VDARE.COM recently published a letter from a California Reader citing several examples of the connection between corprorate fraud and H-1b visas:

The corporatists—as well as their paid lackeys in the mainstream media and Congress—would have us believe that the H-1B program is vital to American competitiveness and efficiency.

If that is the case, then why do so many organizations that use these foreign workers suffer financial failures, legal problems, and technical breakdowns?

I think this question deserves a more elaborate answer. One of the key features of the H-1b program is that it gives employers an extraordinary degree of control over their employees.

If an H-1b employee displeases someone in authority at their employer, the H-1b employee can easily find themselves in a situation in which they have the choice beween finding another job in a matter of a few days, leaving the US, or staying illegally.

Now, there are certain type of sadists that are greatly attracted to situations in which they have that kind of power over people. Slave societies held an enormous attraction for many people in authority in those societies–even though by most important economic measures slave societies do a poor job of delivering broad prosperity or creating serious innovation. The expansion of illegal immigration and H-1b visas has created the closest thing many modern folks can experience to what it was like being an overseer on a plantation.

Now, there is another related issue. Companies like Enron and Tyco have business practices that are fundamentally illegal. The management of those companies sometimes think that having greater control over their employees will make them safer. Now, in the case of Enron, that strategy may have cost the shareholders substantially-a big chunk of Enron’s losses were related to rather strange investments that Enron made in India–the same place that the lion’s share of Enron’s IT staff came from. It is not uncommon that IT staff have access to sensitive corporate information. What is traditionally less common is that IT staff have the social network and business skills necessary to use the information to blackmail managers.

The coincidence of Enron hiring from a pool of H-1b technical talent with a serious tradition of strong business skills and Enron’s later troubles is interesting. Once Enron management started down that road they may not have had the option to turn back.

In both cases, we have issues that really may provide some short term benefit to corporate bottom line–but with serious negative long term consequences. Government regulation may be necessary to change this incredible short term focus of American business.