Forget Immigration Hell; Screw the House, and Screw the Senate, Too!

[Spiny_Norman]

@duffer

There is a thing called Immigration Law. There is a federal apparatus in place to allow people to apply for citizenship. There is a way for foreigners to gain legal access to this country for work.

You know this. And you know there are legal ways to gain access.

You’re mistaken.

There is no way for someone without very specific and needed skills to seek entry to the US in order to work, and even so: Read Eva Luna’s post again. It takes the skilled resources of a legal team and a shitload of work & money for someone to enter the US to do, for instance, high-end pharmaceutical research.

If you want to enter the US to eke out a living picking crops or tending bar or constructing houses, you’re SOL. It can’t be done. Not by filing paperwork, not by waiting in line, not by paying fees.

Close family relationships with a US citizen can gain you access, but the process is cumbersome, complex, expensive and the wait is extensive - years, in some cases. My BIL is still sitting in Canada, with his wife and son in the US - and he’s been waiting for a year already, with no end in sight. (I had to run the gauntlet myself, when I married Shayna and moved to the US. It’s the stuff of Kafkaesque nightmares.)

The illegals are not here because they skipped the line. There is no line to skip. If the US economy has a demand for low-skilled labourers that the US job market cannot meet, then Congress needs to create a line for people to legally get in. The details of that can and should be discussed. At the moment, however, there’s just no way for a citizen of any country to get to the US and undertake unskilled work.

[magellan01]

@Apos

It’s worth noting that while Bush of course puts all the blame on Reid for the bill being stalled, Reid’s actions seem totally reasonable. He just wanted assurances that after he agreed to the bill on the table, he wouldn’t be stabbed in the back by Frist, the House, and the President by having the conference bill end up totally different than what he had publically agreed to. Since such a stab in the back was exactly their plan, they blamed him for being obstructionist and not falling right into their plan. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

Yep. But both parties are to blame here. Frist refused what Reid requested (members on the committee). Reid wouldn’t allow ammendments, which is ridiculous. Way to work to get stuff done, guys. Now we got squat.

[RTFirefly]

@Eva Luna

The main fucking point of my rant has to do with legal immigration of highly skilled people. I work in-house these days for one of the largest companies in the world - we don’t knowingly hire people who are in the U.S. illegally.

The typical person my employer sponsors for immigration purposes has a graduate degree in finance, statistics, operations research, math, economics, IT, or a bachelor’s degree plus several years of specialized experience. Not the profile of the people you see on TV demonstrating. And yet the reforms that would mean they aren’t left dangling for years and years on end…

<snip>

I feel like I’m repeating myself - see above. The quotas for legal, employment-based immigration aren’t coming close to meeting the demand; the FY 2006 H-1B work visa quota was met in mid-August, before the fiscal year even began, and green card backlogs for most employment-based categories are 3 - 5 years and up. And that’s AFTER employers have gone through an exhaustive process of documenting the lack of qualified U.S. workers for the position.

Willya kindly fuck that shit?

I’ve been on the other side of this equation, looking for a job in 1998, in the middle of the tech boom, with qualifications like a PhD in math and computer programming experience. I sent out resumes, I hit the tech job fairs, and I got barely a nibble. But they were able to convince Congress back then that they couldn’t find enough qualified workers, so they were able to get the H-1B limits raised.

I’m sure they can document the lack of qualified US workers, because it’s impressive what you can document that isn’t necessarily true. (See WMDs, Iraqi.) But I don’t exactly see a tight labor market for people with tech skills - just for people with precise in-demand skill sets that need little if any further training. And when the market was by all accounts much tighter than it is now, I know how eager the employers weren’t to train American workers who had the requisite education to do the work they had.

I don’t see the people your employer is sponsoring as the problem, because they’re not. But I do see companies like your employer as the problem. They want to game the system to increase the supply of the workers they need, so that they can keep salary costs low, and give nothing in return. I personally don’t think a Congress that represents the people, rather than the corporations, should be passing laws to make it easier for your employer to keep salaries low.

Maybe it would make your life easier, and your employer’s life easier, but I don’t see how it’s in the interests of the American people.

[RTFirefly]

@Eva Luna

There are certain groups of pigheaded, self-centered, incorrigible people I would like to lock in a room with each other until they can reach a workable compromise that doesn’t drive the rest of us insane.

Right now, it’s entirely selfish on my part; I want to lock up both houses of Congress in a dark, airless room, with no food or water, and not let them out until they come up with a sensible comprehensive immigration reform plan.

Since you’ve been following the Congressional maneuverings, you might be interested in Kevin Drum’s take on how it came down, which is pulled together from reporting in the L.A. Times, the WaPo, and Time magazine.

Now most of you have probably read about the knock-down, drag-out immigration debate raging in the U.S. Congress right now. I’m about 98% sure there will actually be a serious overhaul of some sort passed this session

I’m almost that sure that it won’t. If you read the linked piece (which is just a few paragraphs long), I think it’ll be clear why.

So what happened on the immigration bill? The nickel answer is that Harry Reid and Bill Frist agreed on a compromise measure that had broad bipartisan support in the Senate, but Reid wanted assurances that Frist was willing to control his own caucus and deliver the bill they had shaken hands on.

If Drum and the reporters he relies on have it right, Frist wasn’t willing to either help block amendments in the Senate that would have substantially changed the compromise bill, nor was he willing to allow Reid any input into the Senate negotiators for the conference committee, where the Senate negotiators routinely take a dive, and the House-Senate compromise would have wound up looking pretty much like the House bill.

[Spiny_Norman]

@RTFirefly

I don’t see the people your employer is sponsoring as the problem, because they’re not. But I do see companies like your employer as the problem. They want to game the system to increase the supply of the workers they need, so that they can keep salary costs low, and give nothing in return. I personally don’t think a Congress that represents the people, rather than the corporations, should be passing laws to make it easier for your employer to keep salaries low.

Maybe it would make your life easier, and your employer’s life easier, but I don’t see how it’s in the interests of the American people.

I don’t see the OP’s frustration as based in the number of H1B visas given out, but in the freakin’ complexity of the rules and process. If an H1B applicant (or any other visa applicant) could at least be given a relatively fast thumbs-up/thumbs-down or a set of rules that would make it possible to gauge the chance of a successful outcome ahead of time, less effort would be wasted. Eva Luna’s company is in business because the rules are incomprehensible, forever changing and - at least in my experience - administered by people with the skills and judgment of a trained meerkat.

I do not know the average price to a company for an H1B sponsorship, but I’d not be surprised to learn that it was beyond ten thousand dollars - just to feed an inept bureaucracy and those who make it their living to wrestle with it. That is not well-spent money, no matter how you look at it.

The number of H1B visas can certainly be subject of debate. That the applicants and their representatives should be provided with a reasonably clear set of rules and guidelines for the process - that seems pretty obvious to me.

If you want to reduce the number of H1B visas given, that’s a clear political decision. But trying to reduce the number of applicants by making it a cumbersome process ? That’s not how the law is supposed to work.

[Eva_Luna]

@RTFirefly

I’ve been on the other side of this equation, looking for a job in 1998, in the middle of the tech boom, with qualifications like a PhD in math and computer programming experience. I sent out resumes, I hit the tech job fairs, and I got barely a nibble. But they were able to convince Congress back then that they couldn’t find enough qualified workers, so they were able to get the H-1B limits raised.

I’m sorry you had a hard time finding a job. As a liberal arts grad myself, I know how frustrating it is to try to convince an employer that just because you don’t have specific experience with every item on their wish list, that you’re still worth a shot. I have a master’s degree that I’m not really using myself, because well, that’s just how the job market is in the field I chose to pursue. Sucks, but there you have it - that’s capitalism.

I’m sure they can document the lack of qualified US workers, because it’s impressive what you can document that isn’t necessarily true. (See WMDs, Iraqi.) But I don’t exactly see a tight labor market for people with tech skills - just for people with precise in-demand skill sets that need little if any further training.

Yes, employers like to hire people who can hit the ground running. That’s capitalism for you again.

And when the market was by all accounts much tighter than it is now, I know how eager the employers weren’t to train American workers who had the requisite education to do the work they had.

Education isn’t the whole picture - if you owned a business, would you hire someone who required additional training to get up to speed before being productive, or someone who would be productive immediately? I get accused of being an unrealistic leftie all the time, and a) still looks like the logical choice to me.

I don’t see the people your employer is sponsoring as the problem, because they’re not. But I do see companies like your employer as the problem. They want to game the system to increase the supply of the workers they need, so that they can keep salary costs low, and give nothing in return. I personally don’t think a Congress that represents the people, rather than the corporations, should be passing laws to make it easier for your employer to keep salaries low.

One of the things we have to prove in order to obtain an H-1B for an employee, much less a green card, is that the employer is paying the prevailing wage for the position, level, and geographic area, according to some mind-bogglingly anal statistical criteria - or the same wage being paid to all other workers in equivalent positions, whichever is higher.

Yes, I’m sure there are companies and their attorneys who game the system, but we sure don’t. And frankly, I don’t think someone who is making what these guys are making is being underpaid - my employer rarely has problems meeting the prevailing wage requirement, and sometimes exceedfs it by tens of thousands of dollars. We pay top-market wages, because we want the best employees, regardless of nationality.

Maybe it would make your life easier, and your employer’s life easier, but I don’t see how it’s in the interests of the American people.

Maybe it’s in the best interests of the American people to learn the skills that are in demand.

[Eva_Luna]

@Spiny Norman

I don’t see the OP’s frustration as based in the number of H1B visas given out, but in the freakin’ complexity of the rules and process. If an H1B applicant (or any other visa applicant) could at least be given a relatively fast thumbs-up/thumbs-down or a set of rules that would make it possible to gauge the chance of a successful outcome ahead of time, less effort would be wasted. Eva Luna’s company is in business because the rules are incomprehensible, forever changing and - at least in my experience - administered by people with the skills and judgment of a trained meerkat.

For the sake of clarity, the H-1B process and criteria are relatively straighforward; it’s the quotas that are unrealistic. The current quota is 65,000 a year, of which nealy 7,000 are set aside for citizens of Chile and Singapore under two bilateral free trade agreements. (I’d be surprised if more than a couple of hundred of those get used every year, but that’s a rant for another day.) Yes, there are disproportionate numbers of H-1B workers in the IT sector, but 65,000 is not exactly a significant chunk of the U.S. workforce. (And by the way, I don’t work for a law firm anymore - as of November 2004 I work for a large global financial services company. They hired me because I’m a lot cheaper than paying a law firm to do it.)

Also, for an H-1B companies generally don’t have to document the unavailability of U.S. workers - they just have to document that the position requies at least a bachelor’s degree in a specific field, and that the employee is qualified for the position. The exciting part comes in during the green card process, when the employer has to document that every single U.S. worker who applied is not qualified for the position, or is unwilling to accept the position, and that the company is paying the prevailing wage as determined by the Dept. of Labor. The strategizing arises when out of the blue, the Dept. of Labor decides they will take several years to get around to looking at your application, which is just Stage 1 of a 3-step process.

I do not know the average price to a company for an H1B sponsorship, but I’d not be surprised to learn that it was beyond ten thousand dollars - just to feed an inept bureaucracy and those who make it their living to wrestle with it. That is not well-spent money, no matter how you look at it.

H-1B sponsorship costs depend on how good you are at negotiating your legal fees, etc., or whether (like my employer) you do a significant proportion of your legal work in-house. But the government filing fees alone are $2190 for the first petition and $1690 for the first extension; $1500 of that goes into a Federal grantmaking fund to provide training to displaced U.S. workers.

[magellan01]

Eva Luna, Not to be overly captious, but you made a disparaging, albeit supposedly factual, claim about the eductational levels of people doing a particular job. I asked you for a cite showing that to be the case. Your cite outlines the minimum job requirements. Do you have any evidence, other than your perception from personal experience, that these people have a high school education only?

Also, I’m sure that some societally awarre posters on this board have probably pointed out in the past that education does not equal intelligence. Not everyone is pushed academically or has the means to go to college, but that is not a comment on his or her ability to deal with the complicate issues, such as those you allude to. Your boss at Immigration proves this point, doesn’t she?

@Eva Luna

Maybe it’s in the best interests of the American people to learn the skills that are in demand.

As far as the company I used to work for that I mentioned, they went to Europe and paid people what they considered a very high wage. There are tons of qualified people in this country doing those jobs. But the company found that the skill level they could get for $X was much greater if they shopped in Europe. I was/am surprised at the ease at which they are able to bring people in from overseas, someone new every few months. By the way, the company is in the computer industry, but these people are not computer people.

[catsix]

Is there something wrong with me, an American citizen and person with a degree in engineering and five plus years experience in IT wanting preferance in the American job market over a person who wants to move here from another country and who is not a citizen of the United States?

Because I really don’t think there is, and I don’t take issue with any law that requires companies to prove that they could not find a qualified American citizen before importing help from half way around the world.

I mean you said your company is looking for people with degrees who do IT work, right?

Well, I’m telling you, they don’t need to go to India to find someone. I live in Pittsburgh, PA.

[catsix]

Sorry, I meant to direct my question to Eva Luna.

[Eva_Luna]

@magellan01

[Do you have any evidence, other than your perception from personal experience, that these people have a high school education only?

I never claimed that all of them did; I just claimed that some of them do. And from frequent personal experience with trying to call USCIS Service Centers to ask simple status questions, and from frequent personal experience of myself and the doznes of other immigration lawyers and paralegals I’ve worked with over the years, including ones who are national authorities on the subject and have written widely used texts and reference matierals on the field, I can tell you that USCIS officers frequently make decisions that are both stupid and legally incorrect. I’ve had to explain the law to the people who are supposed to be in charge of administering and enforcing it on many occasions. I wouldn’t care if they’d only completed 5th grade if they weren’t so frequently complete morons.

Your boss at Immigration proves this point, doesn’t she?

Nitpick: I never worked for Immigration (INS/Homeland Security) per se. The Executive Office for Immigration Review was a separate agency within the Dept. of Justice, and remained within the DOJ after USCIS became part of Homeland Security.

As far as the company I used to work for that I mentioned, they went to Europe and paid people what they considered a very high wage. There are tons of qualified people in this country doing those jobs. But the company found that the skill level they could get for $X was much greater if they shopped in Europe. I was/am surprised at the ease at which they are able to bring people in from overseas, someone new every few months. By the way, the company is in the computer industry, but these people are not computer people.

You may be talking about the L-1 or E visa categories, which are a whole other ball of wax. (L-1 is for intracompany transferees, and E-1 is for nationals of countries with which the U.S. has a bilateral treaty of commerce and navigation.) The types of positions these categories can be used for (professional/managerial) are similar, though.

So you’re surprised a company went where they could get more for less? That wacky capitalism again.

[Eva_Luna]

@catsix

Is there something wrong with me, an American citizen and person with a degree in engineering and five plus years experience in IT wanting preferance in the American job market over a person who wants to move here from another country and who is not a citizen of the United States?

Depends how you think about it. Personally, I don’t see anything that makes a U.S. citizen inherently entitled to a higher standard of living that the vast majority of the rest of the world because of the accident of where he or she was born.

I thought about that a lot while helping an ex-boyfriend with his employment-based immigration issues some years back; his great-grandparents and mine were basically from small East European villages a few miles down the road from each other, and he went to Hell and back trying to stay somewhere were he could both practice his profession and eat, and I (kvetching aside about not using my master’s degree) had no such trouble. The only difference between us is that his great-grandparents turned left, and mine turned right a couple of generations ago. Is that somehow cosmically fair?

For that matter, an entry-level secretarial job in the U.S. provides a higher standard of living than many professional jobs in much of the rest of the world. Do I hope that disparity evens out over time? In a way I do, even though I am coming out on top at the moment.

Because I really don’t think there is, and I don’t take issue with any law that requires companies to prove that they could not find a qualified American citizen before importing help from half way around the world.

Realistically, I know that countries will always protect their own citizens first; I just hope we can find a better balance.

I mean you said your company is looking for people with degrees who do IT work, right?

Well, I’m telling you, they don’t need to go to India to find someone. I live in Pittsburgh, PA.

Well, we don’t have any large-scale IT work going on in PA, but you are welcome to apply for any positions we have open - they are all posted on the company website. And we hire plenty of U.S. citizens, too.

[Eva_Luna]

Oh, and catsix, to be clear - my issue isn’t so much that the U.S. grants preference to its own citizens in employment matters, it’s that if hey are going to do it, why do they have to take so goddamn long and make decisions so arbitrarily? Why should it take more than, on, 6 months to determine the lack of qualified U.S. workers, instead of 3 - 5 years before the poor schmo can even move on to the actual green card application, which may take another several years to be approved?

[RTFirefly]

@Spiny Norman

That the applicants and their representatives should be provided with a reasonably clear set of rules and guidelines for the process - that seems pretty obvious to me.

If you want to reduce the number of H1B visas given, that’s a clear political decision. But trying to reduce the number of applicants by making it a cumbersome process ? That’s not how the law is supposed to work.

I agree with you completely on this. Well said.

[catsix]

Eva Luna said:
Personally, I don’t see anything that makes a U.S. citizen inherently entitled to a higher standard of living that the vast majority of the rest of the world because of the accident of where he or she was born.

Well, it’s not about me taking a bow to be fair to someone else. It’s about me doing what I need to do in order to ensure my own survival. And quite frankly, that doesn’t include being happy about having no job because some company can import a worker who’ll take half the salary I want and work eighty-odd hours a week. I think my government works for me, and should be protecting my interests, which includes preferential treatment over a foreigner when it comes to a job in the United States.

I wouldn’t expect a German company to pass up a German citizen for a job in order to import me, and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge their government if they required the German company to hire a German citizen before importing me.

Is that somehow cosmically fair?

Life isn’t fair, and I have no illusion that it’s supposed to be. I also don’t sit around deluding myself into thinking that the foreigner from Europe or Asia or wherever is thinking one bit about the fact that I might be unemployed and starving because THEY got to come here and take an IT job.

And we hire plenty of U.S. citizens, too.

You kind of made it sound like they can’t find any US citizens and prefer to just import foreigners.

Why should it take more than, on, 6 months to determine the lack of qualified U.S. workers,

How many industries are there in which there is an actual lack of qualified US citizens? Not just US citizens in that city, I mean in the entire country. Because if you’re willing to go 10,000 miles to import an employee, then a qualified individual who lives 2000 miles away is hardly too far away to not be included in the pool.

[Eva_Luna]

@catsix

Well, it’s not about me taking a bow to be fair to someone else. It’s about me doing what I need to do in order to ensure my own survival. And quite frankly, that doesn’t include being happy about having no job because some company can import a worker who’ll take half the salary I want and work eighty-odd hours a week.

Maybe the salary you want is too high for the market. As I said, my company hires far more U.S. wrokers than it does non-U.S. workers. Yes, even for IT jobs. Knowing what kind of salaries these guys are making, and using both government- and privately-developed salary surveys on a daily basis, I find it difficult to believe they are being underpaid. And their salaries gibe just fine with what my friends who I grew up with here in the Midwest make - most of them are in IT, and I have yet to hear one complain that the foreigners are undercutting their wages.

I think my government works for me, and should be protecting my interests, which includes preferential treatment over a foreigner when it comes to a job in the United States.

You already have that, and nobody is proposing undoing that. What I’m proposing is that the Federal government make rules that make sense, and enforce them consistently, predictably, and within a reasonable period of time.

[quote]

Life isn’t fair, and I have no illusion that it’s supposed to be. I also don’t sit around deluding myself into thinking that the foreigner from Europe or Asia or wherever is thinking one bit about the fact that I might be unemployed and starving because THEY got to come here and take an IT job.
[/quote

You might be surprised what the foreigners think. When I talk to them about why the green card process is as fucked-up as it is, they are generally pretty even-handed about the whole thing.

You kind of made it sound like they can’t find any US citizens and prefer to just import foreigners.

No, as mentioned above, my company hires thousands of US workers every year. It’s pain in the ass to hire a foreigner, not to mention expensive, so believe me, most managers will hire a US worker over an equally qualified foreigner.

How many industries are there in which there is an actual lack of qualified US citizens? Not just US citizens in that city, I mean in the entire country. Because if you’re willing to go 10,000 miles to import an employee, then a qualified individual who lives 2000 miles away is hardly too far away to not be included in the pool.

Any qualified individual who is willing to relocate to where the job is is quite welcome to be included in the applicant pool. It’s a simple matter of an online application - nobody is keeping these job openings a secret.

[RTFirefly]

@Eva Luna

I’m sorry you had a hard time finding a job. As a liberal arts grad myself, I know how frustrating it is to try to convince an employer that just because you don’t have specific experience with every item on their wish list, that you’re still worth a shot. I have a master’s degree that I’m not really using myself, because well, that’s just how the job market is in the field I chose to pursue. Sucks, but there you have it - that’s capitalism.

My point is, it’s not just capitalism - it’s legislation. It’s tipping the table a certain way.

I realize that there are times when the labor market is going to be tight, and favor workers, and there are times when it’s not, and will favor employers. That’s capitalism, and that’s just life. Trying to open the borders to employees from other countries so it never becomes tight enough that you have to train people who have demonstrated that they can function at a high level in a related area - well, that’s changing the rules. That’s tipping the board.

Yes, employers like to hire people who can hit the ground running. That’s capitalism for you again.

No, that’s what employers like. And to the extent they can find people like that here at home, more power to them. That’s capitalism.

But when they can change the laws because they have clout and the voters don’t even know what’s going on, that’s applying capitalism not to the job market but to the legislative process. And that may be capitalism, but it damned sure ain’t democracy.

Education isn’t the whole picture - if you owned a business, would you hire someone who required additional training to get up to speed before being productive, or someone who would be productive immediately? I get accused of being an unrealistic leftie all the time, and a) still looks like the logical choice to me.

See above.

One of the things we have to prove in order to obtain an H-1B for an employee, much less a green card, is that the employer is paying the prevailing wage for the position, level, and geographic area, according to some mind-bogglingly anal statistical criteria - or the same wage being paid to all other workers in equivalent positions, whichever is higher.

Yes, I’m sure there are companies and their attorneys who game the system, but we sure don’t. And frankly, I don’t think someone who is making what these guys are making is being underpaid - my employer rarely has problems meeting the prevailing wage requirement, and sometimes exceedfs it by tens of thousands of dollars. We pay top-market wages, because we want the best employees, regardless of nationality.

Just because they pay good money doesn’t mean they aren’t doing this to avoid paying even better money.

And by ‘gaming the system’, I’m not talking about gaming the regs; I’m talking about changing the laws. Let’s get that straight.

Maybe it’s in the best interests of the American people to learn the skills that are in demand.

This may surprise you, but the in-demand skills can change pretty rapidly.

[RTFirefly]

@Eva Luna

Depends how you think about it. Personally, I don’t see anything that makes a U.S. citizen inherently entitled to a higher standard of living that the vast majority of the rest of the world because of the accident of where he or she was born.

Neither do I.

As I see it, the problem relaxed controls on movement of workers and goods between countries is that the benefits seem to primarily accrue to the corporations that are in a position to capitalize on such movement, and to their stockholders, while having a depressing effect on most persons’ wages.

To relax such controls without some sort of quid pro quo, then, is a one-sided deal between the top strata of society and the rest of us. The solution is for the body politic to block such deals unless they’re balanced by some other internal deal that evens out the benefits of free trade and movement of workers. You want another NAFTA? Great. How about universal non-employer-based health coverage in return? You want to expand H-1B visas? Fine. How about we up the minimum wage at the same time?

We are in a class war, here in America. The top 0.1% or so has won it, and continues to win it some more each year. Laws and treaties expanding free trade and allowing more foreign workers into the country are just one part of it. Blocking such deals is one of the few places where the body politic has some leverage. You use what you’ve got.

But (for me at least) it’s not about the furriners; it’s about the class war. There’s plenty of wealth to share with workers from other countries, as long as it’s not American workers v. foreign workers for the few scraps not vacuumed up by the super-rich.

[magellan01]

@Eva Luna

Personally, I don’t see anything that makes a U.S. citizen inherently entitled to a higher standard of living that the vast majority of the rest of the world because of the accident of where he or she was born.

I disagree. You are arguing with a people’s basic right to band together as they see fit in order to create a better society. Some groups will have better ideas than others, and they will enjoy better lives. The others have the opportunity to change what does not work and adopt some of the ideas they see have worked well elsewhere. Today these groups are called nations, and the rule sets agreed upon are in effect within an area defined by a country’s border. Nothing is stopping a group from outside a successful nation from adopting the ideas that have worked better. They can even ask the more successful nation for help in duplicating that success.

The successful nations create their own destiny, and in order to do so, have controls in place. They may choose to invite or accept like-minded individuals as they see fit. They shouldn’t, for instance, encourage or allow immigration of individuals that would have a negative aspect on their society. As far as those who they believe would benefit their society, they should be able to set the rate of immigration to a point where their society can absorb the new individuals without shocking or upsetting the system. These are necessary components of self-determination, a group’s (nation’s) ability to create its own future.

Is it fair that Individual X is born into a successful society and Individual Y is born into a failed one? No. Just as it is unfair that people born into the successful society will be born into different economic strata, be born to parents of varying parenting ability, or be born with different physical and mental capacities.

All these unfair occurrences have been part of the human experience from time immemorial. The good news is that people can band together and change their destinies. Moviing into a successful group is one way. Adopting their practices, even improving upon, them is another. While immigration may have great benefits to the two groups involved, it is not a viable world solution. There is a limit—some limit—on the number of people a particular society can absorb without risking losing some of the attributes responsible for its success. Thus, it is incumbent upon people not fortunate enough to be born into a successful society to recreate that success where they were born. This can be a very, very difficult thing to do, but it can be done. It has been done. It is the history of humans on earth.

I also think it incumbent upon the successful group to take actions to prolong and/or increase its success, creatiing an even more prosperous, healthier, safer, society for its members. To do this, they need an appropriate set of laws and boundaries within which those laws can be enacted and enforced.

I should add that the more successful a society is, the more compassionate it can be to both those within and those without. The U.S., a successful society, gives billions of dollars in aid to the poorer parts of the world. While the amount given by the U.S. isn’t the largest percent, we do give more actual dollars than anyone else. Should we give more? I don’t know what the correct number is. The point, though, is that we have a primary responsibility to ourselves to create the best society we can. That is of value to us and the world’s poor, who have a vested interest in us being able to continue to send billions to them every year.

[magellan01]

Eva Luna,

If you have the time, I would love to hear your response to what I wrote above.

Thanks.