Dear Readers:

We trust the New Year’s holiday was joyous for you and despite the uncertainty in the world, there is much for which to be hopeful in 2004. This year we may see serious immigration reform designed to address the seemingly perpetual issue of massive illegal immigration in this country. President Bush seems committed to finally designing a system that allows America’s employers to bring in foreign workers readily when it is clear Americans are not available for the work. America’s employers have been so desperate over the last 20 years that they have been willing to risk serious financial penalties and even jail sentences in order to find workers.

The Lou Dobbses of the world pretend that market forces are not really important and that employers could find enough workers if they simply paid a decent wage. That sounds fine except that employers are in business to earn a profit and if they cannot do so, they will cease operating. And in a global marketplace, employers have to compete against overseas companies often able to produce goods and services with much lower wages and overhead expenses than firms in America.

It is, therefore, a difficult balancing act for the typical American employer. A company must pay a high enough wage to attract workers while at the same time, paying a low enough wage to keep the price of their products competitive with firms in China, India and other nations where outsourcing has become a huge industry. Employers who keep their operations in the US are condemned for hiring foreign workers and not paying high enough salaries. Those that give up and simply move operations overseas are condemned for betraying American workers.

There must be a solution and immigration policy is certainly part of it. When employers can be assured of having a stable and available work force in this country willing to work at wage levels that ensure companies can compete with goods and services produced abroad, then they will keep their operations in the US. That means that Americans and immigrants will both have jobs available to them. When a plant closes and its operations move overseas, both Americans and immigrant workers lose their jobs – often permanently.

There are, of course, other important solutions. Investing in the education of Americans is vital. Outsourcing of work to immigrants and overseas operations seems a lot less scary when Americans fill high end, high paying jobs requiring considerable skills and training. And investing in technology needs to continue in order to maximize productivity. The more American companies can produce per hour on American soil for the same or lower costs, the less sense it may make to move jobs overseas. Finally, we may need to make difficult decisions regarding which industries it makes sense to support through government policies and which ones should rightfully move overseas. Some industries – like food production - may be important to keep here strictly for national security reasons even if strict economic theory suggests that we should not. But we may decide that other industries don’t produce the kinds of high paying jobs that should be a priority for this country.

Obviously this is a debate that will continue for years to come and I don’t pretend to have the answers. But what is clear is that difficult choices will need to be made and Americans may have to choose between instincts to protect workers and industries and a desire to have an affordable cost of living with the “always low prices” that have become the norm in our modern economy.

On a separate note, we have to say “SHAME ON YOU!” to the State Department for its utter failure in managing this year’s green card lottery application process. An online lottery application should have been a simple procedure. But complicated photo submission rules and an utterly negligent lack of server capacity meant millions of applicants probably could not access the system. The State Department did not even offer an apology when its system was basically shut down during the lottery’s last two days. Instead, a spokesman said applicants should have applied earlier. That’s like penalizing tax payers who file on the last day. Of course, after more than fifteen years of running the lottery, the State Department should have known that there is always a rush at the end. Furthermore, people file on the last day because the law permits this and it is not the government’s concern why a person times an application in a certain way as long as the person complies with the law. A simple apology would have gone a long way here. Instead, their handling of the mess only hardens beliefs that our immigration officials are arrogant and incompetent.

Finally, as always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing immigration clients and employers seeking to comply with immigration laws. We would love to discuss becoming your law firm. Just go to http://www.visalaw.com/intake.html to request an appointment or call us at 800-748-3819 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind