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Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

nytimes.com

151–160 of 188 posts

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#151
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. In fact why not simply add 65000 to the net US immigration, abolish H1B and let the much praised market forces attract or repel people to those alleged unfilled jobs by rising wages.

Because immigrants have different economic value. Adding 65,000 day laborers is very different from adding 65,000 engineers.

If engineers have more value, then market forces will adjust wages to fill those roles won't they? If that doesn't happen then clearly your conjecture of their relative value must be wrong. Necessarily.

At least that's the story I'm endlessly told.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#152
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people acknowledge that the Iraqi people aren't ready for Democracy. This is a really contentious statement that you just drop in both as fact and as the basis of your entire argument. No, I would not say that 'the Iraqi people aren't ready for Democracy' is a true statement. I also wouldn't say that what 'most people [in the US]' think about the Iraqi people's readiness for democracy [in Iraq] is really relev…

It's an idea that was invoked by the American left to explain Bush's failure in Iraq, and eventually conceded by key figures on the right as well: http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-rumsfeld-admits-that-e... . So I'm not sure it's all that controversial. And we're not talking about whether individual Iraqis in Minnesota are ready for democracy. We are talking about the link posted earlier in the thread, which sugg…

In 1945, most Americans would have believed that the Japanese people and the German people were not ready for democracy. Luckily the Truman administration and its allies were not as feckless and irresponsible as the Bush administration.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#153
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an idea that was invoked by the American left to explain Bush's failure in Iraq, and eventually conceded by key figures on the right as well: http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-rumsfeld-admits-that-e... . So I'm not sure it's all that controversial. And we're not talking about whether individual Iraqis in Minnesota are ready for democracy. We are talking about the link posted earlier in the thread, which sugg…

In 1945, most Americans would have believed that the Japanese people and the German people were not ready for democracy. Luckily the Truman administration and its allies were not as feckless and irresponsible as the Bush administration.

I don't think your assertion about 1945 is correct. Both Germany and Japan had functional and stable democracies before that date which was excellent evidence that they could support it.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#154
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1945, most Americans would have believed that the Japanese people and the German people were not ready for democracy. Luckily the Truman administration and its allies were not as feckless and irresponsible as the Bush administration.

I don't think your assertion about 1945 is correct. Both Germany and Japan had functional and stable democracies before that date which was excellent evidence that they could support it.

I'm not sure you could call Germany's "stable", at least not in the 1930s. I'm not certain you could call Japan's "functional" - wasn't it more ornamental than having any real ability to change the course of government policy?

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#155
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. In fact why not simply add 65000 to the net US immigration, abolish H1B and let the much praised market forces attract or repel people to those alleged unfilled jobs by rising wages.

Because immigrants have different economic value. Adding 65,000 day laborers is very different from adding 65,000 engineers.

I mean no offense to those 65,000 H1B visa holders but many many of them don't deserve the title 'engineers'. No, not even the title of IT workers.

They are quite often simply bodies being pushed by the outsourcing firms to get fees. Many of these workers brought to Disney had to be trained for months.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#156
post #3

Can anyone elucidate why having artificial barriers to employing certain types of people is beneficial? If so, why not create the same restrictions on, say, a company in California from hiring someone from New York? Or is this a guise for xenophobia?

>Or is this a guise for xenophobia? Would you be in favor of increasing the general US immigration cap by 65000 and abolishing H1B completely? Because I would. If you are not in favor of that then perhaps there is a motive to your concern other than racial harmony.

There is no 'general US immigration cap', because most immigrants are family members who pretty much get to come as long as they pass some checks.

Source: my Italian wife and I went through that process when we moved here from Italy.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#157
post #6

The real fix to this is to make sure that people brought over with an H1-B can easily change jobs. That way they're not beholden to some low-wage job, and companies that bring people in merely for low wages will face high rates of churn.

Easier than current H1 transfers? You're introducing a loophole where unqualified labor will be hired (and let go on day 2) to switch to even lower-wage jobs.

Auction + transfer tends to guard against this. Don't shell out for labour which walks.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#158
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing that says you must let immigrants become citizens right away [...] There's nothing that says you must let immigrants come. Fixed that for you.

Actually, there is: economics. You can't have a successful country and exclude everyone who wasn't smart enough to be born there. In a world of N billion people, a lot of talented people are going to be born abroad. Keep them out, and they'll concentrate in other places. Do you realize how much of the tech world was built be people from all over? HTTP, Linux, Google, Java, C++ and so on.

Restricted immigration that allows the top talent of various countries is not the same as mass immigration that replaces the host population and culture. Your dream of an open-borders utopia is incompatible with a successful country.

Israel has had a strict immigration policy, far more restrictive than the post-1965 US policy. They don't seem perturbed by your claimed economic requirement of not "exclud[ing] everyone who wasn't smart enough to be born there" (while you've already shown you really mean open borders).

The US prospered with very restricted immigration for decades.

> Keep them out, and they'll concentrate in other places.

Let them concentrate, especially those from the Third World, so their countries have a chance to benefit from their talent and develop. I don't understand why you are against their home countries prospering.

Xenophobia-at-a-distance has no place in modern civilization.

Re: Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers with Immigrants

#159
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the real fix is to make the H-1B 'lottery' into an auction. Instead of accepting 65,000 H-1Bs at random--accept the 65,000 H-1Bs with the highest wages. That way we are getting the immigrants with the highest valued skills and stopping companies like Cognizant and Infosys that game the immigration system by applying for the cheapest H-1Bs possible.

What is special about the number 65,000? Absolutely nothing. It's central planning for something that doesn't require it: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

Funnily enough, his argument is that it doesn't mean much for the whole economy for there to be more immigrants. It sure as hell means a lot for individual communities! He seems to approach the economy as a race to the bottom / free market fiasco that has ended up concentrating all the profit in those who already own the land and capital.

It is good for a laborer when there is more available work than there is labor - they can command better rates and generally have a better quality of life (see: almost everyone in the tech industry right now). It is good for someone with lots of capital to have as much excess labor as possible (assuming there's still people that can afford to buy that person's products). When a person with capital can make cheaper products because the labor is cheap, it doesn't necessarily mean that all products become cheaper. You end up with the walmart economy where you have the people who own and manage in their mansions and everyone else unable to generate any meaningful wealth.

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