03/01/2010
Mitt Romney has a new book coming out, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, typically wonkish and boring. The immigration stuff is pro-tech worker displacement, pro-cheap labor for business, not that he puts it that way:Since American innovation comes from people who are educated, experienced, and motivated, we should eagerly welcome individuals from other countries who possess those qualities. But our current immigration policies do not. In order for some foreign students to come to America to earn a degree in physics, for example, they will not only have to endure necessary — but unnecessarily long — Homeland Security screenings. They may also have to agree to leave the United States when their degree has been awarded. That just doesn’t make sense. If a young woman from India or Sri Lanka or Argentina earns a degree from an institution like MIT, Cal Tech, or dozens of other fine American universities, we should staple a green card to her diploma and encourage her to stay. We want her to use her talents to innovate and create new technologies and new jobs here in America, not to take her skills elsewhere. Duke University reported in USA TODAY there is a new reality in reverse immigration among highly educated and skilled individuals: "What was a trickle has become a flood."Romney obviously doesn’t understand the concept of a non-immigrant visa — of course students have to promise to leave. Peter Brimelow, who got an MBA from Stanford, actually did leave after he graduated, coming back years later on an immigrant visa. The USA Today story, More of World’s Talented Workers Opt to Leave USA USA Today — 09/21/2009, is one of the talking points on CompeteAmerica’s website. (CompeteAmerica, if you're not familiar with it, is sort an "Organization Against American Wages" — sponsors include Microsoft, Sun, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and the Business Round Table.)The "trickle/flood" quote above is from immigration enthusiast Vivek Wadhwa, "executive in residence" at Duke University who apparently can’t stand to see Indians leaving America.
Romney goes on
"If we want to continue to lead the world in innovation, we need the most intelligent, educated, and accomplished individuals we can find or develop. What we now do instead is strictly limit how long and how many highly skilled foreign applicants can he admitted and how long they can stay, even those that have specifically been requested by an American employer."Since Romney needs votes as well as contributions, he does not complete that sentence by saying "even those that have specifically been requested by an American employer to displace American workers and lower American wages."
But that’s what that sentence means. Because he’s running as a Republican, he has to say something about illegal immigration, and here it is:
"At the same time, millions of people without these skills enter the country illegally. Our immigration practices are literally upside down. The best and the brightest wait in line to come here, then are forced to return home after we educate them with the very skills we desperately need, hut those with only little education and skill enter by the hundreds of thousands and are permitted to stay."He then goes on to not propose a program to deport them.
All this means is that as an Eastern Governor, Romney hasn’t been getting a lot of money from the Western Growers Association and the agriculture lobby. If people start taking him seriously as a Presidential candidate, he will.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.