One should not overinterpret the available wage evidence. Businesses do have reasonable needs to bring in foreign workers and managers at least for some period of time. Export-oriented businesses, for example, really do need to have staff circulation to/from overseas in order to boost their exports. It's also fairly easy to imagine skills requirements that only a foreign worker could address in reasonable fashion within a reasonable period of time. I imagine there's not a super abundance of experts in German contract law (and German language contracts) living in Peoria, Illinois, for example, but that sort of skill might be super important to a particular employer.
Some countries -- Japan comes to mind -- have a ratio (or at least a ratio sanity check) policy, meaning that employers are permitted to bring in X number of foreign workers as long as they maintain or better yet increase the number of local workers by some multiple of X. Perhaps that ratio varies by profession or industry to some extent. That sort of approach would appear to address at least the bulk of employers' needs. To summarize, foreign workers can and should be welcomed...within a reasonable immigration policy. "Reasonable" means based on the economics and reality. Just to pick an example, I'd really like to see even more top university graduates in the U.S. be able to pursue careers in the U.S. if they wish and under reasonable terms. That sort of approach would be pro-skills, pro-talent. As another example, as I understand it the current H-1B visa program is tied to a specific sponsoring employer. In my view foreign workers shouldn't be captive to a specific employer. They should be able to "jump ship" for better working conditions and compensation, at least after, say, 120 days. Otherwise (in my view) some of their employers would be tempted to exploit them in various ways including compensating them below market rate for their skills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
