Not only do “American” multi-national companies employ a majority of foreigners, they also sponsor thousands of foreigners each year to work in the U.S. via H-1B visas. For example, all of the big banks who received U.S. taxpayer TARP money sponsored 21,800 foreign workers for high paid positions within their banks. These banks are not American companies, not working in behalf of Americans, and should not be privileged as such.
Most Americans do not know that U.S. universities actively recruit foreign students to take the positions of Americans. If you know a young person who didn’t get into a top school, there is an excellent chance that the school had lots of foreign students which were explicitly recruited. For example, Harvard, MIT and many other universities send delegates to China, Japan, and many other countries to recruit foreign students. Frequently, these students receive full scholarships. It is one thing to make American universities available to foreign students, but quite another to reward those foreign students with full scholarships.
It is also interesting to see how “American” multi-nationals will use H-1B visas to exploit people from other countries. Since the company sponsors the foreign nationals, it is also impossible for the foreign nationals to leave the company without leaving the country. In many cases, companies will pay below-market wages because they know the foreign ex-pat has little choice once they are in the U.S. This is exploitation.
Large “American” multi-nationals are only interested in making more profits and will exploit laws and people to accomplish these goals. They are not interested in hiring Americans or keeping their employment levels high during periods of economic distress. Further, corporations will return these profits to their shareholders unless they can be used them to make more profits. To some, this is the way it should work. However, with unemployment rates growing, it is clear that the “profit only” motive does not work for the good of the greater society and has to be changed.
On the other end of the scale, restaurants are eliminating bus people and assigning these duties to the wait staff. This is being done because restaurants are required to pay bus people minimum wage, and not required to pay the wait staff minimum wage. By either over working the wait staff or hiring more wait staff, the restaurants avoid hiring bus people. This, in turns, lowers the wages of the wait staff as they spend more time busing tables and potentially waiting on fewer tables. In the end the corporations profits increase as companies exploit the wait staff and their wages decrease.
America is doomed.
