Outsourcing Your Job and TN Visas

Date: Friday, March 07, 2003 1:09 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

The NAFTA TN visa is unrestricted from Canada but only 5,500 per year
are allowed from Mexico.

Pat Choate says 2005 is the date for elimination of restrictions, but
the actual date is 2004 - LESS THAN ONE YEAR FROM NOW! Pay attention
to this, because the TN visa will soon be worse than H-1B, and many
more of these visas are in the works.

http://www.clearhq.org/winter_2002_contrasts.htm

Noteworthy differences mark the U.S. requirements for
NAFTA visas for Canadian professionals and those for
professionals from Mexico. The agreement requires the
three countries to grant temporary entry1 to citizens
under four categories: business visitors, traders and
investors, intracompany transferees, and professionals.
To qualify in the last category, the profession must be
included in a NAFTA list of more than sixty professions,
and the professional must have the specified educational
qualifications. 2 Currently, the United States imposes
no limit on these visas, also known as TN visas, for
Canadian professionals but restricts Mexican professionals
to 5,500 visas per year. This limit is due to be phased
out January 1, 2004. The extensive NAFTA list of
professions means that a large number of Mexicans will soon
qualify for temporary entry visas, which if the U.S.
government respects the date for eliminating this quota,
COULD NOTICEABLY AFFECT COMPETITION BETWEEN MEXICAN AND
U.S. PROFESSIONALS IN THE BORDER REGION.

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) agreements that Bush is arranging such
as CAFTA will have similar agreements to allow unlimited numbers of
workers to go across national borders to work.

The TN visa is very quick and cheap to obtain. The list of countries
that are on the fast track for TPA agreements include include Brazil,
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Singapore,
Chile, Australia, Israel, and Jordan. These countries will demand visas
that are at least as generous as the TN.

I don't expect media outrage when the NAFTA restrictions are lifted.
The United States media will be focused on the military occupation of
Iraq by Bush's invasion force. They and will not spend time reporting
on boring trade agreements while US troops are still in harm's way.

http://www.usadaily.com/Commentary/Choate/030307_outsourcing_your_job.htm

Outsourcing Your Job

By Pat Choate 3-7-03

If your job requires a specialized skill or a college education, a
foreign worker may soon replace you. If this happens, you may get a
few extra months of work so you can train your replacement.

In most instances, your job will moved to some penny-wage nation, such
as Mexico, India, or China. Already, millions of blue-collar U.S.
manufacturing jobs have been exported. Now, in what is called the
third wave of globalization, high knowledge and skilled jobs are also
being relocated to lower wage countries.

To ease this great job shift, developing nations are educating vast
numbers of skilled and educated professionals, most of whom are as well
trained and as well schooled as Americans. India and China, for
instance, are each producing more than 350,000 new engineers per year.
In combination, that is twice the number being produced in the United
States annually.

These foreign engineers will work six days a week for $10,000 per year,
roughly one-sixth that of their U.S. counterparts. And equally
important, U.S. employers sending work to India and China are not
required to pay for Social Security, medical programs, retirement, or
disability expenses. If one of these foreign employees becomes sick or
objects to unsafe working conditions, qualified replacements are easy
to find.

Equally important for most U.S. employers, these foreign workers are
docile. They are not going to form a union, and they are not going to
confront their bosses with demands. Criticism is discouraged with
firing and by a black ball system operated by employers and the
government. And in no-dissent nations such as China, critics may lose
their freedom, if not their lives.

Among the service and intellectual work now being outsourced from the
United States are software development, engineering, architecture,
design, accounting, call centers, telemarketing, research and
development, and systems integration. Some companies such as Union
Pacific and Proctor and Gamble are moving a large part of the their
entire back office operations to places such as India and the
Philippines. So too is Boeing, General Electric, Motorola, Dell
Computer, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, plus a majority of the other Fortune
500 corporations. Several states such as Alabama have contracted with
companies in India to operate their 800-number welfare service lines.
Workers in many of these Indian call centers are required to watch two
hours of American television daily so that they can perfect their
accents.

Still, there are some service jobs that require providers be physically
available to their U.S. customers. In those circumstances, the United
States has established a liberal immigration policy one that
encourages employers to import skilled foreign workers, such as nurses.

Previously, importing foreign workers was done through quota-type

arrangements whereby Congress would vote a specific number of slots
that employers could use to hire foreign talent. The most famous of
these, the H-1B program, for instance, has enabled U.S. companies to
bring to this country more than 1million high-tech and skilled workers.

These H-1B workers, of course, are paid less than their American
counterparts and do not have similar benefits. Also, these foreign
workers are effectively indentured to their U.S. employer because if
they do anything displeasing, such as ask for a pay raise, they can be
fired and deported.

Still, one million workers are insufficient for the demand from U.S.
employers. Consequently, the Cheap Labor lobby has devised a means to
replace even more American workers with even more skilled foreign
labor. In the NAFTA trade pact, the United States agreed that after the
year 2005 it would allow open immigration for a host of skilled and
licensed professionals between Mexico and the United States. Thus, a
Mexican engineer will be able to come to the United States without any
burdensome visa requirements and without having to worry about quota
limits. Working in the United States will be a right for these
Mexicans professionals.

The U.S.-Chile Free Trade accord extends this open immigration
provision to Chile. If Congress ratifies this pact, any Chilean with a
college degree will have the right to come and work in the United
States. Also, no limits will exist on the number of Chilean college
graduates eligible for work in the United States.

Naturally, other nations will soon demand the same privileges given
Mexico and Chile. And if the past is any guide to the future, our
President and Congress will grant those demands.

Taking outsourcing to the next level, the American Chamber of Commerce
of the Philippines is now demanding that the United States outsource
much of its existing federal and state government work. After all,
most work of the federal and state governments is really little
different than most corporate back office operations. It can be done
as effectively by Filipinos in Manila as Americans in Wichita,
Washington, or Atlanta, and at a substantial savings in labor cost.

Of course, the current U.S. policy of exporting jobs and importing
workers comes at the expense of American workers. Our President and
a majority in Congress tell us by their actions that we do not matter,
that we are too expensive and too demanding. Instead, they throw us
sops, such as more training and more welfare. Today, a majority of
political leaders primarily work to advance their campaign
contributors interests, as opposed to the well being of their
constituents.

Fortunately, this need not continue indefinitely. Millions of American
workers are coming to understand that all these free trade agreements
of the past decade were really about filling their jobs with cheap
foreign labor, whether by exporting jobs or importing workers.

Hopefully, somewhere in America there is a politician with enough wits
and political skills to put together a coalition of those opposed to
unfettered globalism and also the courage to overthrow the special
interest paymasters in either the Democratic or Republican parties.
That person can become President of the United States.

And if that person as President stops the outsourcing of American jobs
and returns to the trade policies of self-sufficiency that so long
provided this nation and its people with economic and military
security, that Presidency will be as revered as those of George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

As with the tale of Arthur and Excalibur in which the King was that
person who could pull the sword from the stone, the next great U.S.
President is the one who can effectively stop the outsourcing of
American jobs.

A USA Daily columnist, Pat Choate was Ross Perot's vice presidential
running mate in 1996. Mr. Choate has served on several presidential and
congressional commissions, worked as a senior economist in the US
Commerce Department and the Office of Management and Budget,
administered development programs for the States of Tennessee and
Oklahoma, and for a decade was the senior public policy advisor at TRW
Inc. A political economist, think tank strategist, and policy analyst,
Pat is also the author of three national best selling books, including
" Agents of Influence ".

) Copyright USA Daily, LLC, 2002-2003, All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction Of Content Without Permission Of USA Daily Is Prohibited.

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