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Beware Vivek’s Plan for Work Visas
Vivek Ramaswamy’s “national libertarian” plan to bring in foreign workers is a flawed concept, replete with the pitfalls of all other legal immigration programs.
In his recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pitched his case for reduced U.S. legal immigration, but defended a system that would still continue to import foreign laborers to compete with and displace American workers. In remarks that sought to distinguish his vision of “national libertarianism” from “national conservatism,” Vivek laid out a plan that would bring in “high-quality” foreign worker immigrants.
Any visa program that does not put in place an ironclad number limitation is a dangerous unlocked door.
Ramaswamy did stress immigration restriction measures that the NatCon audience cheered. He naturally condemned all illegal migration and the ongoing border chaos. He rejected chain migration for extended family reunification, i.e., the motor of the current legal system, as not serving the U.S. national interest. Vivek spoke out forcefully on the need today for large scale deportations, vigorous domestic enforcement of immigration laws, and even the end of jus soli birthrights for illegal immigrants (which currently makes their babies born on U.S. territory American citizens).
All good stuff, but where Mr. Ramaswamy and his national libertarianism vision parted with many at NatCon was in his plan to keep the door open to importing more foreign workers. Amazingly, Vivek still advocated the need for such a program, despite decades of massive immigration, legal and illegal, which has left the country with a foreign born population of over 51 million, 15.6 percent of the total.
That is the highest level in our history; when America in 1924 hovered close to the 15 percent mark, it was the basis for a national pause that ended mass immigration.
Under the Ramaswamy plan, only foreign worker immigrants who were “high quality” would be accepted. For Vivek, high quality essentially meant his legal immigrants would be screened to ensure that they held a solid knowledge of American history and civics, and an ability to speak English. A flaw in Vivek’s plan is the assumption that a foreigner’s skill in passing a high-school level civics test and knowing something of the English language equates with growing up with American values.
Moreover, Vivek did not even pause to make a thorough normative argument on why America should constantly be importing foreign labor of any kind. He did assert, rightly, that the United States must be viewed as more than a giant economic money-making zone, yet the basic justifications for his plan were all tethered to a short-term business analysis, one that had only the perspective of labor and capital.
This is a regrettable approach that lands Vivek squarely on Wall Street, with other billionaire entrepreneurs, far away from the concerns and values of Main Street conservatives.
Vivek’s immigration justification takes us right back to The Wall Street Journal and Cato policy papers. It is the same antiquated view that is comfortable with Washington lobbyists hustling in the halls of Congress and in federal agencies to expand the number of H-1B visas and create other narrow, special-interest visa categories.
Those who spin this special-favor lobbying for the general public, in an attempt to identify a national interest, generally point to U.S. companies becoming more competitive and profitable (at the expense of domestic labor) or the need to bring in foreign laborer to fill jobs, typically farm work, that Americans allegedly “will not do.”
True or not — and in most cases the arguments are dubious — all these scenarios still involve Washington politicians picking winners and losers.
One might expect that national libertarians (Vivek’s camp) would advance a policy of principle that calls on the federal government simply to stay out of labor markets. Uncle Sam should guarantee the rule of law, i.e., protect the national border from outside incursions of illegals, while leaving the country’s domestic labor needs to America’s internal free market.
Such a policy would recognize the inherent vulnerability of all domestic jobs that are opened up to cut-throat foreign competition. National libertarians should not kid themselves. Virtually all modern American employment categories — i.e., medical doctors, insurance salesmen, swimming instructors, physicists, you name it — could be radically and quickly remade by the importation of foreign workers to compete with Americans.
Main Street conservatives believe in the integrity of borders. They are typically good free-enterprise capitalists, unlike the Wall Street types who go to Washington to seek government favors like work visas. Main Street businesspeople work in the world of small family enterprises and trades, such as carpenters, truck drivers, and barbers.
Unlike Wall Street billionaires, they face our country’s modern reality where there are millions, indeed many tens of millions of foreigners, who are capable and willing to arrive on our shores prepared to work for less and for longer hours than regular Americans.
Turning on the immigration faucet to import this endless labor supply has everything to do with immediate business profits, and very little to do with the fate of American workers, their quality of life, or the enlightened national interest.
In his NatCon speech, Vivek asserted: “The old neoliberal view is that immigration policy is inextricably linked to economic policy, where the sole objective was economic growth, while the national protectionist view, historically viewed as the NatCon view, in response to that was inextricably linked to labor policy.”
Mr. Ramaswamy, bright thinker that he is, still underplays the societal disruption that comes with all mass immigration. The NatCon view — or better the Main Street view — is concerned with more than just the impact on labor policy. It is also concerned with the unintended negative consequences and dislocation in our communities that Vivek did not even address: such as the stress on local school systems, hospitals, social services, and housing markets. As a quality-of-life question, we need to ask how many millions should live in our country?
Main Street conservatives also assert that if Wall Street could not easily resort to foreign labor, U.S. businesses might be compelled to innovate new employment strategies that would engage marginalized Americans. It has happened before on a vast scale.
The so-called “Great Migration” of black Americans out of the Jim Crow South to cities in the North and Midwest was fueled by work opportunities in northern factories. Traditionally, those bottom-rung manufacturing jobs went to incoming European migrants, but when World War I and America’s 1924 moratorium halted most legal immigration, the country’s black citizens, for once, had a chance to join the modern U.S. labor market.
Instead of holding open the door for more guest workers, Vivek should call on Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other billionaires to address marginalized Americans. Because foreign workers are cheaper, more manageable, and, yes, even more productive in some cases, U.S. employers will not give them up unless pro-American policies turn off the faucet. As Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has documented through extensive research:
Advocates insist there are simply not enough workers without immigrants. This argument ignores the long-term deterioration in labor force participation among U.S.-born men. Moreover, there is a significant literature showing that being out of the labor force is associated with social pathologies such as crime, social isolation, overdose deaths, and welfare dependency. Policymakers should consider encouraging work among the millions of working-age Americans on the economic sidelines rather than ignoring the problem and continuing to allow in large numbers of legal and illegal immigrants.
It is also unclear how thoroughly Vivek has examined the difficulty of implementing U.S. visa programs; like all government programs, they encounter problems achieving the results that policymakers envision on their blackboards.
For example, Mr. Ramaswamy implied his program would put all foreign workers on a path to U.S. residency and potentially American citizenship. He rightly rejected today’s flawed dual citizenship model, but it is unclear how he would enforce such a norm beyond demanding that applicants pass a U.S. civics test.
Decades of experience in America’s immigrant communities indicates that new arrivals are slow to cut ties to the old country, and it often takes generations to Americanize them. This is particularly true in our modern age of cheap jet travel, digital communication, and multicultural propaganda that ceaselessly proclaims that diversity, not unity and national identity, is America’s strength.
Moreover, as a national libertarian, Mr. Ramaswamy should be highly suspicious of the operational efficiency of any government-run program, including visa processing. Yet he seemed confident that federal government officials would smoothly implement his foreign worker visa program, built on carefully vetting applicants and ensuring their high qualifications. Having once worked in this sausage-making arena, I must, alas, disabuse Vivek that federal government agencies are nimble migrant processing operations.
In part, the chaos associated with visa processing is tied to the never-ending global demand to enter our country, by hook or by crook. The worldwide scramble of illegal migrants, unleashed by Biden-Mayorkas, to reach our borders is a good indicator. The ongoing, unprecedented border pandemonium brutally illustrates the desperate migratory forces that target U.S. legal immigration.
All visa programs — regardless of whether lobbyists design them for foreign investors, students or laborers — are replete with shocking levels of fraud, corruption and scams, often managed by organized crime syndicates in the sending country that reach alarmingly into the United States. Just examine the foreign fraud record in the U.S. diversity visa program. It is hard to imagine how any of this would change under Vivek’s new worker visa plan.
Finally, Vivek did not address the numbers. All immigration programs concocted in Washington must always answer one essential question: how many visas are to be issued? Before Biden-Mayorkas blew up legal immigration, the United States was taking in about 1.1 million annually, mainly through the family reunification process.
When a questioner asked Vivek how many migrants he contemplated accepting in his program, the former presidential candidate was surprisingly unsure. “The question of what number is the wrong question to ask,” he explained, “I think the right question is what is the quality of immigrants we want.”
Any visa program that does not put in place an ironclad number limitation is a dangerous unlocked door. Vivek is rightly suspicious of the administrative Deep State and an inattentive Congress; why would he conceptually give a blank check on worker visas? Imagine a future Alejandro Mayorkas armed with such a program.
Vivek has spoken out bravely in defense of American sovereignty against attacks from the left, a fact we recognize and applaud, but by keeping alive a supposed need for an immigration program based on foreign workers, he is bringing a dangerous Trojan Horse into our camp. Main Street conservatives need to banish the idea that some magically fine-tuned foreign worker visa program is out there that will serve the national interest. It is a fairy tale.
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The post Beware Vivek’s Plan for Work Visas appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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