wing by itself goes nowhere. Though it has been estimated that nearly half of all illegal aliens did not run the southern border, and instead were admitted through America’s 325 ports of entry, securing that border is nonetheless a vital element of our immigration law enforcement system and national security.

The U.S./Mexican border is particularly dangerous because of endemic corruption of the Mexican government on all levels and the extreme level of violence in Mexico, both attributable to the Mexican drug cartels. Mexican government officials are given the choice of “silver or lead.” Either take a bribe (silver) or expect to be shot (lead).

That violence and potential for corruption flows across our border: The majority of violent crimes in the United States have a connection to the drug trade and drug addiction.

For years I have written about how the most reliable metric to determine the level of border security for the United States is not the arrest statistics by the Border Patrol, but the price and availability of heroin and cocaine in the United States since those substances are not produced in the country. Every gram of those narcotics is smuggled into the United States.

Today the United States is experiencing unprecedented levels of heroin addiction that wreaks havoc on lives and our communities. Drug smugglers also engage in human trafficking and smuggle transnational gang members into the United States.

While not all drug smuggling involves the U.S./Mexican border, a huge amount of narcotics does enter the United States along that dangerous corridor that stretches roughly 2,000 miles.

Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission made the compelling case for making border security a cornerstone of national security policy. This conclusion, in point of fact, was laid out in the preface of the official report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.”

Now let’s consider the wrong-headed program created by the Obama administration, DACA.

The mainstream media and immigration anarchists have, since the inception of the illegal implementation of the DACA program on June 15, 2012 by the Obama administration, provided blatantly false and misleading statements about this program, duping Americans into believing that DACA is for alien children.

While President Obama sold this program to the American people as providing lawful status for young aliens, in reality aliens as old as 31 years of age could qualify if they claimed to have entered the United States prior to their 16th birthdays.

For decades the United States has professed to have an official policy of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.

In the 1950’s the Rosenbergs were executed for spying and passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, today more than 500,000 foreign students are enrolled in universities in the United States to study the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curricula.

While not all of these students are studying disciplines that have a direct nexus to nuclear technology, many disciplines do intersect with aerospace and nuclear technology.

Foreign students are permitted to engage in Optional Practical Training to put their education to use and learn how to apply what they have learned in the classrooms and university laboratories in the “real world.”
Sometimes these students work for companies that engage in military-related work.

Not long ago I wrote an article that focused on how our policies had the effect of Educating ‘Engineers of Jihad’ At US Universities.

Today we should be as concerned that China’s acquisition of U.S. technology through its students in the United States poses an increasing threat to our nation.

On May 19, 2016 Reuters reported, “U.S. charges six Chinese nationals with economic espionage.”

The U.S. Navy’s underwater drones seem to have drawn particular interest by China’s military that has constructed an artificial island in the South China Sea. On April 22, 2016 Newsweek reported, “Chines Spy in Florida Sent Drone Parts to China for Military.”

The New Yorker published a revealing article A New Kind of Spy How China obtains American technological secrets under the sarcastic heading, “The Department of Espionage”

Furthermore China provides technology to North Korea’s tyrannical and bellicose leader Kim Jong-Un who continues to order his military stockpile nuclear weapons and perfect ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) that could reach the continental United States.
On August 20, 2017 Newsweek reported, North Korea ‘Nuclear War’ Warning Ahead of Joint U.S./South Korea Military Exercises.

According to current statistics provided by the DHS, the greatest number of STEM students are citizens of India (173,258) while the second largest contingent of students are from China (152,002) and the number of Saudi Arabian students (25,125) is the third largest.

There are two major problems with our legal-immigration system: One, it focuses too little on skills, and two, the part of it that does focus on skills is poorly designed. A new proposal would address both issues. It’s an updated version of the RAISE Act announced at the White House today by Republican senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue; at the event, President Trump called it “the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century” and promised “billions and billions” in taxpayer savings.

One plausible estimate holds that just 6.5 percent of U.S. immigrants are given their green cards on the basis of economic merit. About 13 percent are admitted on the basis of employment more generally, but that system does not make particularly fine distinctions based on economic potential and bizarrely imposes a cap on each sending country.

Far more common is family-based immigration. We don’t just let immigrants bring their spouses and minor children but also give preferences to siblings, parents, and adult children, enabling the phenomenon known as “chain migration.” We also give out 50,000 green cards each year (about 5 percent of the total) on the basis of diversity, meaning applicants are selected literally at random from countries that don’t provide “enough” immigrants through other categories.

The new RAISE Act would take a sledgehammer to this system, dramatically reducing low-skilled immigration and revamping our system for skilled immigration. It would cut immigration by more than 40 percent immediately, and by half in a decade. (It would not affect temporary “nonimmigrant” visas such as the H-1B, which also need reform.)

It would end the diversity lottery and preferences for family members aside from spouses, minor children, and elderly parents in need of care. And it would put those seeking green cards on the basis of employment — 140,000 of which would be available annually, the same number as today — through a new point system similar to those used in other developed countries.

That point system is a thing of beauty. Immigrants would be scored on a scale of zero to 100, though in practice it’s more like a scale of zero to 45 — someone with a perfect score would need a Nobel Prize (25 points), an Olympic medal (15), and $1.8 million invested in a business (12), for instance. More typically, potential immigrants would be scored based on their level of education, their English fluency, their age (with ten points for those 26 to 30 and zero points for those 50 and up), and the salary they’ve been offered (with 13 points for compensation at least triple the median salary of the state where the job is located, and no points for an offer less than 50 percent above the median). Importantly, if an applicant wished to bring a spouse, the spouse’s education, age, and language skills would count for 30 percent of a combined score.

Those without at least 30 points would be ineligible, and ties would be broken by (in descending order) education, language, and age. Immigrants admitted through the point system would be ineligible for welfare benefits for five years.

Every so often comes a dark reminder of the human costs of immigration dysfunction, and last month 10 people suffocated in an 18-wheeler in Texas while trying to move to the United States from Mexico and Central America. Congress could prevent similar tragedies with more legal visas for guest workers, as a new report details.

The National Foundation for American Policy in a report out this week notes that “more than 7,000 men, women and children have died along the Southwest border” over the past two decades. More than 200 people have died so far this year, and last year the count topped 300. This year there have been 7.8 deaths for every 10,000 apprehensions of illegal border crossers.

The number of deaths increased by about 80% between 1999 and 2012, even as apprehensions—a reliable proxy for illegal immigration—plummeted by more than 75%. As a result, a person picking their way across the border is now “5 times more likely to die in the attempt than 18 years ago,” the report notes. One reason is that an enforcement crackdown has encouraged people to slip across more treacherous or remote areas of the southwest.

Most immigrants come to the U.S. for work and opportunity, so the solution is to allow them to find jobs legally. The paper notes that the U.S. doesn’t have a visa program that permits immigrants to work legally in “year-round industries like construction, hotels and restaurants.” In the 1940s and ’50s the Bracero program allowed workers to enter legally from Mexico, and illegal immigration apprehensions dropped 95% between 1953 and 1959.

Some who make it across the border stay in the U.S. illegally because they can’t risk multiple crossings. A visa holder who could travel home freely might be less likely to venture a dangerous crossing with his entire family. By the way, more work visas would be a fillip for the economy; agriculture, construction and many other industries report labor shortages despite rising wages.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who has since decamped for the White House, put out a statement that the Texas smugglers “have no regard for human life and seek only profits.” But smugglers make money when politicians slap on new restrictions on immigration, and the way to bankrupt them is a system that allows safe, legal entry and exit. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) has a bill in the Senate to let states experiment with guest-worker programs, which would be a place to start.

The recent deaths are gruesome but hardly unprecedented: The policy brief recalls how a dozen men died in the Arizona desert in the 2000s, one of whom was Lorenzo Ortiz Hernandez, a father of five who took out a loan at 15% interest to underwrite an illegal crossing. He was looking to support his family. Such casualties will continue until Congress finds the political will to reform the broken U.S. immigration system.