Does U.S. Government Hate its Citizens?

Well-respected investment advisor and commentator Mish Shedlock recently wrote two troubling commentaries related to immigration that are worth the read.

Mish has written quite a bit about Obamacare changing how businesses are addressing staffing – from holding off on hiring to shifting to more part-time workers to avoid the mandate for coverage of full-time employees. Now, Mish writes that between Obamacare and amnesty legislation (if it passes), our elected officials will have incentivized employers to hire the amnestied before other workers.

Employers of 50 or more full-time workers will pay a penalty of as much as $3,000 per employee if at least one employee gets insurance on a new government-run insurance exchange. But the amnestied, who will be eligible for work, but not for Obamacare, have no healthcare penalty attached to their employment. Unintended consequences.

The second commentary, “Million Engineers Struggling to Find a Job,” references an article that talks about all the engineers trained in India who don’t have jobs. India has increased its output of engineers, about 1.5 million in the most recent year period, but an estimated one-third to one-fifth likely will not have jobs.

Where will they go? What will they do?

Probably a lot of them will come to the U.S. on H-1B visas, the visa used to bring in highly skilled foreign workers when American workers cannot be found.

The proposed immigration bill calls for an increase in these visas – even though there’s compelling evidence that there’s no shortage of engineers and high-tech workers, contrary to what we hear from Bill Gates and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Currently at 65,000 a year, the number of H-1Bs would increase to between 115,000 and 180,000 annually under the amnesty bill.

Additionally, there are other ways for these Indian engineers to compete in the U.S. job market. Overall, the amnesty bill will give work permits to 33 million more foreign job seekers in just the next ten years, doubling immigration. So there will be ample opportunity.

At times it seems that our government works harder for foreigners than its own citizens. One might conclude our elected officials just don’t like us!