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For crying out loud. PAY DOWN YOUR DEBT!

One word: taxes.

Do what you have to do!

I've seen worse. They literally are accepting much "less" international degrees, claiming they are equivalent, grade scales are equivalent, when they are not. Academia was noted for labor arbitrage with Post Docs. Yes, we have too many PhDs in the U.S. and major salary repression, other abuses.

We have universities opening up "campuses" around the globe, I will assume using our tax dollars to educate foreigners and what happens with *that*, i.e. do these people get a soup-can label "MIT" degree with lessor teachers, lessor standards? or even worse, what is the inter-campus transfer policy under these conditions....

I'd say probably the worst promoter of global labor arbitrage through the U.S. higher educational system has to be Duke university.

The thing is, when it comes to higher education, there ia nary a mention of any of their doings, their labor arbitrage agenda, their systemic reduction and dilution of the value of a Bachelors degree, regardless that it takes as long and is the same number of credit hours as this so called MSc or foreign "Masters"....

I've seen similar "focus" groups that are truly absurd, say to get more women one needs to make hard science and engineering more touchy feeling. BS! What they need is to get discrimination and harassment out of the field, esp. in industry itself.

How many have seen the intern be viewed as eye candy and a potential date instead of a new brilliant engineer or scientist? Anybody from tech, comment on that statement.

A good overview post on the true state of Academia in this country might be in order...

I really want to call Obama the outsourcing President..might as well add to it Congress, after all, it seems lobbyists are not only writing their legislation and bills, but are clearly writing even their talking points.

If you want to take it on and do a cross post to help people find your own site and other pieces, please I'd love it. Only so many outrages one can analyze per day here.

Just glad they spoke up. Public Citizen wrote up facts and figures on Obama's New NAFTA style trade agenda.

This is a never ending corporate lobbyist agenda to give a free green card by attending U.S. educational system, some proposals are just for "higher education", yet unfortunately the MSc is being counted as a U.S. Masters, which it's much less than a typical U.S. Masters in difficulty, time and depth.

Other proposals have gone all the way to Kindergarten. In other words, attend any U.S. school, some proposals are just enroll, don't actually complete and wala, you get an automatic green card, or permanent residency.

Basically the U.S. has a lot of international students.

Many, many from China & India. These graduates currently use the H-1B Visa, but it's not what you think. Often they eventually get U.S. citizeship but that doesn't mean loyalty to the U.S., it's more like a great feather in the resume, for one now can create businesses in the U.S., usually offshore outsourcing, labor arbitrage models, and they start businesses back in their original countries, or offshore outsource the jobs.

They also displace U.S. workers, in particular this practice is used to age discriminate.

So, this is different from the Dream Act, which has it's own set of absurdities contained within.

When you hit this topic, the rhetoric does not match the actual legislative text. One needs to read the actual legislative text to see that they intent on tying U.S. immigration policy and law to the already overburdened and underfunded U.S. educational system....a system whose primary charter is to education it's citizens...
just like every other nation on Earth for their students.

What that does is bias the educational system with ulterior motives. You cannot expect Academic excellence when the pay out is a green card, think of how that will bias every thing from entrance to grades on tests. Not good. The demand for entrance into the U.S. is still so high, literally that will flood the educational system, just as the USCIS is currently flooded and backlogged.

This is the idea that instead of increasing stipends and making sure Americans get those college seats, especially in graduate school, they want to flood the university system on the promise of an instant green card.

This will displace U.S. students. Right now graduate school stipends are often below the poverty line. A PhD is taking 8 years, frankly without rich parents or support, making it through graduate school for Americans has become almost impossible and this isn't difficulty, this is financial.

U.S. companies as well as India body chops, now Chinese, use foreign nationals to get training here and then take that expertise and technology transfer it out of the U.S.

The F-4 will make it more easy to do that. These people are here for career, money, business, not to actually become loyal to the U.S., create jobs hiring Americans, build up the U.S. economy. It's ridiculous, while companies get sued for hiring only white people....we have FCDC in the form of Indian body shops, where the majority or workers, as in 90%, are on guest worker Visas from the home country. So in other words, it is already "no American need apply" to a company operating in their own country!

We already have a reduction of tech jobs, overall, they are offshore outsourced in droves and use of guest worker Visas to labor arbitrage, wage arbitrage and displace U.S. workers.

53% of female STEM are out of the field in 10 years. So, it's not just age discrimination going on, it's also sex discrimination...

when one has a never ending supply of labor, that causes wages to be repressed and other labor rights to erode.

One needs to look at the statistics in a cold hard view and not bring their personal philosophy to the excel spreadsheet and graphs.

There are exceptions to the above, which actually match the rhetoric, but from a large high up view, this is once again about global labor arbitrage.

If you want to invest in Americans, you have to guarantee your tax dollars are going to opportunities for Americans, first and foremost.

Even Tesla (who was an immigrant and clearly Obama doesn't know his inventors because he mentione Edison instead), worked long and hard to obtain his education....

Tesla by the way would come over today on an "O" Visa and we do indeed want the Teslas of the world.

See USA Today report:

Unemployment rate for college grads is highest since 1970

Sad. Very sad. Obama has turned into George Bush. He's destroying the middle class. There are so many smart, productive, college educated people (and their families) out there that are really hurting ...

Hi Robert,

I enjoy your blog on a regular basis, but I need a little help understanding some of your conclusions in this post. You write:

"While Americans cannot get jobs Obama wants to turn our educational system into an automatic free immigration ticket. This will enable labor arbitrage on steroids, displacing even more Americans and enabling more technology transfer to India and China. Having U.S. taxpayer dollars be used to make sure your kid cannot even get into college, not even get accepted, due to all of the foreigners getting the seats, much less a job upon graduation, is an astounding denial of labor economics."

Forgive my lack of understanding, but how would Obama's policies "turn our education system into an automatic free immigration ticket"? And how would allowing immigrants into the system enable "more technology transfer to India and China"? Most children of illegal immigrants in this country are from Mexico and South and Central America, not India and China, are they not?

Thanks,
Kay

According to the Kaiser Foundation's 2010 report, the average cost of health insurance is $13770.00 per year.  That's for a medium to large company that uses it's own funds to pay medical costs.  The health insurers are just administrators, although the checks come from them.  Those are not health care costs, they're insurance costs.  You add on another $2,300 to the $13,700 for out of pocket expenses:  co payments, procedures not covered, etc.   Then there's the deductible, an expense threshold that has to be reached before the plan kicks in.  That ranges from $500 per person on up.  For a family of three that's $1,500.00.  The grand total for the efficiencies of a direct payment by employer plan is$17,500.

The self employed get no such deal, as is the fact and as I explained clearly.  Remember, we're not talking about premiums.  Those can be very cheap.  But healthcare isn't.  Take this Utah plan from an article I wrote in 2009, Screwing the Self-Employed Out of Health Insurance.

Utah  2 person plan (five other states presented as well with original insurance company quote)

Annual Premium:  1682.15 ($140.18 a month)

Deductible:  $15,000 (2 person family-$7,500 each)

Prescription Drug deductible:  $2,000 (2 person fam ily $1,000 each)

Those procedures, medicines, etc. not covered are in addition and do not satisfy the deductible.

That's how you look at this. 

When you compare low deductible plans with high deductible plans, they come out about the same for total health care costs (not ust premiums).

The self-employed tend to be older - 38% are 40 to 60.  That drives rates up.  In addition, the insurance companies take 30 to 45% right off the top (compared to 5% for Medicare and 15% at most for employer self funded plan administration).

Here's what it looks like when you add premiums, deductibles, and adjust for cost of living for six sates in 2009.  Rates and costs have gone up considerably since then.

(NCPA refers to a think tank analysis in blue that was premiums only.  That's propaganda!)

If you take Massachusetts at $17,000 a year, increase it by 20% to bring you to 2011 rates, it comes to $24,480.  That is 75% or more of the individual median income in the USA.

Where's the "Hope", you asked? "The Hope" is that voters will eventually awaken from their deep affliction caused by "Blind Patriotism", and "Stop" re-electing "professional politicians" to serve in Washington. Until then, look for more of the same ol' same ol'. In the U.S.A., we have some of the most brilliant and educated minds in the world, except on election day. On election day, "Stupid" becomes the "order of the day". Thus the sad shameful and pathetic shape this nation is in today. We elect professional politicians ( crooks, thieves, egotists ) on election day, then basically give them "Carte Blanche" to exert their will, and not the will of the people.

What has happened to this once great nation, didn't happen by accident or chance. It happened because we allowed it to happen through our gullibility to swallow hook, line, and sinker, the campaign rhetoric of silver tongued smooth talking professional politicians. And now, we're paying a heavy price for our stupidity.

We can blame profressional politicians, or we can blame the American voters that allow them the opportunity to destroy a nation.

The "hope" is that enough concerned citizens will awaken to the cold hard facts before it's too late.