Did you know that computer professionals won’t be getting a salary increase anytime soon? In fact they will be lucky if they don’t loose their jobs. Our ‘‘representatives’’ in Congress passed H.R.3736 titled ‘‘Temporary Access to Skilled Workers and H-1B Non-immigrant Program Improvement Act of 1998’’ (an ‘‘H-1B Non-immigrant’’ is an alien who is issued a visa and green card).
H.R.3736 amends the Immigration and Nationality act to double the number of ‘‘skilled foreign workers’’ allowed into the U. S. workforce for the next three years. The actual numbers are 115,000 in fiscal year 1999, 115,000 in fiscal year 2000, and 107,500 in fiscal year 2001; at which time ‘‘The Director of the National Science Foundation shall conduct a study to assess labor market needs for workers with high technology skills during the next 10 years’’. More specifically, the act further states that the study ‘‘shall investigate and analyze...the needs of the high technology sector for foreign workers with specific skills and the potential benefits and costs to United States employers, workers, consumers, post-secondary educational institutions, and the United States economy, from the entry of skilled foreign professionals into the fields of science and engineering’’.
So that’s why we pay all those tax dollars to our elected ‘‘representatives’’.
Update, October 17, 2000: S.2045 ‘‘A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to H-1B nonimmigrant aliens’’ was signed by President ‘‘Slick Willie’’ Clinton. This law increases the number of H-1B visas issued to foreign workers to 195,000 in each of the years 2001, 2002, and 2003, and makes it easier for them to switch jobs. Not much advantage to being an American citizen anymore, is there?
That is only one small example of how the professional bureaucrats that run this country abuse their power by doing things that are contrary to the best interests of the U.S. citizens whose money they spend. The only reason I list the example above first is because it hits very close to home, but every week both ABC news (on the ‘‘It’s Your Money’’ segment), and ‘‘60 Minutes’’ televise a new and different example of how government officials waste millions, and sometimes billions, of our dollars. We’ve gotten so used to what is essentially political racketeering, no one gives it a second thought anymore.
When this country was formed, it was for We the People, not for the political ‘‘servants’’ who have now become our masters. If an employee of any company in the world mismanaged things even a tiny fraction as poorly as our politicians have mismanaged this country, they would have not only been fired long ago, they would be serving time in prison. For Christ’s sake, people are even being arrested for defending themselves against violent criminal’s in their own homes! If you don’t believe it, take a look at H.R.347, then compare that modest proposal with what our forefathers intended in this excerpt from ‘‘The Declaration of Independence’’
| WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. |
des·pot·ism (des Æ pà tizÅà m), n.
| 1. ...; the exercise of absolute authority. 2. absolute power or control; tyranny. 3. an absolute or autocratic government. |