H-1Bs displace Americans?

A lot of people claim that foreigners (H1-B visa holders, for example) displace US IT workers and cause them to lose their jobs. To some extent, I’m sure that this does happen. However, it seems to me that people have forgotten all about the glory days of the dot-com bubble, when companies were hiring way too many programmers and IT people (often with so-so credentials) at tremendously inflated salaries. And of course, when the economy started to turn down, many of them complained that they weren’t being pad enough.

It’s a volatile issue either way, though.

Smallpox may still be a threat

I was talking to a pretty young redheaded physician once. I was telling her how the National Institutes of Health had embarked on a campaign to develop a newer, safer smallpox vaccine. She smiled and said, “Why? Smallpox was eradicated a long time ago!”

She was a smart gal, but she was speaking naively. Smallpox was eradicated from the populace at large, but samples of it still exist, and it may be in the hands of nations such as Iran and North Korea. The standard smallpox vaccine has some undesirable side-effects and is not recommended for use against those with immunocompromised systems and a variety of other conditions. No wonder the NIH wants to find something better!

What to do when someone escapes the law

There’s a news story about Susan LeFevre, a woman who escaped from prison 32 years ago and has been living under an assumed name.  She’s married and has children, and her husband had no idea about her past.  The law finally caught with her, so she has been arrested.

I’ve seen an outcry of people on the web, saying “That’s so wrong!  She’s been a model citizen for 32 years!  And she has a family. Apart from falsifying her identity and escaping from jail, what wrong has she done?”

I understand their anguish, but really… You can’t decide to let someone get off scot free simply because he/she has a family.  Nor should the legal authorities decline to pursue someone simply because the crime happened a long time ago (barring statute of limitation clauses, that is).  Their role is to catch the criminal and let the courts decide to show mercy.

Nor should the police be in the business of saying “Well, she’s been a model citizen, so we’ll let that slide.”  Again, that’s for the courts to decide.  (Besides, how do these outraged people know that she has indeed been a model citizen, apart from the aforementioned crimes?  We simply don’t know that yet, and so further investigation is warranted.  Not to mention that escaping from jail and falsifying one’s identity are pretty serious offenses indeed.)

I like what one compassionate yet level-headed respondent said:

There have to be repercussions for escaping from jail, or what’s the point of having a jail in the first place?

Now, I have no problem with a judge taking a look at the specifics of her case and deciding that her years as a law-abiding citizen negate the need to further punish her for something that occurred so long ago. Or that community service of some kind should stand in for further punishment. Or, even, that she needs to serve the remainder of the sentence she would have served (1 or 2 years) plus a little extra for the escape. Whatever — that’s a judge’s job, to decide these things.

However, I wouldn’t like it at all if some agency had just declined to follow up on a tip about an escaped prisoner, no matter how long ago he or she had escaped. You can’t give away free passes just because the escape happened x-amount of years ago… Escaping from prison is serious and should be treated seriously.

But I do have enough compassion in me for this case in particular to hope that she is treated with a degree of leniency based on the obvious fact that she has rehabilitated herself and is no longer a threat to society.

 

 

Stephanie Ragusa, predator

Stephanie Ragusa is another one of these young female teachers who likes to have sex with her student.  In her case, she seduced two 14-year-old boys, and after getting caught, she borrowed her boyfriend’s pickup truck to go back and have sex with one of the boys again while she was on bail.

This woman is nuts.  She has extremely poor judgment, to say the least.  She’s clearly got mental problems that don’t allow her to see where the line is, despite being arrested now THREE times for the same offense.

Some of these women are quite attractive, but Ms. Ragusa is definitely more attractive than most.  I think that’s one reason why some men on the Internet are quick to excuse her for her actions. They figure “Hey, when I was 14, I would have loved to have an attractive female teacher seduce me.  So what’s the harm?”  It’s like they can’t look past their own hormonal fantasies.

Teacher/student liaisons yet again

Okay, I just had to preserve the following post for posterity.  I don’t generally agree with the person who made this statement, but for once, I think she was speaking sensibly.  Her words should be preserved for all to see.

Things change a lot in just a couple of years. I know it’s very different for 15 or 16 year olds. However, as storyteller0910 pointed out, kids that age are not capable of dealing with the consequences of a sexual relationship yet. The boys cannot support children, and the girls’ future prospects will be seriously affected by having a kid in high school. Not to mention the STI issue. I’m not naive enough to think that my saying so makes it so, but I wish they’d just WAIT a little longer to have sex. Our society is not conducive to teens having children– it screws up the lives of the teens. Of course they want to do it. It’s our jobs as the adults in their lives to encourage them to make the difficult but right decision. Thus, having the attitude of, well, if you’re horny, and you want it, you’re ready, go for it, champ! just doesn’t cut any ice with me. In fact, I find it rather destructive.

I wonder how all you guys would feel if it were your teenage child having sex with a teacher. Parents have to pay their son’s child support until he’s old enough to do it, you know. Probably wouldn’t be so much fun to be on that end of it.

Revisiting the teacher/student sex issue

As mentioned in earlier postings, I’ve been following this ‘net discussion about young, attractive female teachers having sex with their male students.  I’m also disappointed — though not surprised — by a bunch of male posters who are cheering them on, saying “Way to go!” or “I wish my teachers had done that!”

The thing is, they’re viewing this issue through the rosy spectacles of adolescent fantasy.  Quite simply, they fail to acknowledge the reality of why this behavior is stupid, irresponsible, and just wrong — on both sides.  As one more sane poster said,

In a world where justice is dispensed by an omniscient being who can precisely judge a person’s readiness to provide informed consent, this would be a nice system. But we don’t have that sort of world. How, exactly, would you propose “judging each situation on its own merits?” A 28-year-old woman has sex with a 14-year-old boy. Let’s judge it on its merits. How do we decide whether he was ready to consent in an informed fashion, in which case everything is fine, or whether he was not, in which case she has victimized him?

Ask the boy? “Hey, Tommy, do you feel emotionally scarred by this?” Well, I mean, how does he know? I guess you could ask him in a decade, and prosecute then, but that’s kind of silly. “Hey, Tommy, do you fully understand the ramifications of what you did?” If he doesn’t, he’s not going to know he doesn’t, you know? I suppose you could administer some kind of psychological test to every kid from the age of 13 on up, once every six months, to test readiness to consent to sex, and grant the ones who pass a sort of “license to screw,” but that’s not a practical answer.

There is a practical answer, though. You draw a line. You draw it high, so that the majority of kids will fall under it. You pick an age and say, “by this age, most people have sufficient knowledge and experience as to be able to grant informed consent for sex. Some people may have that knowledge and experience sooner, but whereas we have no way of testing for that – and whereas “banging adolescent boys” is not a Constitutional right that we are aware of – we’re just going to say “keep off the grass until the grass is 18.”

Immigration confusion

Here’s another quote from that anonymous article on immigration that I mentioned earlier. I could not agree more strongly.

“

Since the general public, that knows little and cares less about all of this mess, does not distinguish between H-1B and green cards, or between illegal and legal immigration for that matter, every time business and the bar come back to Congress and ask for more H-1B numbers, the level of public confusion grows and their tolerance for solutions of any kind decreases. This is fatal in a pluralistic democracy like ours where an informed electorate must understand what the problem is and endorse the fairness of its proposed solution if the medicine is to cure what really ails the patient. If we, as a people, cannot comprehend what the H-1B is all about, and why its continued existence and future expansion is in our national interest, there is simply no hope for achieving a sustainable national consensus on a comprehensive overhaul of the permanent immigration system. That is a high price to pay for some additional H-1B numbers. “

A balanced H-1B perspective

I strive to present controversial issues in a reasonably balanced manner. 

For example, I’m wont to complain about the exaggerated  claim that foreigners are taking away American high-tech jobs.  This claim sounds convincing to a lot of people, especially those who are already predisposed to resent these foreign threats.  These accusations are overly simplistic though, not to mention lopsided.  As one web article states,

“So are H-1B visa holders paid much less than US workers?  Sometimes, that is indeed true.  On the whole though, I think that this alarmist claim is greatly overblown, and we have good reason to believe that they are generally paid well.  For this reason, I think we should not be quick to conclude that this influx of H-1B workers is dragging salary levels down.”

 

At the same time though, I don’t wish to completely dismiss these concerns regarding foreign workers.  For this reason, I’d like to quote from an anonymously authored article on the IT labor shortage issue, which says,

“[W]hile there is little link between the H-1B demand and age discrimination, University of California at David computer science professor Norm Matloff cannot be cavalierly dismissed as a raving lunatic when he raises such a bias charge. Can those of us who cry out for more H-1B numbers state with absolute certainty that no older programmers have ever been replaced at lower wages by younger H-1B substitutes? Matloff sees discrimination while more neutral observers find technological obsolescence and a failure to remain current with contemporary technology, but the fact that he can make that charge, and, more importantly, have it considered by both Congress and the mainstream media, tarnishes not only H-1Bs but all of employment-based immigration.”

 

 

Taxes

So I just finished filing all of my income tax returns. What a pain.

That got me thinking about tax incentives and economic stimulus.  A lot of people criticize the government for giving out tax breaks that benefit the brich.  They say that the money should have been given to the poor instead.  Many of them claim that this is merely a scheme to benefit the rich. I understand their frustrations, but I think that this betrays a severe misconception of both their opponents’ motives and the nature of economics.

Ultimately, the best way to benefit the poor is to provide them with good jobs.  By and large though, the poor aren’t in a position to create new employment.  That’s the rationale behind providing tax breaks to the better off — the ones who are in a position to grow or establish companies, and thus, to create employment.

I don’t mind it when people voice their opinions. This is a democracy, after all.  All I ask is that they attempt to present their opponents’ views in an accurate manner, even when they disagree.

 

Secularism

I found the following excerpt on a message board, and I think it’s worth reiterating:

“I think the [original poster] is saying that some people argue that secularism is the enemy of religion in a deliberate attempt to turn the word into a pejorative. These people are wrong, and probably know that they’re wrong, but adhere to the Big Lie principle — that repeating a known untruth often enough will cause it to be taken for truth.

A secular government is not guided by any particular religion but that in itself does not mean it is hostile to religion.”