Some Things Don’t Change

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Clarissa

February 17, 2014

Another interesting quote from Tony Judt:

The Canadian Labor Department in 1948 rejected girls and women applying to emigrate to Canada for jobs in domestic service if there was any sign that they had education beyond secondary school.

Judt says things were the same for European Jews: no country wanted to take them in if they had education and didn’t work in manual labor. Which, of course, excludes an enormous number of people whose very culture and religion mandate studying.

Note how this is a permanent feature of immigration requirements that is as present today as it was in 1948. Even though economically First World countries are in desperate need of highly educated people, they prefer to accept immigrants who are not educated and are unlikely to seek education. (Take US’s dedication to taking in only lottery winners, mail-order brides, and religious fanatics and immediate deportations of PhD and MA recipients.)

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8 responses to “Some Things Don’t Change”

el

February 17, 2014

Natives are always afraid of immigrants competing with them for good jobs. In case of economic necessity, they may agree to suffer seeing more Jewish, black, Muslim, etc people, but only if those people will take the worst jobs in society. “Jews take the best” has been the key component of anti-semitism for centuries, so nothing here is new.

This native may be not smart enough to be a doctor himself, but no Others are wanted to “take the job away” from him.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  I guess that’s what it is, yes. But look at the results of these policies in the link you provided in your previous comment.
  
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zinemin

February 17, 2014

I am not convinced that the reason is that people are afraid of immigrants taking their jobs. Immigration of educated people is hugely profitable for the economy, because the country does not have to pay for the education. This is actually one of the big reasons for the current economic boom in Switzerland: we do not have to spend money on education because of the influx of doctors and engineers from Germany. This economic boom creates jobs even for the Swiss and we have a very low unemployment rate.
I think the reason that the people seem to hate immigration of educated foreigners is something else: They don’t mind foreign people so much if those people are cleaning toilets and therefore are at the bottom of the local hierarchy. But it makes them crazy if the foreigners are professors and surgeons and economists. They are foreign and on top of the hierarchy? This is not something the local population can handle.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 17, 2014
  
  Yes, that’s exactly what it is. This is a fear that is not economic in nature.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    February 17, 2014
    
    From what I can tell the Swiss vote was partly about economics as high salary foreigners were crowding native Swiss (through escalating housing costs) out of the cities.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      February 17, 2014
      
      I hear that this is happening in many major European cities. Locals start moving away from the cities into the suburbs. This is common in the US, but for Europe this is very new and very unwelcome. I haven’t been to Brussels and Marseilles but people who have say this is a very obvious and probably irreversible trend: the locals are fleeing, the cities are ghettoizing.
      
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NancyP

February 18, 2014

STEM graduates have an easier time immigrating to the US, but there is political (lobbying) and procedural pressure from corporations that need the STEM graduates willing to take the wages offered. There is some significant effort expended by US companies and universities in getting their preferred job candidates green cards. US STEM graduates often get business degrees because the pay is significantly better on average, and the temporary nature of a sizable amount of STEM employment, in the form of postdoctoral fellowships, is seen as too precarious once one wants to start a family. Experienced graduate nurses can immigrate quite easily. M.D.s need to work for a few years after residency in an “underserved area” to get a green card. Translated, this means working for the V.A. or the military if you are a specialist, and working for the military, an urban public health clinic, in a rural area, or for the prison system, if you are a generalist.

The US scientific community was raised to world class levels by Hitler. Lots of Jewish scientists from the then-leader in science, Germany, came to the U.S.. Some M.D.s immigrated as well – I knew one who had been involved in early studies on nutrition and birth defects, notably congenital goiter from lack of iodine.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 18, 2014
  
  “STEM graduates have an easier time immigrating to the US”
  
  – There is absolutely no provision for them in the immigration requirement at the moment. Unless you already have a full-time job with a US university, you can’t even apply for a green card. A work visa also needs to be sponsored by a US company.
  
  “M.D.s need to work for a few years after residency in an “underserved area” to get a green card.”
  
  – Depends on the country of origin.
  
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