RE: Request to remove Information
> From: John Hasler [mailto:jhasler@debian.org]
> Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 5:18 PM
>
>
> I wrote:
> > It is legal in the US to hire only US nationals.
>
> Seth writes:
> > It is illegal in the U.S. to discriminate on the basis of
> > race, creed, national origin...
>
> You misconstrue "national origin". On can be simultaneously
> a US national and of any "national origin" at all.
I understand the distinction. While you can require any level of
citizenship, you can't discriminate within that group. There are a
large number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have national
origins other than U.S., and we are not allowed to discriminate against
them. That is not a small point. The U.S. does necessarily restrict
immigration, as does every other developed nation. If we didn't, we
wouldn't be arguing about outsourcing. All the technology jobs could
easily be filled with qualified applicants from other countries who
would work for a fraction of our wages and would happily emigrate here.
None of the developed countries have an economy large enough to offer
jobs to their own citizens plus every other human on the planet who
wants one. That is a sad but relevant fact. Thus, excepting
humanitarian disasters, you have to control immigration to a level that
a given economy can absorb the new arrivals without creating undue
hardship for those already present.
Now, compare our situation with controlled immigration and strong laws
against discrimination to the that in the third-world countries we are
outsourcing jobs to. One could argue this is not an issue because not
many U.S. residents currently want to emigrate to these countries. If
they did, their job prospects, except for foreign corporations, would be
slim to none. The reasons would be both national origin and race (call
it culture if you want to be polite), and it wouldn't matter if you
became a citizen. Such is the irony of the current situation.
--
Seth Goodman
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