In making their case for a free-for-all immigration policy, open-border libertarians usually confine themselves to insipid sentimental arguments. This manipulative fare is easy to dismiss. After all, saying that immigrants are only seeking “a better way of life” in our country or that immigration is an American tradition hardly constitutes a valid justification for laws that are manifestly antithetical to the welfare and rights of Americans.

Immigration lawyer Gregory Siskind is one such specimen. Siskind, who claims his work is inspired by his libertarian beliefs and Jewish faith, to boot, traffics in H-1B visas. These are temporary work permits, which are also a route to acquiring legal permanent resident status. The out-of-control H-1B visa program has become an example of crony capitalism in action—it’s tantamount to a taxpayer subsidy for hi-tech corporations.

Siskind claims his work benefits the economy. As his immigration muse, he touts the man who monkeys with our money, Alan Greenspan. Predictably, Greenspan is as hip about immigration as he is about inflating the money supply. That Siskind credits the Fed chairman with “ensuring that America thrives” ought to cast doubts on any judgment he makes about the value to the economy of his H-1B work, much less on his libertarian bona fides.

Far worse is Jim Rogers’ paean to open borders published by the Future of Freedom Foundation, an organization that generally doesn’t countenance falsehoods. In support for his open-border position, Rogers claims falsely that the United States has huge shortages of computer specialists, software and other engineers. Our Mr. Siskind, for his part, hazards that advocates of limited immigration or a moratorium on work visas wish to “shut down the country’s borders to protect the economic well-being of the few.”

As few as 172,000? That’s the official number of unemployed high-tech professionals who are, if we are to believe Siskind, acting as spoilsports. Computer software engineers lead the way with 62,000 unemployed! Indeed, these figures, available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the U.S. Department of Labor, put paid to the untruths spread by immigration fetishists. Unemployment among electrical and electronics engineers reached seven percent in the first quarter of 2003!

Yet the current cap of H-1B visas stands at 195,000, and immigration lawyers like Siskind are lobbying Congress to keep the new arrivals coming. In 1992, the allowable number of H-1B visas was 65,000, but due to pressure, Congress increased the number of incomers first to 115,000 and then to its current level. “Since the H-1B cap was raised to 195,000 visas a year in 2000,” reports the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-United States of America (IEEE-USA), unemployment among American engineers and computer scientists has jumped from 65,000 to 114,000 in 2001 to 166,000 in 2002 to its current unequalled high.

Yes, correlation is not causation. But you have to admit the correlation is a strong one. And it is further strengthened by the fact that during the same time span, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, cheered on by the likes of Siskind and the congressional cockroaches, had approved a total of “529,000 new and renewal H-1B visa petitions from U.S. employers.” Talk about treason! American governments are unique in their efforts to displace their own population, while at the same time training it in the art of silent suffering—the locals are guaranteed to go quietly into the night, mouthing mad mantras about immigration’s blessings.

The sheer volume of unemployed, highly skilled people in the fields of science and engineering must give pause. This “may not be a short-term cyclical phenomenon,” ventures Dr. Ronil Hira of the IEEE-USA, but a result of much more fundamental changes in the U.S. economy. Even theoreticians who refuse to adapt abstracted economic models to reality must concede that America’s best and brightest young people will be unlikely to pursue careers in science and engineering anytime soon, not if they want to eat.

Professionals like electrical engineers and computer scientists have an added problem. Most of these fellows make their living via the economic means. The political class and its sycophants—immigration lawyers and activists—utilize the political means to earn their keep. As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard reminded, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory…but oh so very effective. 

©By ILANA MERCER
WorldNetDaily.com
July 2, 2003

The post DISPLACING AMERICANS appeared first on ILANA MERCER.

Policies of cheap money and credit are, invariably, accompanied by boom and bust cycles ~ilana

When government sports a ‘surplus,’ this implies that the political pickpockets have stolen more funds than they can possibly dream of spending. The property is not theirs to keep! Conversely, when ‘deficits’ are reported, this means that the kleptomaniacs have not been able to steal sufficient funds to cover their profligacy ~ilana

The guy on one of those policy-bereft-of-principle debates plaguing television had me confused. He was saying that the dot-com bust of the 1990s is a big factor in the deficits. Pondering over what he meant, it occurred to me that he was putting the cashless cart before the horse.

The process began with the Chairman of the Fed, also the most revered government lackey, Alan Greenspan. With policies of cheap money and credit, which are, invariably, accompanied by boom and bust cycles, Greenspan, his Federal Reserve System, and the consecutive governments they’ve served created the “irrational exuberance” that typified the times—in cahoots, this cartel created the conditions for the speculative glut that was the dot-com era.

Still, the dot-com bust saw the private sector bite the bullet and undergo the necessary downsizing. Gone are the annoying “wonder kids.” When their business plans proved to be without substance, they, presumably, sold the Porsches and moved back with mom and pop.

How then did this rational, post-hangover, private-sector sobriety contribute to government deficits?

Well, guess who didn’t shrink operations to fit the emptying coffers? When you and I fall on hard times, often due to the policies of plunder, we economize or face the legal and economic ramifications of our excesses. When the parasites who feed upon us exhaust our resources, what do they do?

Answers Rep. Ron Paul: “Congress almost always spends more each year than the treasury collects in revenues.” The budget passed in 2003, says Paul, is 22 percent higher than two years ago, and encompasses all federal programs, not only those concerned with homeland security. In the face of faltering revenues, government has continued to expand, and federal spending to rise.

Because of the oil-and-water relationship governments have cultivated between ethics and political economy, speaking in plain terms—spelling it out as it is—has become foreign to the public. So here goes: When government sports a “surplus,” this implies that the political pickpockets have stolen more funds than they can possibly dream of spending. The property is not theirs to keep! Conversely, when “deficits” are reported, this means that the kleptomaniacs have not been able to steal sufficient funds to cover their profligacy.

The tax cut, which is an agreement by the plundering class to pilfer less, has become a red herring, used for political hay on both sides. Democrats say that reduced revenues will contribute to the deficit, hence tax cuts are bad. Republicans, as unflinching about fleecing the people, say that tax rate cuts will ultimately increase their revenues by stimulating the economy. Each of the morally bankrupt parties has used the tax cut as a decoy to avoid addressing the cause of the deficit: government’s spending more than it steals.

In fact, not only has Congress failed to show the kind of restraint you and I exercise in tough times, it has “magnanimously” raised its debt ceiling by one trillion dollars. Over and above a staggering national debt that now stands at 6.4 trillion dollars, Congress, reports Ron Paul, has also provided in the 2004 budget for an annual increase in the debt limit to 12 trillion over the next ten years!

Figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis confirm that federal spending under Mr. Bush has indeed reached historic levels, with years of record deficits looming ahead. Our politicians have saddled every American with a debt of $22,000, reserving the option to double that burden.

At best, Bush’s tax cut will see him siphon approximately $35 billion per year less from taxpayers, over a period of 10 years, while simultaneously accelerating federal spending. At worst, the tax cut Bush proposes to phase in over the course of a decade will be repealed by a future Congress after his departure, thus never taking effect. Bush gets to claim he cut taxes without implementing the cut, but all the while spending like there is no tomorrow—for every dollar that may or may not remain with its rightful owner, the president will have blown tens of non-existent bucks on brand-new spending.

How will Bush make the money materialize? There’re a few easy options, chief of which is a tax infinitely more dastardly and damaging than all others: Alan Greenspan has been faithful, as he has been promiscuous, about inflating the money supply. To feed the deficit, government will pressure the Fed to print money. This practice—inflation—raises prices and depreciates the value of the currency. Politicians, first to feast on the new money, get richer; you and I get poorer. 

Here’s another simple truth: A decrease of a $100 billion in government spending would, according to professors Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, authors of Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth Century America, lift three million children out of poverty!

In their work on “The Scope of Government and the Wealth of Nations,” for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, James Gwartney, Randall Holcombe, and Robert Lawson have demonstrated that as government expenditures grow—a trend the United States has adopted for the past several decades—so does the national income shrivel, point for painful point.

Larger government, be it through welfare or warfare programs, spells slower economic growth. Sustained job creation and economic prosperity hinge on slashing federal spending. The degree of economic stagnation currently reached indicates that The Beast has eaten away at the flesh and is now biting at the bone…our bones.

©By ILANA MERCER
WorldNetDaily.com
May 14, 2003

The post DEFICIT DISORDERS appeared first on ILANA MERCER.