The Becker-Posner Blog: When Two Old Men Try to Blog

I don't usually read the Becker-Posner blog. It's a little like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, if they'd left the theatre, popped a bunch of ginko biloba, and gone straight into a top Ivy League school. Food for the brain, but not good fare for a Monday morning before I've had any caffeine.

Today, for some reason, I changed my routine and actually skimmed yesterday's post regarding skilled immigrants. Becker basically suggests that the U. S. is shooting itself in the foot by lowering the number of green cards and H-1B visas it offers to foreign workers. His stance is that the United States seeks to increase the number of skilled IT professionals with its left hand, and staunches immigration of skilled IT professionals into the country with its right.

I agree.

If the U. S. is going to fumble the education ball as badly as it has for the past 20 years, we need smarter people who got better educations in other countries to come in and do the jobs we need to do for us. Herein lies a fundamental weakness to the entire immigration concept: American citizens hate the idea of competing for a domestic job with someone who wasn't born here. And suddenly — and illogically — the idea of "the best person for the job" takes a backseat to "Do you even belong on this side of the border, Kumar?" That's just plain wrong thinking, and goes completely counter to the idea we all learned in elementary school of the melting pot analogy. Becker makes the same argument: get skilled IT immigrants into the country and then help them to become American citizens. Part of me can't believe that our country has come so far as to say "Sorry. All full up," to someone who has a CCNA certification and doesn't mind working weekends. If America is so bloated that it can't hold a few more talented people, I suggest we keep the skilled immigrants coming in and purge a couple counties in Arkansas to make room for them.

That's right. I say we exterminate the hillbillies, because they're bringing the American way of life down. Way down.

The other side of me jumps straight to that illogical "American jobs for American citizens" argument, and the reason why is that it's so much easier to get a job when the resource pool that recruiters draw from is thin and weak from the glut of so many American-educated Americans. Do I want competition? No. Would having competition kick my butt to go back and get the certs I need to compete on higher terms? Yes. So I don't want skilled immigration competing with me, specifically, just because I'm lazy.

What kind of argument is that? Not much of one. So Becker gets my vote on this topic: more visas, more green cards, better service from new citizens. It's what made this country great once, I don't see why it wouldn't a second time. I'll just have to go back to school to get my resume into shape is all.

Weatherhead's application system is a touch confusing.