Sirota: Bailout cash subsidizing outsourcing

[antigop]

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11274

In the intensifying fight over Buy America laws and whether to make sure U.S. taxpayer money works for U.S. taxpayers, it's not just stimulus money that corporate lobbyists want subsidizing outsourcing, it's also bank bailout money:

(AP) Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications. The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers...The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers.

As my book, The Uprising, showed in its examination of efforts to unionize high-tech workers, these companies use the H-1B program to hire workers who will take much lower wages and whose immigration status is effectively determined by their visa-holding employer (read: they can't try to unionize, etc.), thus undercutting American workers. In the case of the banking industry, while "lower wages" still certainly means decent wages, the bottom line is that the importation of foreign workers - at a time when domestic unemployment is rising - is a way to drive down the corporate bottom line. And now, that drive is being subsidized by the very taxpayers who it is hurting.

And yet, in the face of this, we're expected to believe that provisions ensuring taxpayer cash is used to hire American workers is somehow evil "protectionism," while letting taxpayer cash subsidize outsourcing is Enlightened Prgamatism. What a joke.

[AzDar]

1. K & R

:kick:

[Autumn]

2. Is there no end

to this shit?:kick:

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[global1]

4. I've Mentioned Before In One Of My Posts That The Recent Rash Of Layoffs, Downsizing......

firings by companies of their employees was being done because this 'economic crisis' we're in is providing them cover to do this. I believe that any recovery from this 'stimulus package' will be watered down because any hiring that will be done post stimulus package will be to replace those that were axed with cheaper employees. Think about it - and I'm not sure this is part of the stimulus package but at one time I heard that it might be. If companies are incented some way for hiring or creating jobs - wouldn't it be in my best interest as a company to downsize first and then when the incentives come - start hiring and win both ways. I would win by getting a government incentive for hiring people - either a monetary payment or a special tax write off and the second way I would win is that those people I would be hiring would cost me less monies because they wouldn't be laden with all the bennies that the people that I let go just months before. Also - those people might come in at a lesser wage as well.

I hope that someone in Obama's administration has thought about this and has put in safeguards and controls to prevent stuff like this from happening - but I won't hold my breath.

[Lost4words]

5. UNION! now today-again,

one at a time will never stop them.

Until their lifestyle is threatened why should they ever stop!?

[nichomachus]

6. But it was just free money -- it wasn't a bailout

See my other post. There was no crisis -- the banking system was not collapsing -- it was just a way to loot the treasury

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4965387

This is why they feel free to spend the money on private jets, Superbowl parties, bonuses, vacations, making new risky investments, and whatever.

We've been played for suckers -- and we've been robbed.

And we're sitting still for it. As long as we do, shit like this will continue.

[OneBlueSky]

7. fucking insane . . . isn't anyone watching this money? . . . n/t