The item quoted below (Taoiseach hoping to reach new deal on US work visa) is from the Irish Independent newspaper, so you have to wonder whether the proposal of increased work visas is a serious possibility or just some political BS, er blarney aimed at the voters of Ireland.

However, you can never underestimate Washington’s treachery against the American people where immigration is concerned. Check out last year’s lop-sided work visa agreement: 5,000 visas for Americans and 20,000 for Irish. Wouldn’t it be more fair for Americans to get the bigger share of work visas, since the United States has a considerably larger population?? (US - 306 million; Ireland - 4 million)

So it is quite believable that Congress and BHO might import thousands more Irish workers even though over four million citizens have lost their jobs since December 2007. In Washington, it’s American citizens last, always.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen is seeking to reach an agreement with US President Barack Obama that would allow thousands more Irish people to work in the US.

It comes after a deal was agreed with Australia, which has allowed 10,000 of its citizens to live and work in the US for two years in return for access to Australia for US citizens.

Mr Cowen was speaking as it emerged that talks between the two governments on setting up a similar programme for Irish and US citizens were under way.

“We would like to get the model the Australians obtained, where people from both countries could come for a more prolonged period and work,” he told RTE’s ‘Week in Politics’.

Last year, the US agreed that 20,000 Irish citizens could apply for year-long working visits. In return, 5,000 US citizens were allowed to come to Ireland.

The new ‘E3 visa’ deal is separate from discussions on the issue of the undocumented Irish, who are being detained in jail for up to 56 days prior to being deported and also have to share cells with convicted criminals. This has heightened fears among the estimated 50,000 Irish people living in the US who do not have visas.

Below, Ireland PM Brian Cowen presents the current resident of the White House with the traditional bowl of shamrocks prior to discussing additional Irish immigration.

There has been a tendency on VDARE.com to paint Barack Obama as a leftist. I would suggest that Obama is no more a sincere leftist than George W. Bush was a sincere conservative. First and foremost, Obama is a Chicago politician. Chicago has a substantial leftist tradition. During its heyday, the IWW was founded in Chicago-which also hosted the national headquarters of the SDS. At its peak, the “Red Squad” in the Chicago police had 600 acknowledged operatives. The Daley tradition in Chicago politics represents the most pro-business and conservative type of politics that is electorally possible in Chicago–and black districts are more left oriented. Bipartisanship in Chicago means something a bit different than other parts of the country.

I would specifically take Obama’s New Party affiliations with a grain of salt.The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee , ACORN and the New Party were never explicitly Marxist. Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most celebrated member of the New Party-and he calls himself and “anarchist” or “libertarian socialist”.

Who is the “real” Obama? My assessment is that Obama will do whatever he thinks necessary to either get re-election or die trying. He would literally rather die than go down as the Black, one-term, Jimmy Carter. I fully expect tensions to rise among Obama’s base when his 2012 campaign ramps up–and the Obama administration needs to make some really hard decisions. I truly doubt he could, for example, carry Iowa again after a major amnesty.

Joe Guzzardi will be on Chuck Wilder today, March 17th, at 3:20 PM Eastern, 12:20 Pacific Time (click here to listen) talking about his most recent column: “Governor Dianne Feinstein: The Horror!”

Most of the interview will be devoted to why Joe thinks that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has little chance of being California’s next governor.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all our Irish readers, our Irish-American readers, and to legal immigrants from Ireland. (As for illegal Irish immigrants, you can buy a one-way ticket from New York to Shannon fairly cheaply.)

In honor of St. Patricks’s Day, check out St. Patrick’s Day Explained To England
by Peter Brimelow, and The Camp Of St. Patrick and Ganging Up On America by me.

Peter Brimelow’s column was an attempt to explain the St. Patrick’s Day parade to the readers of the London Times in the ’80s, and mine attempt to explain that nineteenth century Irish immigration was not an unmixed blessing.

In Dr. Matloff’s email below, he describes trying to have a conference about the effect of H-1Bs on American workers, and being caught up in an ethnic studies argument instead:“Second, one of the speakers from the UCLA conference was an attendee to this one, and in his discussion with me at lunch, he took the party-line Ethnic Studies professor point of view: Criticism of H-1B reflects negatively on Asian-Americans, and that’s that, stop criticizing H-1B. He knows my close ties to the Chinese-American community, and though I pointed out to him that the large numbers of Asian-American programmers and engineers means that they are prime victims of employers’ use of H-1Bs, it didn’t move him. He also claimed that Lou Dobbs and Peter Brimelow are xenophobes, again ignoring my arguments to the contrary. As I had seen and admired this professor’s research in the past, I was taken aback by his flatly ideological view of things.”

Of course this is the problem with modern immigration debate–even if we say that immigration restriction is not about race for us, (as Tom Tancredo did recently) it is about race for the immigrants themselves.

Dr. Norm Matloff writes:

Last Friday I attended the third in a series of conferences sponsored by the Sloan Coast Program on Science and Engineering Workers, this one held at Stanford. The first was held at UC Davis last year; see here for my summary.

The second conference was held at UCLA in January. I did not attend, as it seemed to be focused on ethnic issues rather than on labor. More on this point below.

(more…)

An enterprising VDARE.com reader, John J. Pershing, (see his earlier contributions here, here, and here) was sufficiently moved by the spectacle of Professor Robert Kennedy - the University of Michigan’s worker-import/job-export cheerleader with the enterprising habit of getting his employees to puff his book on Amazon – that he wrote to him. (Kennedy, it will remembered provoked Carrie’s Nation’s recent excellent outsourcing essay.)

Professor Kennedy:

What sayeth thou in reference to the two March 11, 2009 rock turning over pieces by Patrick Cleburne/Carrie’s Nation/Androcass found in Vdare’s blog column? I’m a reasonable person willing to listen to the other side. Be advised that should you respond, these communiques are subject to being forwarded and published20on the web as well would be news of you opting not to respond.

Most sincerely,

J. Pershing

Kennedy responded with a classic piece of academic arrogance and intellectual dishonesty:

From: Robert Kennedy
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:26:25 -0400
To
Conversation: Kommissar H1-B Cheerleader
Subject: Re: Kommissar H1-B Cheerleader

If you’re interested in the topic — both what works and what doesn’t, I suggest you check out my book (The Services Shift, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0137133502). It’s primarily descriptive, but does provide a roadmap I’ve found that blog commentators tend to not understand the distinction between descriptive and normative writing.

I’ve never heard of the vdare blog and am not inclined to respond to people who post anonymously. I’ve had many debates with actual people on both sides of this issue. I am happy to interact with people who rely on facts and arguments. I have no interest in debating people who simply emote and call people name s. A quick glance give me the impression that the vdare blog tends toward the latter.

If any of these people would like to debate, have them write me directly, with a name and some facts. I am more than happy to have a discussion on those terms.

Best,

Bob Kennedy

The techniques used here are very common amongst a certain group and they are worth analysis.

• Utter refusal to meet argument with argument. Rather throw a book (without explication) at his correspondent and dodge VDARE.com with specious assertions.
• Attempt to intimidate: in this case using academic jargon – “descriptive and normative”. As if his op-ed piece “Work Visas stop offshoring of high-skill jobs” The Detroit News February20 2008 was not normative!
• Lie about what the other side says. This is very common. In this case the “Patrick Cleburne” blogs are obviously not anonymous. Further more much of the H-1B/Outsourcing material we have published, for instance Norm Matloff’s or John Miano’s is highly technical. But it is far more convenient to yell out a falsehood and run.

It is of course possible Kennedy does not know of VDARE.com – Academics are pitifully narrow. Not following the public debate could account for the poor quality of the op-ed, as Carrie’s Nation was able to find a mass of errors in it.

Tell Professor Kennedy to shape up – he needs to do his homework to actually compete in the polemical Big Time.

Afterward:

I see William Davidson, who funded Professor Kennedy’s Chair and Institute, died on Friday.

It is not VDARE’s habit to go all sentimental because an enemy dies. Davidson is said to have to have given away over $200 million – but most went to Israel, or to Jewish causes here. His contributions to the U.Mich Business School bought him, in Professor Kennedy, an apologist for the brutal attack on American living standards that Outsourcing/H-1B constitutes. Davidson caused Kennedy’s chair to be named after the deplorable late Congressman Tom Lantos (D –CA) (who appears to have had nothing to do with the University). Lantos ( ADA rating 100%; Career Numbers USA grade F) deviated from the knee jerk leftism he brought from his native central Europe at the end of his career – to help promote the attack on Iraq.

This was the man William Davidson thought deserved honoring.

America will be better off without William Davidson.

I’ll be on John Oakley’s popular Toronto radio show at 8:30 a.m. ET, streamed here