RSS
From The Hindu:
India takes on U.S. at WTO over visa rules
AP
India has filed a complaint to the World Trade Organisation against the United States over its measures raising fees on some applicants for temporary work visas, mostly involving the tech sector.
The Geneva-based body said Friday that India has notified it has started dispute proceedings alleging the U.S. measures are not consistent with Washington’s commitments to accept services from other countries.
Unfair treatment
In its request for consultation, India alleges the U.S. had increased fees for temporary visas in December, officials said. It argues that as a result, some Indians receive unfair treatment compared with Americans in the United States in providing similar services in sectors like computer services.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
It argues that as a result, some Indians receive unfair treatment compared with Americans in the United States in providing similar services in sectors like computer services.
When did the world turn so crazy that this type of statement could be made?
The only saving grace is an exit clause on six months' notice. I imagine they'll do away with that early.
Cruz fans should look into his role in enabling this.
I like India . Its one of the few places left where you can regularly see women dressed in traditional clothes . Outside of India , Nepal and a few African countries , most of the world is a T shirts and Jeans sort of a place or women are dressed in black trash bags .
Didn't Tawana Brawley invent that look?Replies: @marwan
Most Indian women dress conservatively because they are afraid of being gangraped by Indian men.
But yeah, let's let more Indians in because to not would be unfair.Replies: @marwan
This is why the word “chutzpah” was invented.
Indians in India are nice, but there’s a reason progress is slow in India. It’s a low-trust, high-talk, all-time-politics, nepotistic, low-do culture.
You do realize that outside of the upper crust, most Indians have a lower iq than blacks right?
why does the usa need to import computer people. i thought the internet made shelter in place doable?
Bingo. If we are living in the INFORMATION AGE, why do we need people to actually go from one place to another?
They can communicate through the Net. And they can use virtual reality communication.
Email made much of snail mail obsolete.
E-work should make snail-work obsolete.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson
2) Indians are not Americans. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to explain exactly what you want to people from a different culture and educational system.
3) Thanks primarily to St. Jobs, there is now profound faith in pushing people together for serendipitous encounters.
4) Physical security still means a lot.
I’ve now worked in several places that go out of their way to hire H1Bs, usually Indian but not uncommonly Chinese. The main reason for hiring these people directly is that they are effectively indentured servants. To stay in this country and eventually get trhe coveted green card they must keep theit H1B employer happy. They will do anything to keep the visa including working uncompensated hours until late into the night and weekends.
Some are decent tech workers. Most are only semi-competent. Their employers rely on a small cadre of retained, native-born and educated workers to debug and correct all but the most obvious problems. higher level work beyond simple coding and support is almost invariably the purview of the native-born cadres. Employment contractors, like the notorious TaTa and various domestic exploiters like Covansys, Deloitte and Touche, etc., make a mint by over-rating their H1Bs, getting them high paying jobs that they cannot handle, and reaping enormous profits from fees and grossly overpriced G&A and Overhead charges. They don’t care whether the workers supply can do the work.
It’s a particular issue in state government work. US native-born tech workers are screwed over three times: (1) Their jobs are stolen from them by unqualified foreigners; (2) They wind up training and supporting these foreign workers; (3) Tax payers are stuck paying inflated wages for incompetent and destructive employees w ho have no investment in their work or the citizens they supposedly serve.
Meanwhile, the US pipeline of STEM workers is closing down as native-born students interested in these fields see that their is no future for them if they continue in STEM. If they do follow their interest, by the time they’re thirty they’ll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.
Even if Trump wins and fulfills all his promises it will take more than a decade to correct the havoc wrought on native-born workers by these ill-advised immigration policies.
They should train their foreign replacements to do the job wrong. They should actively sabotage thier former employers.
Once people understand the loss of sovereignty in these trade deals, a move to repeal or renegotiate them will have a majority. If there’s a president who pursues it.
women are dressed in black trash bags .
Didn’t Tawana Brawley invent that look?
“why does the usa need to import computer people. i thought the internet made shelter in place doable?”
Bingo. If we are living in the INFORMATION AGE, why do we need people to actually go from one place to another?
They can communicate through the Net. And they can use virtual reality communication.
Email made much of snail mail obsolete.
E-work should make snail-work obsolete.
You can't control people on the other side of the planet. The time difference is just the first impediment. Doing remote support or development has a host of problems that can be solved by bringing indentured servants here, and then flogging them on death march after death march.
Why? Because we all must support Zuckerberg, Ellison, Gates, et alii in getting their next billion dollars. Because they are such wonderful Americans. Always looking out for the rest of the country.
Where is the wealth tax on the 1% of the 1%? (And no, I do not care if it doesn't generate enough money to pay off the debt, or pay for the military, or pay for social security. The very rich are the enemies of common sense, prudence and the citizens of the United States.) And where is the tax on these damnable foundations that work against us tax-free?Replies: @Threecranes
I sometimes feel guilty about treating my own children different from other people’s. Aren’t they, like, all equal, man?
Didn't Tawana Brawley invent that look?Replies: @marwan
If memory serves , Tawana Brawley was dressed in dog feces and her face was decorated in black magic marker …….
I’m going to guess that this will turn out to be fairly mundane concerns about the cost of providing customer support and will have nothing whatsoever to do with immigration.
If readers can put aside their strong feelings about immigration for a moment, I hope they’d agree that if any free trade agreement in services would not be much of a free trade agreement if a host country can arbitrarily change the cost to foreign companies of providing those services to their customers. And, certainly, visa costs for sending their employees to customer sites are part of those costs.
I have no idea of the actual merits of the case (how high can visa costs possible be?) but I doubt it’s some unprecedented intrusion into US immigration policy.
And now, I’ll actually try to read more on the issue to see if my initial hunch is correct!
Most of these agreements (since NAFTA anyway) were unpopular with the American people. Like immigration policies, they were shoved down our throats.Replies: @Vinay
If Trump has any brains at all he will pounce on this like a starving cat.
Am I reading this correctly ? A foreign country has filed a case against the US in some court in yet a third country to complain about how we handle visas allowing foreigners into our own country ?
Is it just me or is it or is there something very wrong with this situation ?
I wouldn't be surprised if these crazy people do this. Bono will be writing songs about how Japan doesn't want to flood their country with 3rd worlders and how bad they are.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Chrisnonymous
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you...ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these "is it just me" questions are usually not too interested in the answers.Replies: @TangoMan, @Wilkey, @Bill B., @epebble
The question is raised about temporary work visas, so that might apply more to visiting software or services salesmen and such like than to contract workers working for US employers.
The question is whether the US is charging significantly more than India charges for equivalent temporary work visas for Americans, and whether the rate is just to cover administrative expenses, or whether visa sales are a profit center in themselves.
What next – the Indian government will protest that their H-1B emigrants aren’t getting proper training from the American workers whose jobs they’re taking?
Bingo. If we are living in the INFORMATION AGE, why do we need people to actually go from one place to another?
They can communicate through the Net. And they can use virtual reality communication.
Email made much of snail mail obsolete.
E-work should make snail-work obsolete.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson
You are being facetious right? If not, please review the post #6 by Jus’ Sayin’ above.
You can’t control people on the other side of the planet. The time difference is just the first impediment. Doing remote support or development has a host of problems that can be solved by bringing indentured servants here, and then flogging them on death march after death march.
Why? Because we all must support Zuckerberg, Ellison, Gates, et alii in getting their next billion dollars. Because they are such wonderful Americans. Always looking out for the rest of the country.
Where is the wealth tax on the 1% of the 1%? (And no, I do not care if it doesn’t generate enough money to pay off the debt, or pay for the military, or pay for social security. The very rich are the enemies of common sense, prudence and the citizens of the United States.) And where is the tax on these damnable foundations that work against us tax-free?
Somehow, virtually every American believes that foundations truly engage in benevolent charity with no strings attached. It is seemingly impossible to convince an American, right, left or center, that a foundation is a tax shelter, a vehicle for preserving family wealth and insuring continuity of dynastic control going forwards.
"No", they will tell you with a straight face, "a foundation is philanthropy, an act (we are supposed to believe) of a deeply caring person (who spent their entire lives accumulating and gouging others--chiefly through low pay for their labor) and which benefits the community if not all of humanity".
Sigh, Americans are so naive.
To retain its tax-free status, a foundation must give away 5% annually but expects to make (an historic average) 8% on its investments. So where's the charitable giving? And not only that, but the administrators of the foundation get to pick and choose which social causes will be the beneficiary of their largess and so thereby guide and shape public policy.
Heh…
Anyone who has dealt with the Indian High Commission knows a real bureaucracy.
Their whole system is designed to discriminate against non-Indians.
To get a visa to go to India, you have to give them your passport. Really. They keep it at least overnight.
And that will scare the crap out of anyone who’s been there.
Some are decent tech workers. Most are only semi-competent. Their employers rely on a small cadre of retained, native-born and educated workers to debug and correct all but the most obvious problems. higher level work beyond simple coding and support is almost invariably the purview of the native-born cadres. Employment contractors, like the notorious TaTa and various domestic exploiters like Covansys, Deloitte and Touche, etc., make a mint by over-rating their H1Bs, getting them high paying jobs that they cannot handle, and reaping enormous profits from fees and grossly overpriced G&A and Overhead charges. They don't care whether the workers supply can do the work.
It's a particular issue in state government work. US native-born tech workers are screwed over three times: (1) Their jobs are stolen from them by unqualified foreigners; (2) They wind up training and supporting these foreign workers; (3) Tax payers are stuck paying inflated wages for incompetent and destructive employees w ho have no investment in their work or the citizens they supposedly serve.
Meanwhile, the US pipeline of STEM workers is closing down as native-born students interested in these fields see that their is no future for them if they continue in STEM. If they do follow their interest, by the time they're thirty they'll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.
Even if Trump wins and fulfills all his promises it will take more than a decade to correct the havoc wrought on native-born workers by these ill-advised immigration policies.Replies: @Numinous, @Mr. Anon, @Clyde
Every shop has its tribal knowledge that old employees need to educate new employees about. That’s what such “training” usually refers to, not (hopefully) Programming 101. Granted, that doesn’t make the process any less humiliating for the soon-to-be-fired employees.
Now that we are returning to pre-union employment conditions (wholesale replacement of existing workers with cheap alien labor) it would behoove every worker to keep their work practices and procedures secret. As all non-union craft and industrial workers knew in 1890, you need every edge.Replies: @Numinous
Is it just me or is it or is there something very wrong with this situation ?Replies: @Ttjy, @Vinay
Crazy. If Trump doesn’t win and we don’t turn this around, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US and Europe in their diversity insanity start calling for sanctions against Japan and South Korea for their restrictive immigration policies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these crazy people do this. Bono will be writing songs about how Japan doesn’t want to flood their country with 3rd worlders and how bad they are.
As of March, 2015, the ROK government
recorded 1,813,037 foreign-born persons
residing in Korea, including white collar
workers, migrant workers, undocumented workers, and
“foreign brides.”
In 2014, documented
workers totaled 503,135 and there were an estimated
64,507 undocumented workers.
By 2020, migrants are expected to constitute about five
percent of the total population and 10 percent by
2030.
Not bad compared to the Anglo countries, but the immigration wave started in the 90's so it's all very recent and rising quickly.Replies: @Anonymous
Frankly, Japan's immigration policy is already too lenient, and people take advantage of it. Over on the Japan-Guide.com forums, I saw a post recently by an Indian couple who wants to move to Japan but wants to find a Indian school to raise their children in! Japan is screwed if it opens up its doors any more.Replies: @anonymous, @Mr. Anon
Is it just me or is it or is there something very wrong with this situation ?Replies: @Ttjy, @Vinay
“Is it just me or is it or is there something very wrong with this situation ?”
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you…ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these “is it just me” questions are usually not too interested in the answers.
Wonder how much it affects the "profit margins" of American workers whose jobs they've taken.
Just a thought experiment: If this were a tariff on Honda and Toyota autos imported from abroad, the U.S. consumers and others would be up in arms against "protectionism". Because the affected are lower status blue collars? H1B affects white collar; hence louder uproar?Replies: @MarkinLA
What’s next is foreigners sue American companies based on skin color discrimination with the EEOC, or something.
Israel seems to have a booming high-tech sector without importing so much as a single Indian. So why does America need them? The Ashkenazi-White IQ gap isn’t that big.
“If they do follow their interest, by the time they’re thirty they’ll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.”
Fine, I’ll play along. What happens to these incompetent H1-B serfs once they get their green cards? Or citizenship? Do they suddenly find themselves unemployable? “By the time they’re thirty”, they’ll no longer be H1-Bs so do they also take their place on the unemployment line? Do they go back home, to be replaced by a fresh batch of serfs?
Pardon the expression, but this isn't rocket science.Replies: @Vinay
Anyone who has dealt with the Indian High Commission knows a real bureaucracy.
Their whole system is designed to discriminate against non-Indians.
To get a visa to go to India, you have to give them your passport. Really. They keep it at least overnight.
And that will scare the crap out of anyone who's been there.Replies: @Numinous
Well, duh! They have to stamp the passport. The US consulate in India kept my passport for nights when I applied for a visa. It’s standard practice.
I agree with you about Indian bureaucracy though. It IS hellish.
Lots of Israeli tech workers in America too, though they are unlikely to be at the low end of IT jobs. America is the tech workshop of the world, so every ambitious tech person wants to be there. Anywhere else (India definitely, Israel too) is a backwater doing grunt work.
Fine, I'll play along. What happens to these incompetent H1-B serfs once they get their green cards? Or citizenship? Do they suddenly find themselves unemployable? "By the time they're thirty", they'll no longer be H1-Bs so do they also take their place on the unemployment line? Do they go back home, to be replaced by a fresh batch of serfs?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @AnAnon
They train their replacements!
Pardon the expression, but this isn’t rocket science.
And then do what? Retire on the windfall they accumulate in their 5-10 years as an H1-B? Or just vanish into the ether? What exactly do these incompetent serfs do once they become citizens and find themselves in the same boat as native-born citizens?Replies: @MG
No it is not standard practice.
I’ve been to many countries. For most countries the visa is nothing more than the entry stamp. This has been my experience as a U.S. passport holder. Many countries just wave you on through without even a stamp in your passport (which kinda sucks when trying to brag about where you’ve been). Other countries do insert the visa in your passport. I have several. India is the only country where I had to surrender my passport to the High Commission.
Using the U.S. consulate in India as a counter example isn’t really going to change my mind in your direction.A significant amount of our host’s efforts detail how the U.S. government is hostile to it’s own citizens. I imagine it is even worse on foreigners.
For those of you that have never experienced this: Coming home to the U.S. from an extended stay abroad is awful. The U.S. government treats its own citizens as criminals.
The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.Huh? Then what else does? I was trying to answer your question about why the Indian High Commission held on to your passport for a night. Since the US chooses to hang on to my passport (in my country), the Indian government reciprocates that behavior with you. That's all there is to it.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @IA
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you...ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these "is it just me" questions are usually not too interested in the answers.Replies: @TangoMan, @Wilkey, @Bill B., @epebble
Your explanation doesn’t make sense. Donut’s criticism is valid. These types of provisions are designed to allow all firms to be treated equally, well, an Indian IT firm can be treated as the equal of an American IT firm simply by hiring American IT staff. Indian firms relying on Indian staff are in the exact same boat as an American IT firm which relies on hiring Indian staff.
This firm is complaining that the higher visa fees cut into its profits, which are earned through the hiring of cheap Indian labor, and thus lessens their ability to compete against American IT firms which hire more expensive American labor.
Their central criticism in the complaint is that the US gov’t impedes their ability to do business by raising visa fees and that this “anti-competitive” behavior must stop, therefore the US gov’t cannot have the discretion to raise visa fees because doing so reduces the competitive advantage of Indian IT firms, who hire cheap Indian labor, firms against American IT firms, who hire expensive American labor. We can test how anti-competitive the gov’t’s actions are by comparing the cost burdens of American IT firms which hire Indian labor against the Indian IT firms which hire Indian labor and determine that there is no difference between these two classes of firms.
But Honda, Toyota etc., import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Daimler, BMW etc. import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Sony, Toshiba etc., import electronics made abroad by non-Americans.
Why special dispensation towards goods importers compared to service importers? Is it because goods makers are lower status than (some) service providers?Replies: @TangoMan
Pardon the expression, but this isn't rocket science.Replies: @Vinay
“They train their replacements!”
And then do what? Retire on the windfall they accumulate in their 5-10 years as an H1-B? Or just vanish into the ether? What exactly do these incompetent serfs do once they become citizens and find themselves in the same boat as native-born citizens?
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you...ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these "is it just me" questions are usually not too interested in the answers.Replies: @TangoMan, @Wilkey, @Bill B., @epebble
“This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. “
Wonder how much it affects the “profit margins” of American workers whose jobs they’ve taken.
I wouldn't be surprised if these crazy people do this. Bono will be writing songs about how Japan doesn't want to flood their country with 3rd worlders and how bad they are.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Chrisnonymous
Maybe the refugees-are-welcome crowd could point to Japan as a success story. Only two of last year’s intake have been arrested for rape so far. Of course, they’d have to play down the fact that the country only let in 27 refugees for the whole year.
“These types of provisions are designed to allow all firms to be treated equally, well, an Indian IT firm can be treated as the equal of an American IT firm simply by hiring American IT staff”
And I’d agree that there would be absolutely nothing unfair about that. But the Indian government is not alleging that there’s something *imherently* unfair in what the US government is doing. Instead, it’s alleging that it violates the fricking FREE TRADE AGREEMENT!! That’s not at all the same thing.
1) American bosses still want to see butts in chairs and to look right into your eyes if necessary.
2) Indians are not Americans. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to explain exactly what you want to people from a different culture and educational system.
3) Thanks primarily to St. Jobs, there is now profound faith in pushing people together for serendipitous encounters.
4) Physical security still means a lot.
And then do what? Retire on the windfall they accumulate in their 5-10 years as an H1-B? Or just vanish into the ether? What exactly do these incompetent serfs do once they become citizens and find themselves in the same boat as native-born citizens?Replies: @MG
They become project managers, part of the slab known as ‘middle management’, and spend the rest of their working lives claiming Silicon Valley was built by Indians.
“Indians receive unfair treatment compared with Americans…”
The whole world has noticed that America is now a nation of beta pushovers who have bent so far over backward they can see the other side. Women get whatever they want by simply demanding it “It’s unfair, Unfair, UNFAIR!” There’s no demand too extreme. Why shouldn’t India make demands? It’s unfair! America is descended from Britain and shouldn’t they feel guilty for having ruled India for centuries? No reparations will ever be enough.
Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It'll be an interesting experiment.Replies: @Progressive Matricist, @IA, @Tex
And I'd agree that there would be absolutely nothing unfair about that. But the Indian government is not alleging that there's something *imherently* unfair in what the US government is doing. Instead, it's alleging that it violates the fricking FREE TRADE AGREEMENT!! That's not at all the same thing.Replies: @TangoMan, @Tex
Anyone can make any form of allegation they choose but the making of an allegation doesn’t come with the presumption that the allegation is sound.
I’d be surprised, well maybe not, but anyway, I’d be surprised if any nation forfeited the right to attach fees to visa applications. In fact we can conclude that this isn’t an actual provision of the agreement because there are existing fees in place and India is not demanding their removal.
The key to the issue is to focus on the specific harm at the heart of the allegation – higher fees reduced competitiveness. The competitiveness advantage is built on the practice of importing Indians to work in the US. An American firm following that same business strategy would face the same cost increases and same reduction in competitiveness, and so there is nothing unfair about the fee increase.
The allegation is unsupported.
Obviously, the right to charge visa fees itself is not in dispute. It's the level which is under dispute. I don't think anyone would disagree that if the US were to charge, say, $100,000 for business visas, it'd seriously affect commerce. As I said, this isn't a case where some grand principle is at stake, it seems to be all about the details.
" The competitiveness advantage is built on the practice of importing Indians to work in the US. An American firm following that same business strategy"
If the visa fees make it onerous for, say, IBM, to grow its services division in India, that'd be a competitive disadvantage for India. You're assuming that this is about "American" firms vs "Indian" firms. It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for the Indian government to make such distinctions. Firms are multinationals and it matters little whether the disadvantage is suffered by a firm headquartered in India or the Indian subdivision of an American or European or Chinese company.
I'd note that this nicely illustrates why free trade in *services* is distinct from the usual free trade in goods. If the European Union were to vastly increase its visa fees, it'd have little effect on BMW's decision to locate its manufacturing facilities in Alabama. Because, I assume, only a miniscule portion of the workforce needs to shuttle back and forth between Alabama and Germany.Replies: @Anonymous
The whole world has noticed that America is now a nation of beta pushovers who have bent so far over backward they can see the other side. Women get whatever they want by simply demanding it "It's unfair, Unfair, UNFAIR!" There's no demand too extreme. Why shouldn't India make demands? It's unfair! America is descended from Britain and shouldn't they feel guilty for having ruled India for centuries? No reparations will ever be enough.Replies: @Stephen R. Diamond, @Numinous
Then, the Indians are pushovers too. From the same piece:
To oppose globalization without being an American chauvinist, defend also the sovereignty of India!
1)immigrants = not trade
2)trade = trade
Visas and foreign travel run on the principle of reciprocity. If country A imposes fees and restrictions on citizens of country B, country B attempts to impose similar restrictions on country A.
The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.
Huh? Then what else does? I was trying to answer your question about why the Indian High Commission held on to your passport for a night. Since the US chooses to hang on to my passport (in my country), the Indian government reciprocates that behavior with you. That’s all there is to it.
US citizens are free to visit most European countries without a visa, but the US governnment requires visas for citizens of European countries to visit the US. A pretty glaring non-reciprocity that is often pointed out by Europeans when they visit here.Replies: @Numinous
The US allows non-citizens to buy property. Not so in India and many other countries. USAID (which runs directly from US Embassies) spends billions of US taxpayer money annually in 3rd world countries such as India. It is certainly going to be a cold day in hell when they reciprocate.
Westerners in India pay many times the rate levied to natives (and even Indian citizens of Western countries) to enter museums, monuments, services, clubs, etc.
I don't mind Indians and other groups looking out for their own interests. Americans need to start doing the same and quit trying to be all things to all people.Replies: @Numinous
The whole world has noticed that America is now a nation of beta pushovers who have bent so far over backward they can see the other side. Women get whatever they want by simply demanding it "It's unfair, Unfair, UNFAIR!" There's no demand too extreme. Why shouldn't India make demands? It's unfair! America is descended from Britain and shouldn't they feel guilty for having ruled India for centuries? No reparations will ever be enough.Replies: @Stephen R. Diamond, @Numinous
Free trade agreements prohibit India from giving priority to its farmers and local farm products over those produced by foreign countries. The US keeps its farm produce artificially cheap (and extremely competitive) by subsidizing its farmers. That has the effect of killing off agriculture in poor countries (and in India, literally killing off the farmers, many of whom commit suicide because they are unable to pay off their debts.) The percentage of population that is rural is much higher in India (and other poor countries) than it is in your country. But you all don’t see, or care for, the effects of free trade on others, and just raise a hue and cry when it affects you.
Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It’ll be an interesting experiment.
Trump.Replies: @Numinous
Some are decent tech workers. Most are only semi-competent. Their employers rely on a small cadre of retained, native-born and educated workers to debug and correct all but the most obvious problems. higher level work beyond simple coding and support is almost invariably the purview of the native-born cadres. Employment contractors, like the notorious TaTa and various domestic exploiters like Covansys, Deloitte and Touche, etc., make a mint by over-rating their H1Bs, getting them high paying jobs that they cannot handle, and reaping enormous profits from fees and grossly overpriced G&A and Overhead charges. They don't care whether the workers supply can do the work.
It's a particular issue in state government work. US native-born tech workers are screwed over three times: (1) Their jobs are stolen from them by unqualified foreigners; (2) They wind up training and supporting these foreign workers; (3) Tax payers are stuck paying inflated wages for incompetent and destructive employees w ho have no investment in their work or the citizens they supposedly serve.
Meanwhile, the US pipeline of STEM workers is closing down as native-born students interested in these fields see that their is no future for them if they continue in STEM. If they do follow their interest, by the time they're thirty they'll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.
Even if Trump wins and fulfills all his promises it will take more than a decade to correct the havoc wrought on native-born workers by these ill-advised immigration policies.Replies: @Numinous, @Mr. Anon, @Clyde
“If they do follow their interest, by the time they’re thirty they’ll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.”
They should train their foreign replacements to do the job wrong. They should actively sabotage thier former employers.
If readers can put aside their strong feelings about immigration for a moment, I hope they'd agree that if any free trade agreement in services would not be much of a free trade agreement if a host country can arbitrarily change the cost to foreign companies of providing those services to their customers. And, certainly, visa costs for sending their employees to customer sites are part of those costs.
I have no idea of the actual merits of the case (how high can visa costs possible be?) but I doubt it's some unprecedented intrusion into US immigration policy.
And now, I'll actually try to read more on the issue to see if my initial hunch is correct!Replies: @Mr. Anon
“If readers can put aside their strong feelings about immigration for a moment, I hope they’d agree that if any free trade agreement in services would not be much of a free trade agreement…
Most of these agreements (since NAFTA anyway) were unpopular with the American people. Like immigration policies, they were shoved down our throats.
I wouldn't contest that at all. There is certainly robust debate about whether extending free trade agreements to include services, intellectual property, investment etc. provides any benefit for the average citizen.
However, given that the US *has* signed free trade agreements in services, it'd help to understand exactly what it means. It doesn't mean losing control over your immigration policy but it *does* mean that it'll lead to some novel disputes which'll be ironed out over time.
The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.Huh? Then what else does? I was trying to answer your question about why the Indian High Commission held on to your passport for a night. Since the US chooses to hang on to my passport (in my country), the Indian government reciprocates that behavior with you. That's all there is to it.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @IA
“The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.”
US citizens are free to visit most European countries without a visa, but the US governnment requires visas for citizens of European countries to visit the US. A pretty glaring non-reciprocity that is often pointed out by Europeans when they visit here.
Just HOW did ‘immigration’ ever get conflated with ‘trade’ to the point where the official regulator speaks that the two activities – which are entirely separate and distinct, always have been regarded as such, and have very different dictionary definitions – ate now regarded as being one of the same?
Actually, when you come to think about it, the whole point of ‘trade’ in the first place is to substitute the movement of people with the movement of inanimate objects.
One needs not move to Ecuador to eat bananas. Conversely, an Ecuadorian need not move to China in order to have usage of a tablet computer.
Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It'll be an interesting experiment.Replies: @Progressive Matricist, @IA, @Tex
American poultry and egg farmers don’t receive direct subsidies that I’m aware of.
That used to be true of China, too. Then what happened? They made a conscious choice to urbanize and followed through with it. Something India has proven incapable of doing.
We’ll see.
The other parts of your comments don't make much sense. China has progressed in large part by taking over (stealing?) industrial production work from richer countries, including the US. That, and a centralized and largely efficient bureaucracy has helped the country urbanize. But a large part of their population is still poor and rural. And China sends as many emigrants out as India does, probably more.
I wish more Indians liked India and would stay there.
I wouldn't be surprised if these crazy people do this. Bono will be writing songs about how Japan doesn't want to flood their country with 3rd worlders and how bad they are.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Chrisnonymous
South Korea doesn’t have restrictive immigration policies.
As of March, 2015, the ROK government
recorded 1,813,037 foreign-born persons
residing in Korea, including white collar
workers, migrant workers, undocumented workers, and
“foreign brides.”
In 2014, documented
workers totaled 503,135 and there were an estimated
64,507 undocumented workers.
By 2020, migrants are expected to constitute about five
percent of the total population and 10 percent by
2030.
Not bad compared to the Anglo countries, but the immigration wave started in the 90’s so it’s all very recent and rising quickly.
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you...ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these "is it just me" questions are usually not too interested in the answers.Replies: @TangoMan, @Wilkey, @Bill B., @epebble
Thank you for illustrating one of Steve’s key points: that most people in the world will defend illogical positions if it is for the sake of their ethnic brethren.
Yes, a central theme throughout Indian history has been ethnic solidarity against the foreigner. We leave arguments on principle to the white guys.
I'd hope Steve's point is a bit more intelligent than that. I'd put it as "ethnic solidarity trumps principle". It's a much bigger leap from that to "ethnic solidarity trumps self-interest".
Here's an amusing example of where your "ethnic solidarity trumps all" assumption can lead. Note the reaction of the Indian guy. :-)
http://youtu.be/9kNHulx2fE0
Just look at Merkel, for instance.
Agreed. It’s impossible to have fond feelings for the US government after dealing with multiple CBP bully tyrants.
“I’d be surprised, well maybe not, but anyway, I’d be surprised if any nation forfeited the right to attach fees to visa application”
Obviously, the right to charge visa fees itself is not in dispute. It’s the level which is under dispute. I don’t think anyone would disagree that if the US were to charge, say, $100,000 for business visas, it’d seriously affect commerce. As I said, this isn’t a case where some grand principle is at stake, it seems to be all about the details.
” The competitiveness advantage is built on the practice of importing Indians to work in the US. An American firm following that same business strategy”
If the visa fees make it onerous for, say, IBM, to grow its services division in India, that’d be a competitive disadvantage for India. You’re assuming that this is about “American” firms vs “Indian” firms. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for the Indian government to make such distinctions. Firms are multinationals and it matters little whether the disadvantage is suffered by a firm headquartered in India or the Indian subdivision of an American or European or Chinese company.
I’d note that this nicely illustrates why free trade in *services* is distinct from the usual free trade in goods. If the European Union were to vastly increase its visa fees, it’d have little effect on BMW’s decision to locate its manufacturing facilities in Alabama. Because, I assume, only a miniscule portion of the workforce needs to shuttle back and forth between Alabama and Germany.
I don't really care what is in the free trade agreement or not. I care about what is good for our country. And letting a bunch of Indians in who have much different views on rape than Americans do is a mistake.
You realize that trade agreements are written by big companies without public input right?
Most of these agreements (since NAFTA anyway) were unpopular with the American people. Like immigration policies, they were shoved down our throats.Replies: @Vinay
“Most of these agreements (since NAFTA anyway) were unpopular with the American people. Like immigration policies, they were shoved down our throats.”
I wouldn’t contest that at all. There is certainly robust debate about whether extending free trade agreements to include services, intellectual property, investment etc. provides any benefit for the average citizen.
However, given that the US *has* signed free trade agreements in services, it’d help to understand exactly what it means. It doesn’t mean losing control over your immigration policy but it *does* mean that it’ll lead to some novel disputes which’ll be ironed out over time.
“Thank you for illustrating one of Steve’s key points: that most people in the world will defend illogical positions if it is for the sake of their ethnic brethren.”
Yes, a central theme throughout Indian history has been ethnic solidarity against the foreigner. We leave arguments on principle to the white guys.
I’d hope Steve’s point is a bit more intelligent than that. I’d put it as “ethnic solidarity trumps principle”. It’s a much bigger leap from that to “ethnic solidarity trumps self-interest”.
Here’s an amusing example of where your “ethnic solidarity trumps all” assumption can lead. Note the reaction of the Indian guy. 🙂
http://youtu.be/9kNHulx2fE0
You can't control people on the other side of the planet. The time difference is just the first impediment. Doing remote support or development has a host of problems that can be solved by bringing indentured servants here, and then flogging them on death march after death march.
Why? Because we all must support Zuckerberg, Ellison, Gates, et alii in getting their next billion dollars. Because they are such wonderful Americans. Always looking out for the rest of the country.
Where is the wealth tax on the 1% of the 1%? (And no, I do not care if it doesn't generate enough money to pay off the debt, or pay for the military, or pay for social security. The very rich are the enemies of common sense, prudence and the citizens of the United States.) And where is the tax on these damnable foundations that work against us tax-free?Replies: @Threecranes
“where is the tax on these damnable foundations that work against us tax-free?”
Somehow, virtually every American believes that foundations truly engage in benevolent charity with no strings attached. It is seemingly impossible to convince an American, right, left or center, that a foundation is a tax shelter, a vehicle for preserving family wealth and insuring continuity of dynastic control going forwards.
“No”, they will tell you with a straight face, “a foundation is philanthropy, an act (we are supposed to believe) of a deeply caring person (who spent their entire lives accumulating and gouging others–chiefly through low pay for their labor) and which benefits the community if not all of humanity”.
Sigh, Americans are so naive.
To retain its tax-free status, a foundation must give away 5% annually but expects to make (an historic average) 8% on its investments. So where’s the charitable giving? And not only that, but the administrators of the foundation get to pick and choose which social causes will be the beneficiary of their largess and so thereby guide and shape public policy.
Except for white people – who seem to take illogical positions to attack and destroy their own kin, and defend the ethnic genetic interests of unrelated peoples.
Just look at Merkel, for instance.
One of the driving forces behind unionization was the “sharing of tribal knowledge”. As workers got older and more experienced, they knew more about the equipment and processes and had developed various efficiencies. They had no incentive to give this knowledge away with coworkers. When people were laid off, they needed to show their value above and beyond that of their peers. Only by having union seniority rules (LIFO) could they be cajoled to work as a team and share their knowledge with the new guys.
Now that we are returning to pre-union employment conditions (wholesale replacement of existing workers with cheap alien labor) it would behoove every worker to keep their work practices and procedures secret. As all non-union craft and industrial workers knew in 1890, you need every edge.
The only real leverage a software guy has to avoid getting laid off is management's fear that he could sabotage the code (if he's a senior programmer, he'd have had carte blanche to modify code and could have inserted logic bombs at will) in a way that could tank the business before the new guy has come up to speed.Replies: @Irrelephant
The question is whether the US is charging significantly more than India charges for equivalent temporary work visas for Americans, and whether the rate is just to cover administrative expenses, or whether visa sales are a profit center in themselves.Replies: @IA, @MarkinLA
In order to do that you have to adjust for the buying power of a US Dollar in the USA vs. India. Wages in India for the same job are generally 1/15th compared to the US.
The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.Huh? Then what else does? I was trying to answer your question about why the Indian High Commission held on to your passport for a night. Since the US chooses to hang on to my passport (in my country), the Indian government reciprocates that behavior with you. That's all there is to it.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @IA
What an absurd idea. The US runs a LOTTERY to allow 3rd world immigration from Africa, at least, and maybe parts of Asia and South America to boot. But definitely Africa.
The US allows non-citizens to buy property. Not so in India and many other countries. USAID (which runs directly from US Embassies) spends billions of US taxpayer money annually in 3rd world countries such as India. It is certainly going to be a cold day in hell when they reciprocate.
Westerners in India pay many times the rate levied to natives (and even Indian citizens of Western countries) to enter museums, monuments, services, clubs, etc.
I don’t mind Indians and other groups looking out for their own interests. Americans need to start doing the same and quit trying to be all things to all people.
If there are no incentives to drive unilateral decision-making, reciprocity applies. Always.Almost certainly false. Economists keep saying that the American public persistently overestimates (vastly) the amount of foreign aid given to countries not named Israel. And it is a point of pride with the Indian government that it does not take (or need) foreign aid. But I'm willing to be corrected on this if you can provide evidence.True, and extremely egregious. If it were up to me, I'd abolish this discrimination. The government's rationale is that most Indians can't afford to pay more than the peanuts they are charged to visit these places (which is true), and if everyone were charged that rate, the govt. couldn't afford to maintain those places (also true.) Need to come up with a better system though that doesn't blatantly discriminate against foreigners.Replies: @IA
Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It'll be an interesting experiment.Replies: @Progressive Matricist, @IA, @Tex
The more we give you the angrier you get. Something about envy maybe. You may want to read about Norman Borlaug, from Cresco, Iowa: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
The Green Revolution headed by Borlaug, who won a Nobel Prize, is credited with saving one billion lives, many of that billion in India.
Trump.
There's no free lunch; India allowed its farmers to be exposed to competition in exchange for preferential agreements to help build up its services industry. Some sections in India lose, others gain, but the calculation made was that the overall effect would be positive. That's what happened in the US too, except a different bunch of people won/lost. If you think it's your God-given right that no one in America must ever lose, then that's your problem. The real world (and mathematics) doesn't work that way.
And I'd agree that there would be absolutely nothing unfair about that. But the Indian government is not alleging that there's something *imherently* unfair in what the US government is doing. Instead, it's alleging that it violates the fricking FREE TRADE AGREEMENT!! That's not at all the same thing.Replies: @TangoMan, @Tex
Is that what is known as a distinction without a difference?
Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It'll be an interesting experiment.Replies: @Progressive Matricist, @IA, @Tex
No, as a matter of fact, I don’t want my government ramming “free trade” down other countries’ throats. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re more aware of how “free trade” negatively impacts us, because we observe & get more information about our own environments.
Try again, why don’t you ask if we’ve stopped beating our wives?
This reminded me of this column of Sailer’s, which will turn 10 years old in three months:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/socializing-costs-privatizing-profits-why-americas-rulers-dont-want-hearings-on-the-senate-
The Indians initiated the suit. Who raised the idea of the suit? Tim Cook? That would be badass.
US citizens are free to visit most European countries without a visa, but the US governnment requires visas for citizens of European countries to visit the US. A pretty glaring non-reciprocity that is often pointed out by Europeans when they visit here.Replies: @Numinous
Wrong
By the way, your link goes nowhere.
India is doing exactly the same, albeit at a lesser pace because of the fragmented nature of the polity, heavy handed regulations, and an inefficient state/bureaucracy. While that is happening, you can expect a lot of ambitious people to try and escape, because the country isn’t going to get to the level they want in their lifetimes.
The other parts of your comments don’t make much sense. China has progressed in large part by taking over (stealing?) industrial production work from richer countries, including the US. That, and a centralized and largely efficient bureaucracy has helped the country urbanize. But a large part of their population is still poor and rural. And China sends as many emigrants out as India does, probably more.
Now that we are returning to pre-union employment conditions (wholesale replacement of existing workers with cheap alien labor) it would behoove every worker to keep their work practices and procedures secret. As all non-union craft and industrial workers knew in 1890, you need every edge.Replies: @Numinous
I don’t know if this will work in the software industry. Writing a fully working piece of software from scratch is at least an order of magnitude easier than building an elaborate and complex piece of machinery. And given source code, a rudimentary API doc, and a unit test suite, any developer worth his salt can figure out the nuts and bolts within a couple of months. Obviously it’ll be much faster and more efficient for the older worker to “train” the new guy to understand what the software does, but it isn’t absolutely necessary.
The only real leverage a software guy has to avoid getting laid off is management’s fear that he could sabotage the code (if he’s a senior programmer, he’d have had carte blanche to modify code and could have inserted logic bombs at will) in a way that could tank the business before the new guy has come up to speed.
The US allows non-citizens to buy property. Not so in India and many other countries. USAID (which runs directly from US Embassies) spends billions of US taxpayer money annually in 3rd world countries such as India. It is certainly going to be a cold day in hell when they reciprocate.
Westerners in India pay many times the rate levied to natives (and even Indian citizens of Western countries) to enter museums, monuments, services, clubs, etc.
I don't mind Indians and other groups looking out for their own interests. Americans need to start doing the same and quit trying to be all things to all people.Replies: @Numinous
True, but to the best of my knowledge this was a unilateral decision taken by the US in the interest of the US. (By US, I mean the decision making elite.) The US never demanded any other country reciprocate in this respect. The reasoning, I guess, was that allowing foreigners to buy property would be good for local economic growth, and that outweighed the risks. Obviously, other countries made different calculations.
If there are no incentives to drive unilateral decision-making, reciprocity applies. Always.
Almost certainly false. Economists keep saying that the American public persistently overestimates (vastly) the amount of foreign aid given to countries not named Israel. And it is a point of pride with the Indian government that it does not take (or need) foreign aid. But I’m willing to be corrected on this if you can provide evidence.
True, and extremely egregious. If it were up to me, I’d abolish this discrimination. The government’s rationale is that most Indians can’t afford to pay more than the peanuts they are charged to visit these places (which is true), and if everyone were charged that rate, the govt. couldn’t afford to maintain those places (also true.) Need to come up with a better system though that doesn’t blatantly discriminate against foreigners.
Trump.Replies: @Numinous
I’m not angry at all, and also well aware of Norman Borlaug’s contributions, but what exactly does that have to do with the effects of post-Cold War free trade agreements? (And please don’t use the pronoun “we”; unless you were part of Borlaug’s research team, your contribution was zilch.)
There’s no free lunch; India allowed its farmers to be exposed to competition in exchange for preferential agreements to help build up its services industry. Some sections in India lose, others gain, but the calculation made was that the overall effect would be positive. That’s what happened in the US too, except a different bunch of people won/lost. If you think it’s your God-given right that no one in America must ever lose, then that’s your problem. The real world (and mathematics) doesn’t work that way.
Lol.
Most Indian women dress conservatively because they are afraid of being gangraped by Indian men.
But yeah, let’s let more Indians in because to not would be unfair.
Indians in India are gang raping 13 year old girls on a daily basis. Why would you want them to do that here?
You do realize that outside of the upper crust, most Indians have a lower iq than blacks right?
Yeah, because a US firm competing in India is guaranteed fair and equal treatment? Give me a break.
Obviously, the right to charge visa fees itself is not in dispute. It's the level which is under dispute. I don't think anyone would disagree that if the US were to charge, say, $100,000 for business visas, it'd seriously affect commerce. As I said, this isn't a case where some grand principle is at stake, it seems to be all about the details.
" The competitiveness advantage is built on the practice of importing Indians to work in the US. An American firm following that same business strategy"
If the visa fees make it onerous for, say, IBM, to grow its services division in India, that'd be a competitive disadvantage for India. You're assuming that this is about "American" firms vs "Indian" firms. It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for the Indian government to make such distinctions. Firms are multinationals and it matters little whether the disadvantage is suffered by a firm headquartered in India or the Indian subdivision of an American or European or Chinese company.
I'd note that this nicely illustrates why free trade in *services* is distinct from the usual free trade in goods. If the European Union were to vastly increase its visa fees, it'd have little effect on BMW's decision to locate its manufacturing facilities in Alabama. Because, I assume, only a miniscule portion of the workforce needs to shuttle back and forth between Alabama and Germany.Replies: @Anonymous
Ah, so the Indian is for lowering visa fees for his countrymen. No surprise there.
I don’t really care what is in the free trade agreement or not. I care about what is good for our country. And letting a bunch of Indians in who have much different views on rape than Americans do is a mistake.
You realize that trade agreements are written by big companies without public input right?
Some are decent tech workers. Most are only semi-competent. Their employers rely on a small cadre of retained, native-born and educated workers to debug and correct all but the most obvious problems. higher level work beyond simple coding and support is almost invariably the purview of the native-born cadres. Employment contractors, like the notorious TaTa and various domestic exploiters like Covansys, Deloitte and Touche, etc., make a mint by over-rating their H1Bs, getting them high paying jobs that they cannot handle, and reaping enormous profits from fees and grossly overpriced G&A and Overhead charges. They don't care whether the workers supply can do the work.
It's a particular issue in state government work. US native-born tech workers are screwed over three times: (1) Their jobs are stolen from them by unqualified foreigners; (2) They wind up training and supporting these foreign workers; (3) Tax payers are stuck paying inflated wages for incompetent and destructive employees w ho have no investment in their work or the citizens they supposedly serve.
Meanwhile, the US pipeline of STEM workers is closing down as native-born students interested in these fields see that their is no future for them if they continue in STEM. If they do follow their interest, by the time they're thirty they'll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.
Even if Trump wins and fulfills all his promises it will take more than a decade to correct the havoc wrought on native-born workers by these ill-advised immigration policies.Replies: @Numinous, @Mr. Anon, @Clyde
And these days screwed over native born workers are not necessarily white. They might be Chinese, Indians and others whose parents immigrated. Put crudely, our native born Hindu citizen loses his job to an imported H1B Hindu.
The question is whether the US is charging significantly more than India charges for equivalent temporary work visas for Americans, and whether the rate is just to cover administrative expenses, or whether visa sales are a profit center in themselves.Replies: @IA, @MarkinLA
H-1Bs ARE temporary work visas.
As is true 99% of the time when someone asks this question, yes, it really is just you...ok, you probably have a lot of company here. This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees which is estimated to affect the profit margins of IT service companies by 0.5%. Naturally, those companies feel it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to American firms. Which has pretty much nothing to do with US immigration policy.
Then again, people who ask these "is it just me" questions are usually not too interested in the answers.Replies: @TangoMan, @Wilkey, @Bill B., @epebble
“This is about a $4500 increase in visa fees”
Just a thought experiment: If this were a tariff on Honda and Toyota autos imported from abroad, the U.S. consumers and others would be up in arms against “protectionism”. Because the affected are lower status blue collars? H1B affects white collar; hence louder uproar?
“an Indian IT firm can be treated as the equal of an American IT firm simply by hiring American IT staff.”
But Honda, Toyota etc., import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Daimler, BMW etc. import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Sony, Toshiba etc., import electronics made abroad by non-Americans.
Why special dispensation towards goods importers compared to service importers? Is it because goods makers are lower status than (some) service providers?
Society doesn't exist to service commerce, commerce exists to service society.
When did the world turn so crazy that this type of statement could be made?Replies: @Perplexed
The new trade treaties (which the Republicans obligingly lowered the vote threshold for, and no amendments, and limited debate) promote this sort of thing. We’re all one world, you know. Anybody anywhere (including NGOs, aka “stakeholders”) can meddle in anyone’s contracts, anywhere. No national sovereignty anywhere. There’s a special section on immigration. And the treaties have precedence over national constitutions.
The only saving grace is an exit clause on six months’ notice. I imagine they’ll do away with that early.
Cruz fans should look into his role in enabling this.
Thank you for putting quotes around “free trade.” I have no idea what the term means. When we admit foreign products tariff-free but are subject to other nations’ tariffs, is that “free trade”? When we (and others) are bound by treaties, is trade “free”? For whom? Is everyone a winner? What the heck is “free trade,” anyway?
So is it "free"? Well, if you follow to the rules it is. No tariffs and minimal or non-existent border inspections. But don't go inventing something new and revolutionary. It might not be covered.
Just a thought experiment: If this were a tariff on Honda and Toyota autos imported from abroad, the U.S. consumers and others would be up in arms against "protectionism". Because the affected are lower status blue collars? H1B affects white collar; hence louder uproar?Replies: @MarkinLA
No, you would be because you believe in that libertarian clap-trap. I wouldn’t care, I would just buy the Ford or Jeep like I have now.
Free trade is any time an American corporation can set up a factory in a foreign country and export what it makes back to America without paying a tariff. In order to fool the public, the agreement also lets the American corporation ship it’s products to that foreign country duty free. However, that option is only used in the case of sub-assemblies still being made in the US and shipped to the foreign country for final assembly while the US plant is slowly being shipped to the foreign plant.
There are rules that allow the US companies to fight the non-tariff restrictions that places like Japan or China put on US goods but those rules are generally ignored because it is really all about using foreign labor to make goods for the American market and the corporations do not want to antagonize the corrupt politicians of the foreign country.
Economists and libertarians have some fairy-tale idea about everybody specializing in what they do best and trading where everybody wins but like all fairy-tales it has never existed in the real world.
If there are no incentives to drive unilateral decision-making, reciprocity applies. Always.Almost certainly false. Economists keep saying that the American public persistently overestimates (vastly) the amount of foreign aid given to countries not named Israel. And it is a point of pride with the Indian government that it does not take (or need) foreign aid. But I'm willing to be corrected on this if you can provide evidence.True, and extremely egregious. If it were up to me, I'd abolish this discrimination. The government's rationale is that most Indians can't afford to pay more than the peanuts they are charged to visit these places (which is true), and if everyone were charged that rate, the govt. couldn't afford to maintain those places (also true.) Need to come up with a better system though that doesn't blatantly discriminate against foreigners.Replies: @IA
I worked on a project for USAID in Delhi in 1999. The total amount spent by USAID in India in 1998 was US$125,300,000 (development assistance = US$34,800,ooo, food aid = US$90,500,000). That’s a lot of money in India. I’d assume not much has changed since then. You could probably Google “USAID India 2014” to check.
The US Embassy in Delhi is one of the largest in the world.
Quit claiming to speak for Indian farmers. You aren’t one.
I wouldn't be surprised if these crazy people do this. Bono will be writing songs about how Japan doesn't want to flood their country with 3rd worlders and how bad they are.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Chrisnonymous
Many of the European and American expats in Japan already agitate against Japan’s immigration policies. Most do it in private with their friends, but some do it publicly, whether it’s in class where they’re teaching English, or, in the case of Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons, in print. They are all crazy.
Frankly, Japan’s immigration policy is already too lenient, and people take advantage of it. Over on the Japan-Guide.com forums, I saw a post recently by an Indian couple who wants to move to Japan but wants to find a Indian school to raise their children in! Japan is screwed if it opens up its doors any more.
The Japanese should deport these foreign agitators. Frankly, they have no right to have an opinion on the matter.Replies: @anomymous
The treaties are essentially standardization agreements, so the producers/sellers know what’s required for making something and the buyers/consumers know what to expect. Makes everything easier and cheaper for everyone. As you can imagine the agreements can get really voluminous since they are supposed to cover everything from trading satellites to buying and selling bacteria across national borders.
So is it “free”? Well, if you follow to the rules it is. No tariffs and minimal or non-existent border inspections. But don’t go inventing something new and revolutionary. It might not be covered.
“…Economists and libertarians have some fairy-tale idea about everybody specializing in what they do best and trading where everybody wins but like all fairy-tales it has never existed in the real world.”
Yeah, things are pretty different in the modern world. We’re not shearing sheep for wool in England to trade for wine from Portugal. These days relative advantage doesn’t matter so much. There’s a lot of absolute advantage or “political” advantage out there that has nothing to do with native sheep and wine.
Frankly, Japan's immigration policy is already too lenient, and people take advantage of it. Over on the Japan-Guide.com forums, I saw a post recently by an Indian couple who wants to move to Japan but wants to find a Indian school to raise their children in! Japan is screwed if it opens up its doors any more.Replies: @anonymous, @Mr. Anon
You know that that Indian immigrant probably has an IQ 10 points higher than the average Japanese right? And that there are probably 50 million like him who have similar IQ scores in India/Pakistan.
No, he probably doesn't know that. Because it probably isn't true.Replies: @anomymous
As of March, 2015, the ROK government
recorded 1,813,037 foreign-born persons
residing in Korea, including white collar
workers, migrant workers, undocumented workers, and
“foreign brides.”
In 2014, documented
workers totaled 503,135 and there were an estimated
64,507 undocumented workers.
By 2020, migrants are expected to constitute about five
percent of the total population and 10 percent by
2030.
Not bad compared to the Anglo countries, but the immigration wave started in the 90's so it's all very recent and rising quickly.Replies: @Anonymous
Why wouldn’t Korea benefit from a mass immigration of high IQ Indians, Whites, and Jews?
No, you are wrong. They do require a visa for visitors from at least some european countries (Poland, for example). I believe they required visas for german nationals 20 or 30 years ago, at a time when Americans did not need one to visit Germany.
By the way, your link goes nowhere.
“You know that that Indian immigrant probably has an IQ 10 points higher than the average Japanese right?”
No, he probably doesn’t know that. Because it probably isn’t true.
Frankly, Japan's immigration policy is already too lenient, and people take advantage of it. Over on the Japan-Guide.com forums, I saw a post recently by an Indian couple who wants to move to Japan but wants to find a Indian school to raise their children in! Japan is screwed if it opens up its doors any more.Replies: @anonymous, @Mr. Anon
“Many of the European and American expats in Japan already agitate against Japan’s immigration policies.”
The Japanese should deport these foreign agitators. Frankly, they have no right to have an opinion on the matter.
The only real leverage a software guy has to avoid getting laid off is management's fear that he could sabotage the code (if he's a senior programmer, he'd have had carte blanche to modify code and could have inserted logic bombs at will) in a way that could tank the business before the new guy has come up to speed.Replies: @Irrelephant
Who remembers the Bhopal disaster, which happened because a disgruntled employee sabotaged the chemical tanks after quarreling with his boss?
And look at what they’ve done for those countries thus far. What reason is there to believe their results would vary here?
No, he probably doesn't know that. Because it probably isn't true.Replies: @anomymous
I thought i saw a Source that indian immigrants to the us had an iq of 115, and the average japanese iq is 105, so the average iq for a japanese hick living in the rural areas must be even lower.
The Japanese should deport these foreign agitators. Frankly, they have no right to have an opinion on the matter.Replies: @anomymous
You want the americans to firebomb Tokyo again?
But Honda, Toyota etc., import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Daimler, BMW etc. import vehicles made abroad by non-Americans.
Sony, Toshiba etc., import electronics made abroad by non-Americans.
Why special dispensation towards goods importers compared to service importers? Is it because goods makers are lower status than (some) service providers?Replies: @TangoMan
Because a Toshiba product doesn’t require schooling for kids, doesn’t need a hospital when it gets sick, doesn’t tax police time, doesn’t tax the carrying capacity of a freeway, or a sewer system, doesn’t erode the social capital of society, doesn’t require differential treatment under law to set it apart from the citizens of the US.
Society doesn’t exist to service commerce, commerce exists to service society.
Fine, I'll play along. What happens to these incompetent H1-B serfs once they get their green cards? Or citizenship? Do they suddenly find themselves unemployable? "By the time they're thirty", they'll no longer be H1-Bs so do they also take their place on the unemployment line? Do they go back home, to be replaced by a fresh batch of serfs?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @AnAnon
They still have their ethnic and tribalist network, so they hold on for a little while longer than the average American.
While I oppose the WTO and would see it shut down:
1)immigrants = not trade
2)trade = trade
Most Indian women dress conservatively because they are afraid of being gangraped by Indian men.
But yeah, let's let more Indians in because to not would be unfair.Replies: @marwan
Big difference between conservative dress and traditional dress . When I was in some of the smaller easterly islands of Indonesia there were still a few young woman in traditional dress if you drifted into the countryside . They were dressed in traditional clothing but it was not conservative at all , in fact it was somewhat to quite revealing , and very appealing to me , I must add . Of course this was 7 years ago so things could have and probably did change for the worst , seeing as the smaller cities in those islands already had 100% of young women dressed in jeans , t shirts and flip flops , and the arrival of the smart phone to every nook and cranny of the earth will cause most of the girls to throw tradition and culture to the bin .
If your culture doesn’t include Abdallah standing behind your neck with a scimitar , its fair to say these girls won’t be getting compelled to keep their culture .