The Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week released a report calling for increased immigration to the Midwest “…to be globally competitive” according to the March 7 Journal Sentinel.
The report was directed by Tamar Jacoby, who heads the big business-backed ImmigrationWorks USA lobbying organization. The underlying theme of the report is that, “…the US workforce is not educated enough to sustain a globally competitive knowledge economy.’ The contradictory theme of the report is that, “…Americans are increasingly educated,” and are not interested in manual labor, and, therefore, more foreign manual laborers are needed. The report, unsurprisingly, arrives at recommendations that Jacoby has long advocated: more H-1B and L professional worker visas with an emphasis on high tech (STEM) workers, more foreign entrepreneurs, more unskilled and seasonal workers and amnesty (“a path to citizenship”) for current illegal aliens.
The dearth of immigrants and foreign workers in the Midwest is not supported by data available in the report and elsewhere. The report notes the presence in the area in 2011 of 87,000 H-1B visa high-skills workers, 108,000 L visa intra-company transfer workers and 610,000 NAFTA long-term non-immigrant professional workers. It also cites the presence in the 2010 Census of more than three million foreign-born residents in the region. The only relevant statistics that were missing were the number of new immigrants being admitted with the aim of settling in the region – an average of more than 125,000 per year between 2002 and 2011 according to official immigration data – and the number of unemployed Midwesterners who would like to have some of those jobs taken by foreign workers – more than 2.4 million in December 2012 according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
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“…the US workforce is not educated enough to sustain a globally competitive knowledge economy.’ The contradictory theme of the report is that, “…Americans are increasingly educated,” and are not interested in manual labor, and, therefore, more foreign manual laborers are needed.
They contradict themselves all the time but no one in the media will ever call them on it. A classic of their “have it both ways” rhetoric is that we have to legalize aliens so they will pay taxes; but they simultaneously argue that they already pay taxes. Which is it?
I am sorry but increasingly educated should go hand by hand with labor……
I quite agree Leland. I could retire tomorrow, but the economy is so uncertain (and I’m contributing to the support of my unemployed brother), that I don’t dare. I expect to be working until I’m 70. I hope circumstances prove me wrong, but I doubt they will.
**** on, Ali. Don’t mean to frighten you, but my husband is in his mid-eighties and hasn’t quit working yet. He worked full time until the last three years and now still works two days a week. With a fixed income, and prices on everything rising, we’re caught in the middle. We do have excellent insurance, although one-fourth of our income goes toward it. We can’t afford to lose it, even though premiums took the biggest jump ever at the beginning of the year. With Obamacare, we don’t know what will happen. Guess we’ve just lived too long.
And there’s more of the same old baloney about how we need to import workers because of “baby boomers retiring”. It’s a simple fact that EVERY poll taken in the last 10 to 20 years has shown that the majority of boomers will work at least part time past their official retirement dates to supplement their Social Security, either because they want to or will need to. Boomers are not their parents, many of whom started working in their mid teens and were ready for complete retirement at 65. IF we should need workers because boomers are not filling those jobs, it can be discussed THEN. It’s not like we need to “stock up” on low skilled workers, of which there is no proven need.
Big Business Propaganda
Open Border Allegations are like chronic alcoholic promises to quit…..pure lies….