Carl Bialik writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The recipients of U.S. visas for specialized job functions are a small blip in the overall employment market. But they’ve taken on great symbolic importance in the past year.

With the filing period for employers beginning April 1, immigration advocates argue that granting more H-1B visas to foreign nationals creates jobs for Americans. Critics dispute that notion and say that financial firms receiving bailout funds have been hiring foreign workers while laying off tens of thousands of Americans. Both sides are playing fast and loose with the numbers.[Work Visa Numbers Get Squishy-and Get Played, March 31, 2009]

The advocates of H-1b expansion have enormous resources to analyze every aspect of skilled labor immigration and include some of the wealthiest people in the world, the most powerful CEO’s, the Federal Reserve and leaders of major foundations and research institutions that are heavy direct and indirect users of H-1b and related visas. H-1b skeptics have virtually no such resources. Why did guest worker expansion advocates create a set of policies with such poor tracking and reporting in place?

“H-1b” has become a popular “generic” label for skilled guest worker visas. There is a complex alphabet soup of related visas including L-1 visas. Both sides are flying blind because of the policies H-1b advocates cavalierly instituted. We just don’t know things like just how many H-1b and related visas are used in each publicly traded company and how this relates to their financial performance, hiring and criminal convictions in those companies. You will find far more support for honest and expanded reporting among H-1b skeptics than H-1b advocates.

There has been no lasting improvement in the US stock market or the employment situation of Americans since H-1b expansion. Skilled guest worker expansion is far more than a blip in the most impacted industries.

Katie Fairbank writes in the The Dallas Morning News:

DISD had the most filings of any North Texas entity, with 380 requests for H-1B visas and five for permanent visas.

“We’re obviously trying to find more bilingual teachers to help us with our population,” said school district spokesman Jon Dahlander. Students with limited English proficiency now number 53,785 in DISD, or 34 percent of total enrollment.

Dahlander added that despite job cuts of about 1,000 positions this school year, “we will be making new requests in April.” He said he didn’t know how many.[Dallas ISD, area firms sought hundreds of worker visas amid job losses, March 30, 2009]

Some analysis suggests there has been a recent reduction in illegal immigration. Are we seeing an influx of immigrants from other parts of the country into Dallas or is this evidence of a policy change in the DISD? I wonder how many of these “students with limited English proficiency” are US citizens (i.e. anchor babies)?

London is giving a warm, multicultural welcome to the G20 leaders assembling there.

Interestingly, overt Marxism is largely absent from the symbols of protest-which seems centered around environmental and anarchist sympathies.

Since the Great Depression, there was largely an identification of Marxism with the left. That originated when restriction of immigration was fact in most developed countries. Key elements of the Social Democratic Marxist tradition are now part of the Global elite when something has gone deeply wrong.

The face of the “Establishment” is rather cosmopolitan.

We are seeing crowds thresh about, unconsciously seeking some package of policies that will address essential issues. These intellectual and cultural gyrations accelerate until a real solution is found for the world economy and the major developed countries. Until immigration restriction is in place, issues essential to leftists simply cannot be addressed in developed countries-and that creates a huge quandary for the left aspect of global leadership because they are so identified with multiculturalism they can’t think straight about immigration issues. When street leftists move into corridors of power, they create a niche for new and different varieties of street leftists-and that will continue until somebody who moves into power delivers something real.

Anti-immigration groups like the BNP aren’t part of the G20 Protests–but that could change if the global economy and leftist orthodoxy continues to unravel.

More photos of the London G2 Protests are here.

Sen. Jim Webb writes in Parade:

In 1984, Japan had a population half the size of ours and was incarcerating 40,000 sentenced offenders, compared with 580,000 in the United States. As shocking as that disparity was, the difference between the countries now is even more astounding–and profoundly disturbing. Since then, Japan’s prison population has not quite doubled to 71,000, while ours has quadrupled to 2.3 million.[Why We Must Fix Our Prisons, March 29, 2009]

Japan of course, has a more sane immigration policy than the US.

This chart shows the time line more graphically:

Webb goes on:

law-enforcement officials in many parts of the U.S. have been overwhelmed and unable to address a dangerous wave of organized, frequently violent gang activity, much of it run by leaders who are based in other countries

It is more than importation of criminals. Since 1967, the US has steadily become a less economically equal society-and economic equality stagnated even between 1958 and 1967. Economics problems accompanying mass immigration are driving Americans into escapism and criminality.

Mexican cartels are now reported to be running operations in some 230 American cities. Other gang activity–much of it directed from Latin America, Asia, and Europe–has permeated our country to the point that no area is immune. As one example, several thousand members of the Central American gang MS-13 now operate in northern Virginia, only a stone’s throw from our nation’s capital.

Post-1965 mass immigration was a huge mistake. How do we humanely address this tragedy?

Steve Sailor recently asked someone to “summon the ghost of Henry George” to  “explain why high land prices are not a good thing for America”. I’ve been quite interested in the economics of Henry George since I was a student at U of Chicago because I felt George brought some economic rigor to the quest to create a more equal society.

Henry George thought dips in the business cycle occurred when the returns to land and monopoly capital or taxation of labor and capital investment reached levels an economy could not support. According to George, in a free market economy, the way out of a depression was to let prices drop–or lower taxes–to a level the existing economy might support.

The banking industry has been working hard to keep that from happening. In a practical sense, a 20-50% dip in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida real estate values that have been driven up by high immigration levels and lowering the wages of Americans, would mean banks would have to write-off substantial assets.

If George is right, what we really ought to be doing is simply allow land prices in high immigration states to drop and regulate banks so mortgages are written off to the the point citizens are unlikely to abandon their homes. That would mean the banks that financed mass immigration in the Southwest and Florida would be turned over to new owners and management. Such a major restructuring would present the ideal time to humanely enforce immigration laws and develop alternative employment for illegal immigrants in their home countries.

Moving forward, George would advocate putting in places taxes on land that would automatically adjust to prevent future accumulation of high levels of private equity in land but preserve the investment of owners in their housing structures. This would considerably contain enthusiasm of financial interests for mass immigration.

19th Century Economists observed that except under special circumstances, an “Iron Law” will direct market wages towards subsistence levels. The 20th century saw a universal tendency of politically stable, developed countries to take steps to alter labor markets-including restriction of immigration.

We have hired mouthpieces promoting slogans that “markets are global”, without any understanding what it would mean if that were really the case.

The BLS reports “Average wages and benefits” in the US at $29.18 per hour-suggesting that most of the US GDP relates to US market wages. That has nothing to do with what 19th century economists were talking about-most of the earnings of labor they would see as either return on human capital or broadly held forms of economic rent.

19th century economists lived in a world with little restriction on movement of labor beyond issues of language and endemic cultural prejudices. Until WW I, only Czarist Russia required a passport for entry. Workers in India and China live on less than $8.3K per year- because there is substantial return to the capital stock and land in those countries.

The workforces of China, India and even poorer countries are much larger than developed countries. At the average GDP per worker of India and China, the entire workforce of the US could be replaced for less than $1.286 Trillion or less than 9% of the US GDP if we assume no movement of prices from such a big transaction. That price wouldn’t replace workers with all important skills in the US-but it would replace all but the most highly skilled workers if we had true open borders, no trade barriers and a libertarian fantasy that would permit supporting workers in the US at Chinese/Indian living standards.

As bad as post 1965 trends have been, there is still a long race to the bottom ahead for American workers.

In the past we’ve noted at VDARE.com, Citigroup has a tendency to make extensive use of foreign labor. Citigroup is also traditionally an enormously politically active organization. In 2008, Citigroup employees made $3.5 Million in federal campaign donations. I looked up the Americans For Better Immigration voting records for the top recipients(those that got more than $10,000) and did a weighted average. Their GPA was 1.19–or a D+. This was mostly driven I think by a cluster of Republican immigration patriots like Chambliss that got substantial money from Citigroup employees.

Four banks have about 40% of all deposits in the US. They all make extensive use of H-1b labor. These banks are all largely creatures of bank regulations-and I would suggest that VDARE.com reader may want to see bank regulation as one tool to defend themselves.

For example, It would be perfectly reasonable for overseas accounts in US banks to be regulated like domestic ones-since Citigroup is expecting the equivalent of FDIC protection in hard times. It might also be appropriate to expand FDIC protections in smaller banks so they could better compete with the larger banks-and I suspect smaller banks don’t have quite the immigration bias we see among Citigroup employees.

As we move forward with handling the mess in the banking system, I think we should be open to dismantling entities like Citigroup-and making sure no such monstrosity ever arises again.

Reuters writes:

Citigroup Inc awarded Chief Executive Vikram Pandit $10.82 million of compensation in 2008, a year when the government propped up the bank with $45 billion of capital.

Norman Thomas scoffed at

Republican accusations that FDR is a “socialist.” No socialist, Thomas explains, would stage a short-term government takeover of the banks, only to return them once they were solvent to the same Wall Street millionaires who broke them in the first place.

US regulations assume the largest banks would never fail. Sadly these banks often aren’t “American” in any meaningful sense. Often, their ownership is largely foreign, their management are either foreigners, recent immigrants or their descendants,a lot of their depositors are foreigners, and many of their employees are recent immigrants or guest workers. Just maybe, this is part of the problem. The easiest way to rob a bank is to own it. The next easiest way is to run a bank’s databases. Until a new management team is installed at these failed banks, there is no way to understand what happened.

Nationalization of the Federal Reserve system makes sense. We can admit Citigroup et al have failed and distribute control of those institutions among sound banks-even if those banks require government investment to take on responsibility to the depositors at failed banks. The smaller banks can then choose a new management team and sort the mess out.

Banking is inherently a privileged business. Any business subject to government guarantees like FDIC protection should be required meet the same requirements for employees and investors as the Presidency. Having sensitive bank databases controlled by young people far from home–or outsourced to countries where a background check can’t even be–done is absurdly risky.

Steve Sailer noted that Obama may be gearing up for an immigration fight early in his term. I wouldn’t assume this is because he expects–or wants–to win such a fight. Obama assembled a coalition with contradictory agendas.

Many of his Hispanic supporters want an amnesty regardless of what it does to other Americans. He also has a lot of supporters who expect an Obama administration to do something other than continue the last three decades of pandering to the rich. All Obama has to do to keep his Hispanic supporters is show he’s done a little more than Bush et al did for them–which consisted of empty promises and sub-prime mortgages that blew up on them.

Obama in 2012 will be running either with the first popular vote or with an electoral college shaped more by recent Hispanic immigration reflected in the 2010 census. Even if Obama got an amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens, they won’t become eligible to vote fast enough to do him any good in 2012.

What might help Obama electorally in 2012:

• Accelerate grants of citizenship. According to DHS, In 2007, there were 12.8 million legal permanent residents–8.2 million were eligible for naturalization. From 1980-2006 there were of 284,000 naturalizations each year. That suggests a lot of room to pack the voting base.

Obama might even temporarily reduce the presence of illegal aliens by cracking down on illegal employers or offering repatriation assistance to recent illegal immigrants who want to go home. Such a move would avoid a fight over amnesty–and might actually improve conditions for illegal aliens now in the US.

Requirements for naturalization have been way too loose in recent decades. Further loosening requirements will create long term problems–but those problems won’t be apparent until after Obama is out of office. Above all, we can count on Obama to do whatever he thinks will get him re-elected in 2012.

From the India Times:

CEO and founder of popular site LinkedIn Reid Hoffman urged the US Congress and the Obama Administration to remove the cap on H-1B visas, which enable foreign nationals to live and work in the United States. LinkedIn is a popular business-oriented social networking site.

“Remove the cap on H-1B visas and impose a 10 per cent payroll tax beyond the benchmark salary for each visa,” Hoffman wrote in an article “Stimulus 2.0: It’s the Startups, Stupid” in TechCrunch, a publication of The Washington Post. A day earlier in another article in The Washington Post, Hoffman made a similar argument for the next phase of stimulus policies.

Observing that the US is a country founded on immigration, Hoffman said, “We should welcome the best and the brightest as our own. Abolish the H-1B cap, and give me an economic reason for preferring local. I’ll only do foreign if I need to.”

Hoffman said, “A 10 per cent payroll tax for each H-1B visa can be reinvested in whatever it takes to get American talent up to the same level.” This has been proposed previously, but a payroll tax ensures that H-1Bs are used for skilled labour, not cheap labour.

First off, the taxes on imported labor that Hoffman is arguing for are quite a bit less than companies would pay in competitive econonmies like Singapore. I disagree strongly with Hoffman’s argument that the issue has ever been training of Americans–but even if he were right, the revenues on a $60,000/year H-1b worker would be something like $12,000 over six years. This would not even cover expenses for a 4 year IT program at a State University–let alone the true cost of education and the student’s opportunity cost of investment in their education. Hoffman is still advocating what amounts to a program that lets US companies grant green cards at far less than the value of citizenship. Such a program is inherently abusive.