In April, Forbes published an article discussing current immigration policy, STEM college students, and the Trump administration. It somehow manages to insult and ignore American IT workers at the same time.
Better Immigration Policies Would Help U.S. Tech Companies - Forbes
Don't let the headline fool you. "Better," in this case, doesn't refer to any policy favoring American IT workers over foreign talent. Quite the opposite.
The author makes a few statements about the value of human capital, college students in STEM...and then jumps right to the "We need more H-1B visas!" rhetoric.
"H-1B status is typically the only way a high-skilled foreign national or international student graduating from a U.S. university can work long-term in the United States. The wait for employment-based green cards often stretches to years, making them impractical to use for hiring most people. That means despite its limitations, H-1B visas are the key way U.S. companies employ high-skilled foreigners."
This position—and the entire article, in fact—ignores a huge problem. What about the American IT workers right here, ready and willing to do the work?
The Author Ignores Americans for a Reason: He Wants Open Borders
This particular Forbes column's author? One Stuart Anderson, director of the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).
Anderson is a staunch open-borders advocate. His foundation creates studies which "prove" more H-1B visas is better, using whatever correlation they can make. Other open-borders/more-H-1Bs-please advocates then cite those studies to bolster their arguments. He's called out on his acts in Chapter 11 of "Sold Out," a 2016 exposé on the economic impacts of IT offshoring.
When working at the INS, Anderson killed a foreign student visa tracking database project. Such a project would have made it easy to track foreign students in the U.S., and even facilitate their transition into jobs. But it would also tell the INS which students had overstayed their visas & needed to go home...unacceptable to an open-borders advocate.
Now we see why the Forbes article ignored American IT workers. Mr. Anderson isn't working hard on their behalf...he's working against them.
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