The NYTimes published a long piece today on the evil, designing H1-B recipients who come to the US to “steal jobs.”
Note how similar the rhetoric of the Liberal NYTimes is to that of Trumpazoids. Substitute illiterate Mexicans with educated Indians, and the rest is exactly the same: evil immigrants are “stealing jobs.” What is especially curious is that each side feels enormously self-righteous in comparison to the opponent.
Both shades of this rhetoric are an attempt to hide from the new reality of post-work society behind the bits and pieces of the collapsing nation-state. (Citizenship, borders, visas belong to the nation-state era, of course.) The wall that Trump wants to build (and the NYTimes does, too, albeit in a less tangible form) is a symbolic bulwark that is supposed to protect the nation-state from the intangible forces that are battering it.
The rhetoric of “stealing jobs” is an avoidance of the real reasons why jobs and entire professions are disappearing. The new and disturbing reality of post-work society will have to be discussed one day, and the longer we delay this discussion, the more painful it will be.
Clarissa's Blog 
How many people even know what’s going on well enough to talk about it?
The great majority of those engineering the disappearance of the nation state are not opening stateing what they’re doing (for obvious reasons).
The only language people have for discussing the current changes are rooted in the past. In nation state terms what businesses abusing H1-B visas are doing is essentially treason. Choosing self-enrichment and short term gain at the expense of fellow citizens and the commonweal.
The places where where what they’re doing makes sense are places like India and Brazil – in other words places with no real social cohesion and places where mass amounts of the citizenry would love to jump ship (because they’ve never been real nation states).
What’s worse, they’re counting on traditional US social cohesion to help them get away with it.
What, according to you, is a better way to talk about this?
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“In nation state terms what businesses abusing H1-B visas are doing is essentially treason. Choosing self-enrichment and short term gain at the expense of fellow citizens and the commonweal.”
I’m on my way to my salon right now, and its owner just promoted to the role of her second-in-command an immigrant for the sole reason that she’s the only one who comes to work to actually work and not socialize and requires no emotional maintenance.
At my job, it’s the same thing. The people who publish, do the work, have exciting things going on professionally are all immigrants on HB-1 visas or the equivalent. The rest are endlessly bitching about the non-existing 80-hour work weeks. Honestly, which employer in their right mind would not prefer to have a dozen workers like me over a dozen of the whiners who write for Chronicle of Higher Ed about their microaggressions, victimizations, persecutions, and exhaustions?
As for the better way to discuss this issue, it does exist. We need to remember that if a societal model is formed, that can only happen if there is demand for it. The post-work society is being created as a result of the technological revolution.
HOWEVER! It would not come into existence and take root if there weren’t massive popular demand for it. It’s so easy to succeed among North Americans and Western Europeans because they are increasingly not that into work. We are talking about the people who used to be the most hard-working on the planet but that’s all disappearing. One can still find a hard-working Canadian, etc. who’s over 50 years of age. But under 30? Good luck.
The concept of a life-long career is disappearing but it is doing so, to a large extent, because people are losing interest in it. An employer (again, I’m talking about a real person I know here) who tries to motivate workers by offering this kind of a career keeps discovering that workers are not interested. A patchwork of undemanding, part-time gigs is actually what they prefer. Is anybody surprised that eventually employers give up and bring over workers who actually need careers and not gigs? Yes, evildoers, treason. But what would you have them do? Babysit a moaning workforce that has crying jags because you didn’t thank them too exuberantly for performing some minor task (once again, real people, real stories) and starts preparing to leave work at 4:30 to ensure that nobody detains them even a minute longer?
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If you follow the link, note how Americans begin to unravel in the comments when faced with the evidence of why immigrants succeed. The story doesn’t inspire them. It angers them.
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We don’t need to follow the link for that. Cliff gave us a fine demonstration of this unraveling.
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