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Well, well, the Church of Free Trade is splintering and finally the silent stewards of economics are breaking ranks with the court doctrine and speaking truth. A crack in the armor is starting to show….
Alan S. Blinder:

is saying loudly that a new industrial revolution –communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically from afar –
will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two.

After all it only takes massive job losses and a growing trade deficit to get even a squeak of acknowledgment that something is grossly wrong?

Blinder continues:

A college diploma, he warns, may lose its exalted ’silver
bullet’ status. It isn’t how many years one spends in school that will matter, he says, it’s choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar.

From Congressional Testimony, Ralph Gomory says:

In its simplest form the pattern we see is this: if the wage differential between two trading countries is sufficiently large, the loss of industries from the higher wage developed county to the low wage underdeveloped country may well benefit both countries at the national level. However as the under-developed…

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This past week, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007

The bill number is S.1035 and the Title:

A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to reduce fraud and abuse in certain visa programs for aliens working temporarily in the United States

Durbin in the past does not have a great record on insourcing (bringing in cheap labor to displace Americans, labor arbitrage, scroll to guest worker Visas), although he did vote for the Byrd amendment, which was a key indicator that he would support American workers. But this new legislation implies Durbin is finally getting it on how US immigration policy is being manipulated for the purposes of labor arbitrage and guest worker Visas are the vehicle of choice for the Corporate cheap labor lobby.

It appears that Durbin is going to stand tall with US professionals and labor and this is truly a godsend!

To give an overview of the problems with H-1B and L-1 Guest worker Visas I suggest watching this video from the Economic Policy Institute, Agenda for Shared Prosperity.Yet the question remains, does this bill do enough? Yet an even larger question remains can…

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