Support Mike German, Republican Nominee 8th C.D. (SF)

Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:29 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

I asked Mike German to write an essay for my newsletter explaining his views
on H-1B and immigration. The essay below gets a five star rating from
ZaZona.com! He has obviously done his research and he doesn't beat around
the bush like most politicians. German is new to the H-1B issue and yet he
shows a uncanny grasp of the issues.

Please give German your support so we can get him voted into office. This is
one of our few opportunities to vote someone into Congress that is on the
side of the American worker.

Mike German on H1B and L1 Visas

I appreciate your contacting me concerning the above issues and your waiting
for my position statement on them; running a campaign for Congress takes A
LOT of time and I thank you for your patience.

As you know from my initial postings on my site,
http://www.smartvoter.org/vote/german , I support immigration provided it is
both legal and managed at a rate consistent with preservation, through
assimilation, of what we know, understand and value as our uniquely American
culture. However, those legal and cultural constraints have been violated,
both by government and private individuals and corporations, since the
immigration laws were revised in 1966, especially in the implementation and
working of the above two programs. As a moderate, but law and order
Republican, I hope to correct those violations and write to tell you how I
would so so.

First, I thank you all for your numerous emails, which have been greatly
helpful in educating me on these issues. You will forgive my relative
ignorance in that department by my reliance upon the local Bay Area press,
which sweeps legitimate discussion of such issues under the carpet or brands
those who persist in doing so as racist or xenophobic. Even those reporters
who have the temerity to tell it like it is find themselves without a forum
in which to do so, as in the case of Ms. Bjorhus. For whatever reason, the
Wall Street Journal, my other otherwise-reliable print source for news, is
an unthinking advocate of uncontrolled immigration, which is blaringly
inconsistent with many of its other positions on social issues. I will
neither be silent nor tow a corporate line on this issue, however, and I
will address my concerns on it now and carry them over once elected to
Congress by acting on them publicly in that forum.

Like so many government-engineered social programs, doubtless the H1B and L1
visa programs were undertaken with the best of intentions. However, even
their foundations seem ill-laid. From the materials I have studied, I doubt
that a serious shortage of tech, or any other sort of, workers ever actually
existed. Instead, the figures appear to have been manipulated by
corporations looking to lower labor costs by importing cheap labor,
exporting their jobs outside the US to take advantage of cheap labor, or a
combination of both schemes. In some cases, to my disgust, I was
disappointed to see some corporations hint at threatening to take their
business elsewhere, i.e. India, if not given what they perceive as the
"right" to engage in either of these employment practices proving so
disastrous to American citizen workers, whether native born or naturalized.
Indeed, naturalized American citizens are just as adversely affected by
these abuses as are native ones.

As I have stated before, the privilege of doing business in America under a
corporate charter and with the benefits of the US tax laws is just that - a
privilege. Legally, there is no "right" to be incorporated or to enjoy US
tax benefits. It is not demanding too much to require that corporations
expecting to avail themselves of these benefits remain US corporations.
That means they are not just paper corporate citizens, but actual ones who
employ US citizens, do business here and do not threaten to move elsewhere
if they are legitimately held accountable for abuses of our laws. While
this in no way is intended to deny corporations their right to expand their
businesses overseas, their desire for expansion cannot be permitted to serve
as a mask for displacement of American citizen workers at home. Where
corporations do so, their corporate charters and tax treatment merits
investigation and, where necessary, reassessment or penalties.

That is the general proposition, but there are more specific concerns.
First, the lack of real teeth against corporate abuse of these two programs
requires a remedy. Instead of violations being a complaint-driven process,
an active enforcement team needs to be established to respond to,
investigate, track and coordinate legitimate complaints of abuses. While
the Bar can take then initiative in many of these cases by prosecuting them
on a contingency basis, particularly where they involve, as many appear to,
instances of age discrimination, that is not enough. I believe that abuses
of these two programs need to be armed with at least the same armory of
regulatory and prosecutorial weapons that sex and disability discrimination
cases have at their disposal, including remedies for recovery of both
attorneys fees and punitive damages by successful plaintiffs. As a former
plaintiff's personal injury lawyer, I can tell you that no lawyer worth his
or her salt would willingly turn down a case coming to him on the silver
platter of a government-established violation. (Compare, the willingness of
many large corporate law firms to handle so-called "pro-bono" work on behalf
of convicted felons, defaulting tenants, petty criminals and others
undeserving of free legal representation, while ignoring the legitimate
needs of people like laid-off workers suffering the abuses of H1B and L1.)

Second, establishing the "need" for importing H1B and L1 workers should not
be the responsibility of the corporations who stand to - and have! - benefit
from their self-established need, but of an impartial factfinder, whether
governmentally or privately and independently based. As is it now, the fox
is not just guarding the henhouse, but building it - and what shoddy
construction it is! Checks must replace the cracks in the construction to
ensure that where H1B and L1 workers are legitimately employed they are
being paid what their applications said they'd be paid, with penalties to
both the employer and employee for any variances found from the prevailing
or agreed-upon wage, whichever is higher. Corporations seeking to employ
these workers must be required to demonstrate their actual need for them
under a higher standard of proof than the relatively lax, self-defined one
now in effect. And the "walk-on-water" rule of Sec. 412 of ACWIA must be
permanently plugged.

Third, to help those who have been displaced NOW, training and workforce
reintegration programs must be adequately funded and operated. That does
NOT mean dumbing down intelligent tech workers to assume less skilled or
challenging jobs than those they performed so well for so long in so many
cases. Nor does it mean using money originally targeted for training to go
to facilitating imported workers' access to Green Cards, thereby mindlessly
exacerbating this problem. It means real training and what I'd call
"internal reintegration," i.e., establishing a system for displaced workers
to regain their prior jobs once the need for their replacements, if ever
even legitimately established, has ended.

Fourth, the serial amnesties granted to illegal immigrants, whether
individually or en masse, must be stopped. Illegals do not arrive in this
country with a clean start; their initial presence is a violation of law
and a slap in the face of every legal immigrant who waited his or her turn
to acquire the privilege of American citizenship. Illegal immigrants must
be deported swiftly and justly, and where INS regulations need to be revised
in this area I will work to revise them. Again, I reemphasize that I am NOT
in favor of barring all immigration, only illegal immigration. There is a
huge difference between the two and don't let anyone convince you otherwise,
whether through legitimate logic or illegitimate appeals to emotions.

Finally, oversight over this problem must be maintained by providing for
ongoing Congressional investigation, fact-finding and reporting on the
impact and effects of these two programs. And those impacts are not just
economic; they go directly to undermining the stable workforce and culture
we have built up in this country. No discussion of or remedy for this issue
can be complete without considering what we are sacrificing in terms of our
long term national identity for short term corporate gain.

I hope this answers your questions on my views of this problem and I look
forward to working with you towards its solution. Your courtesy in copying
others with this letter and providing them with my site URL will be much
appreciateed. This letter will appear in my site shortly.

Sincerely,

Mike German
Republican Nominee, 8th C.D. (SF)
http://www.smartvoter.org/vote/german

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