B
Bret Ludwig
(From EAU)
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1638
Abolish the H1 and L1 Visas
by John Young
Welcome to Western Voices, I'm John Young.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, America became a powerhouse that
delivered living standards, levels of personal freedom and class
mobility that made it the envy of the world. As developments in the
European homeland were not analogous, the unparalleled prosperity of
the United States cannot be explained on an ethnic basis alone. The
main difference
was ideological. The ideas and conditions that gave America the
crucial edge continue in many forms to this very day, and can be seen
in rates of ownership of real property that aren't even approached
anyplace else in the world.
Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation that would separate the United
States from Europe, and create the greatest nation the world has ever
seen with his often-misunderstood words in the Declaration of
Independence that "all men are created equal." His true intent was
given life in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Sections 9 and 10
in which both the United States and the Several States were expressly
prohibited from granting titles of nobility; and in Article III,
Section 3 in which Attainders of Treason are specifically prohibited
from working Corruption of Blood.
The importance of these matters to our Founding Fathers can be seen in
the fact that they were included in the Constitution itself, rather
than in the subsequently ratified Bill of Rights. They didn't want to
entrust it to the amendment process. And the amendment process was a
risk. Today, we think of the first ten amendments to the
Constitution as a monolithic article containing only ten amendments.
But what most Americans don't realize is that the Bill of Rights, as
sent to the States for ratification, actually contained twelve
amendments, two of which weren't ratified at the time.(1)
As a result of this strong foundation, with a few setbacks along the
way, the United States guaranteed that all citizens would be treated
equally under the law without regard to social class, abolished the
system of inherited aristocracy, and eliminated the most severe abuses
employed by the ruling classes of Europe. In this environment, class
mobility flourished with people like Thomas Edison, impoverished as
children, founding business enterprises on their own ingenuity and
industriousness. These success stories became celebrated and known
throughout the country, and every school child had faith that with a
little education -- or even self education -- and some hard work, a
fulfilling life lay just ahead. When America put men on the moon, the
thousands of scientists and engineers required for that task often had
parents or grandparents who had been farmers.
The destruction of inherited class distinctions served to mobilize an
entire population to achieve to its highest levels, and brought a much
larger proportion of our population to its highest level of
productivity compared with our cousins in the European homeland. For
the first time, ordinary Americans of European descent had the ability
to build for a long range future, and work to ensure their children
had greater opportunities than themselves. To top it all off, the Bill
of Rights, at least in theory and quite often in practice, created a
system that ensured liberty and justice for all, and protected a
citizen's property and effects from abuses of a government controlled
by a handful of individuals. These ideas energized the new nation.
While our brethren in Europe were struggling under the yoke of a vast
aristocracy that they later replaced with the even more destructive
yoke of socialism, we in America were experiencing the greatest levels
of class mobility ever seen on earth.
Our Constitution even ensured that inventors and thinkers wouldn't
have their ideas and inventions stolen, by guaranteeing them a period
where they could exclusively use and profit from the products of their
mind and imagination. This fostered an environment that inspired
Americans, no matter how humble their origins, to be the hardest
working and most innovative people on earth. The results can be seen
in history, and all around us even today.
But inventing a new philosophy or changing a law doesn't change human
nature or the psychological traits that have been expressed by people
of European origin for millenia. Class mobility is not only the
exception rather than the rule in all human societies to this very
day, but a departure from known European history. Strict social
stratification has been a prominent feature of European societies
since such societies existed, and as such a philosophical and legal
change such as that wrought by America's founding fathers will
ultimately succumb to the weight of history and revert to prior
methods unless it is vigilantly guarded and energetically maintained.
So let's take a look at the social conditions prevailing in Europe
prior to America's founding.
European society was characterized by extreme social stratification
and lack of not only class mobility, but lack of even the most basic
mechanisms to allow a person to achieve based upon personal merit if
that person were born in the lower social strata. In fact, many of our
ancestors here in America were Europeans sent here as indentured
servants for committing the unspeakable crime of being poor. This
mindset was long-established and deeply ingrained in the European
psyche. Some of our earliest myths, such as the Lay of Rig(2),
attribute the establishment of the social classes to divine
intervention, and support the idea of inherited social class based
upon blood. Even the more modern Arthurian legends justified Arthur's
kingship through resort to blood and supernatural forces.
Because so many attributes of an individual are the result of genetic
inheritance, and because the abilities of individuals differ markedly
even within the same ethnic group, the idea of a natural aristocracy
cannot be entirely dismissed. This is especially the case in
circumstances where the aristocratic class takes upon itself the
burden of upholding and defending the lives, property and freedoms of
the other classes. When this occurs, the aristocratic class
effectively becomes the servant and guardian of the other classes,
outward appearance notwithstanding.
As in so many things, the practice of inherited aristocracy fell far
short of the ideal. In practice, the aristocracy became corrupted, and
ultimately became a parasite upon the body politic that ill-served the
people. Rather than manifesting traits that would be expected of an
inherently superior class of people, they instead showed themselves to
be nasty, brutish, short-sighted and unfit to rule. Hordes of
essentially unemployed aristocrats became wastrels supported on the
backs of those least able to afford it. Nevertheless, the idea of the
aristocratic class being an inherently superior grade of human being,
separate from the rest of the ethnic group, persisted in the European
zeitgeist.
Against this backdrop, then, we see a Europe in which starvation
figured prominently, persons were owned as property, people were
persecuted over minor theological differences and people were
wholesale accused of a variety of crimes simply to deprive them of
their property. Justice was capricious and seldom punished wrongdoers
of the upper classes severely if the victim was of a lower class.(3)
This echoes the Frisian Laws, some of the oldest recorded laws of
Europe, that established different punishments for crimes based upon
the social classes of the perpetrator and the victim.
When it came time for America to assert its independence, these
observations were clearly in the minds of our nation's founders; and
it is within THIS context that Thomas Jefferson penned his most famous
words -- that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights." When Jefferson wrote these words,
race was the furthest issue from his mind. Instead, the idea of
birthright nobility was foremost.
But as I mentioned earlier, words on paper prohibiting the existence
of titles of nobility did nothing to change either human nature or the
mindsets peculiar to European-derived peoples. The worship of
aristocracy was simply replaced with the worship of wealth. Folks who
were able to garner great wealth were therefore given all of the
access, influence, rights and respect that had previously been
reserved for aristocracy. Early in our nation's history there was at
least some basis for this. People like Edison, Ford and Whitney gained
wealth through a combination of intellect, hard work, luck and
honorable behavior. But as stock markets and fiat currency came to the
fore, the process of amassing wealth came to rely more on connections
than upon hard work and honorable behavior. The man who had inside
information on a company's new product details could make more money
in a day than the designer of that new product could make in a year.
So at some point after 1913, we reached a tipping point where wealth
could no longer be equated with creativity, hard
work and virtue in a majority of cases.
Nevertheless, in spite of this change in the character of too many
persons with wealth, the idea of aristocracy is so entrenched in the
European-American mind that far too many of us subconsciously think of
fugitive financiers, stock swindlers, bad musicians, vapid actors and
people who make a living by destroying our jobs as if they were
royalty. So
this faux aristocracy, unlike the older European aristocracy that at
least had to present the illusion of acting in the best interests of
the people at large, and even acted within certain gentlemanly moral
codes ... this faux aristocracy of wealth in a new land of radical
individualism saw the end itself -- wealth -- as adequate
justification for its actions. Combined with the ingrained notion of
the upper class being an entirely different People than the lower
classes, we created a ruling class accountable to nobody with no
loyalties other than to itself. This is why, with so many wealthy
European Americans in positions of influence, very few can be counted
among the friends of their ethnic group. They don't consider
themselves to be part of the ethnic group from which they hailed, and
therefore owe it no loyalty whatsoever. So in this sense, the
aristocracy of wealth is worse than the system it replaced.
I discussed the influence of money on politics in the preceding
Western Voices. Money is a determinative factor on the positions
supported by our politicians, and he who has the gold makes the rules.
We don't get to elect who becomes wealthy. Instead, we usually get to
choose between candidates supported by people with money. So we end up
with an oligarchy.
Just as the old aristocratic system had barriers to entry, our ruling
oligarchy has erected barriers as well. These barriers run the gamut
from a "progressive" income tax that assures that even people with
high incomes won't be able to amass substantial wealth ... to a
federal reserve system that diminishes the value of people's savings
every day of the week. It also includes a maze of regulatory systems
that can only be navigated by the anointed. If you don't believe me,
just do a little research into the regulatory requirements of building
an electric power plant, starting a chemical factory or starting a
television station. If you decide to build a small power plant, count
on spending millions of dollars just in lawyers to figure out all of
the paperwork.
In the late 1990's, employee stock options for software ventures
started turning a lot of highly intelligent engineers, scientists and
technical workers into overnight millionaires. The oligarchy was
unprepared for this -- a situation unprecedented in history -- and
articles started appearing about the emergence of a new elite class
composed of engineers, scientists and computer programmers -- almost
all of whom were European-American, individual thinkers, and not
terribly concerned about what other people thought of them. The ranks
of unconventional nouveau riche started new charities, created trusts
to protect and pass down their wealth across generations and trust
management offices started popping up like daisies across the country.
It soon became apparent that engineers and scientists were on the
verge of converting their wealth into political power, with a number
of engineers running for public office. Prominent engineering journals
started running articles describing how much better Congress would
work if it were populated by engineers and scientists rather than by
lawyers.
Scientific and engineering fields in the United States have been
overwhelmingly staffed by European Americans for decades. There can be
little doubt that an emergent scientific class in the mid-to-late
1990's would have been so overwhelmingly white in composition that at
least some of its members would have to look around and say: "Hey, has
anybody noticed that almost all of us are white?" So the emergence of
this new class, and its solidarity, posed a significant threat to the
existing order.
The oligarchy struck back. The dot-com crash was not based strictly on
a lot of vaporware coming home to roost. Rather, a deliberate
contraction of the money supply through the raising of interest rates
put the brakes on many companies. This was accompanied by a number of
"reforms" including new limitations on the distribution of stock
options to employees(4) in order to prevent the re-emergence of a
scientific elite that could challenge the existing oligarchy, and
bolstering the H1 and L1 visa programs in order to push wages lower
and create a multicultural scientific and engineering workforce that
would lack the unity inherent in a homogeneous workforce.
Certainly, even though I am both a scientist and an engineer, I don't
suffer any illusion that an engineer put into our extremely corrupt
political system would automatically do any better than a lawyer at
resisting temptation. Replacing lawyers with engineers without
changing the underlying flaws in the system would be like rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic. And if the system were fixed, a lawyer
would be able to do just as well as an engineer.
But science and engineering are crucial fields of endeavor for the
United States and for European Americans generally. They are so
important that scientific labor has been called by some observers the
"new wealth of nations."(5) The reason for this is the comparative
rarity of scientists and engineers among the population. You see, the
completion of an undergraduate scientific or engineering curriculum
requires not only a strong grasp of advanced mathematics, but an IQ of
130 or higher. Only 2% of European Americans have IQs that high, and
of those, a goodly number could choose to pursue high finance,
medicine, law or other highly compensated professions. These latter
professions are, of course, well within the hands of the existing
oligarchy.
Nevertheless, the scarcity of any needed resource makes it valuable.
At one point during the late 1990's, it was not unusual for a
hardworking Unix(6) expert to take home more income than a doctor or
lawyer.
Going back to scarcity for a moment, there are a finite number of
people in the United States who are capable of becoming scientists or
engineers, and of that finite number, some percentage has no
particular inclination in that direction. Meanwhile, engineers and
scientists stand at the center of all of our consumer products such as
cars and cell phones and our most vital infrastructure like
electricity generation, the telephone system, and the Internet.
Naturally, the new biotechnology field is almost entirely a purely
scientific undertaking. These are the sorts of things that not only
drive our economy, but even make it possible. So demand for scientists
and engineers is rising, but the supply is limited by genetics and
inclination. This latter factor, inclination is largely governed by
the perceived status and expected salary of such jobs.
Because our Federal Reserve system is designed in such a way that
infinite growth is necessary in order to prevent collapse, the need
for technical personnel -- just like the need for taxpayers to support
social services -- is growing.
This situation is, of course, a man-made problem. It is man-made to
the extent that our monetary system is in need of drastic reform, but
it is also man-made by virtue of the values we push to kids via
television and movies that undervalue the hard work that even a highly
intelligent person will have to undertake to become a scientist. We
also undervalue intelligence in and of itself, and push anti-
intellectualism in movies, music and television. Our educational
system has been re-oriented so that its primary purpose is to produce
equal outcomes for some 100 ethnic groups and keep them all from
squabbling rather than to educate each child to the fullest extent of
his or her own potential. In other words, our current system is doing
practically everything it can to make sure that even the 2% of
children we produce who have the potential to become scientists never
realize that potential. As a result, in many of our engineering and
science schools, over half of the student body is composed of Asians
rather than European-Americans, and the business community is
clamoring for expansion every year of the H1-B program.
Let me take this back, now, to the wealthiest European-Americans,
people like Bill Gates. I explained the fundamental mechanisms earlier
that led to the wealthiest European-Americans having no loyalty to the
people from whom they sprang. But it goes beyond that. Bill Gates has
established a scholarship fund, for example, for whom only people of
non-European ancestry are qualified.(7) While people are dying from
AIDS in this country, he has donated $100M to fight AIDS in India.
This should be no surprise because India constitutes his preferred
talent pool, as his endless and prestidigitory Congressional testimony
in favor of expanding the H1 visa program will attest.(8)
This is nothing more than a way to force down the wages of the very
people who should be earning the most, while people like Bill Gates
who already have enough money to buy their own countries get to pocket
the difference. Even worse, the never-ending flood of H1 workers has
forced huge numbers of European-American workers out of the
engineering and scientific job markets altogether. This discourages
bright European-Americans from even trying to enter fields for whom
the primary job requirement seems to be the possession of an
unpronounceable name. Just this past weekend I was speaking with a
European-American who is an IT worker and a member of EAU. I was
discussing some options for upgrading his IT skills when he stopped me
and pointed out that in his area, highly qualified European-Americans
with those credentials can't find work.
He isn't exaggerating. In 2001, for example, 9 out of 10 newly-created
jobs in the computer field were filled by H1 visa holders. Nine out of
ten!(9) And that wasn't because we didn't have enough native talent.
Despite the fact that we faced record unemployment after the 9/11
tragedy, and high tech workers were laid off left and right with the
dot-com crash, 312,000 new H1 visas were issued in 2002. Every year
the cap is expanded, and there are currently nearly two million H1
workers in the United States.
Things aren't all wine and roses for the H1 workers, by any means. The
attitudes among our upper classes that drove the Irish and African
slave markets, indentured servitude, child labor and a host of other
humanitarian disasters in our past are still with us today. Indentured
servitude was not finally abolished in this country until the early
20th century, but the H1 visa program gives daddy Warbucks a way to
bring it back.
It is here that I must interject that H1 and L1 workers are not
automatically evil or bad people. Most of them come from countries
with serious problems developing even the most basic infrastructure
outside the major cities, like India and Pakistan. These societies are
hampered by a lack of class mobility, institutionalized corruption
that is truly breathtaking, and difficulty feeding their own
populations. A person from such a country who takes advantage of our
H1 and L1 visa programs is following the natural human tendency to try
to better his circumstances and that of his family. Blaming someone
for that is fruitless. Rather, the blame lies with the governments of
these Third World countries, with our own government and with our own
aristocracy of wealth. It is important that if we are going to vent
our righteous indignation, that we vent it in the right direction. And
taking the brightest and best from the Third World further
impoverishes these nations in the interests of the First World
oligarchs, constituting a new form of imperialism and exploitation.
So, as I was saying, H1 and L1 workers are the new indentured
servants. A 2003 article in Business Week makes this abundantly clear:
"Immigrants have long complained about employers who cheat or abuse
them and threaten to have them deported if they protest ... nowadays,
the weak economy has sparked an outbreak of abusive treatment among
the legions of white-collar employees who flocked to the U.S. on
perfectly valid visas during the late-1990s boom. ... Indeed, labor
law violations involving workers on H1-B visas ... have jumped more
than fivefold since 1998, according to the Labor Dept. ... there could
be thousands of H1-B workers who don't file complaints because they
fear the loss of their visa. ... The abuses have been particularly
widespread in high tech, which used H1-Bs to bring in tens of
thousands of programmers and other professionals when companies were
desperate for help during the boom. But with the jobless rate among
computer scientists and mathematicians at 6%, vs. a mere 0.7% in early
1998, many workers are more vulnerable. Experts point out that the
U.S. work-visa system gives employers tremendous power over
immigrants. ... says Eileen Appelbaum, a professor of labor economics
at Rutgers University. "You're essentially an indentured
servant.""(10)
Hardly a week goes by when the news doesn't carry a report about some
company being fined for underpayment of H1 workers.
The repercussions of this among our own best and brightest cannot be
overstated. For one thing, it distinctly discourages our own people
from even attempting to enter these fields. There are just too many
stories about experienced Americans being forced to train low-paid
foreign replacements before being laid off. The fields are now
considered just too unstable to justify the extraordinary time, effort
and dedication necessary to obtain the training and keep up to date. I
know a PhD chemist who is now a salesman. I know a software engineer
with 20 years of experience who works at a convenience store.
Kids in high school look at their own fathers and wonder why they
should even invest the effort in high school, much less college.
Because H1 & L1 workers are essentially indentured servants, it is
extremely difficult for free labor to compete against them. But wage
differential is only one reason. The other is that such workers are an
incredible tax-dodge for corporate America. According to Donald
Barlett and James Steele:
"Visit most any large American company and you will find two people
working on the same computer project. One is a permanent company
employee who pays taxes through withholding. The other a temporary
employee who enjoys the kind of payday that more than 100 million
American workers can only dream about - a full paycheck with zero
deductions.
"Because they are employed by the consulting firm that recruited them,
many of these foreign workers are paid either in cash or by check -
and no money is withheld for U.S. income tax, Social Security,
Medicare, state, or local taxes... Still others receive a paycheck
that is banked in India, and, while they're living and working in this
country, they're paid an 'allowance' that is also free of all U.S.
taxes."(11)
In some cases, no taxes need to be paid at all due to special tax
treaties. One such outrageous example is outlined by professor Norm
Matloff of University of California: "there are many other related
dodges. Did you know that universities don't have to put taxes on
[withhold] their teaching/research assistants from China, due to a tax
treaty?"(12)
Most Americans are unaware of the fact that their employers have to
pay additional taxes on their employees beyond what is withheld from
paychecks. For example. employers are required by law to match the
employee's social security contribution. This tax-free edge for H1 and
L1 workers, even if their wages were identical to those of our home-
grown workers, gives them a crucial competitive edge. Because of this,
major U.S. corporations are donating big money to political campaigns
in order to make the H1 and L1 programs even more lucrative.
For example, between 1997 and 1999, Microsoft spent over $2 million on
political campaigns because of this issue.(13)
And that's where we are left today. We have an aristocracy of wealth
and celebrity, too many of whom have no loyalty to the European-
American people from whence they came. This aristocracy of wealth has
left the American people behind, and rather than comply with the hard-
won laws protecting American workers, has opted to replace us with
indentured servants with the support of our corrupted elected
officials.
And, of course, true to their lack of caring for anyone, they are
enabling the largest brain-drain that the Indian subcontinent has ever
seen. Since intelligence is a heritable characteristic and their
brightest people are leaving their shores for opportunity in the West,
subsequent generations of Indians will be less intelligent than the
current generation. As the average IQ in India is only 81(14), the
physical removal of hundreds of thousands of Indians with IQs of 115
or higher from the country is an unspeakable crime that will
impoverish that nation for generations to come. This will doom a
billion people to lower standards of living than they would otherwise
have. But our business leaders don't seem to care about THAT either.
They just care about money in their bank accounts. Morality, ethics,
and even basic humanitarian instincts are just baggage to them. If it
were otherwise, they wouldn't be simultaneously destroying our own
best and brightest while dooming the Indian subcontinent to a darker
future.
Clearly, it is not enough to merely "reform" the H1 and L1 laws. In
order to protect American workers, keep the wages for scientists and
engineers high enough to make the training worthwhile and provide
incentives for our own population by making sure these careers are
accorded the social status they deserve, AND to improve the future
prospects of the developing world we need to utterly ABOLISH these
visas. It's really that simple.
To that end, we have initiated a campaign to abolish the H1 and L1
visas. The campaign is a petition drive, and you can find both the
petitions and informational handouts at the www.wvwnews.net website.
Just click on the link in the left hand column.
I covered the procedures for conducting the petition drive in the
spring membership newsletter, but we've had a lot of new members join
since then, so I want to go through the procedures again today.
For collecting petitions, you need at least the informational handout
and petition that you can download from the wvwnews.net website. You
should also have pens, a clipboard, and a partner.
Neither the petition nor the information sheet is labeled with the
name of our organization. You'll see why shortly.
As I mentioned, you need a partner. People these days are often scared
to open doors for strangers, and I can't really blame them. Probably
the most scary thing in the world at your door is an unaccompanied
male, particularly if he is poorly dressed. So at a minimum, dress
well. Carry your clipboard with petitions and handouts, and bring a
partner. It works best if the partners are male and female, but they
can be the same sex in a pinch. This is just because of certain
aspects of human psychology that I won't get into today, so for now
take my word for it.
Before you get started you need to choose a community. Once the
community has been chosen, check the local ordinances or call the
local police department to check whether you have to register before
collecting signatures door to door. Collecting signatures to petition
for redress is constitutionally protected, so they won't shut you
down; but you may need to register in order to stay on the right side
of the law. The reason for this is because there are a lot of people
who will be scared to death when a stranger knocks on their door, and
instead of opening the door will call the police once you walk away.
If the police know you are in the neighborhoods and why, they can
instantly put the concerned citizen's mind at ease. Not all towns
require registration, but check just in case.
Naturally, do not go anywhere that has a "no soliciting" sign. But
everything else is fair game. When you knock on the door, stand back
away from it far enough that the resident can see you from a side
window, and can open the door without hitting you. Make sure your
clipboard is displayed prominently. When the resident opens the door,
remain at least a pace from the door, and introduce yourself: "Hi, I'm
Joe Schmoe and this is Bryan Doe. We're collecting signatures on a
petition to abolish the H1 and L1 Visas." Because our materials aren't
labelled in any way, you can confidently approach people of ANY
ethnicity with the petition.
A likely question from the resident who answers the door is: "Who are
you with?" At this point, you can be honest. "We are with an advocacy
group called European-Americans United." Another likely question is
"What are H1 and L1 visas, and why should I want to abolish them?" In
preparation for this question, you should have already reviewed the
material in our informational handout. You can give the handout to the
person, and briefly explain that we have hundreds of thousands of
highly-skilled Americans either out of work or underemployed, and they
are being replaced with below-market labor from overseas that doesn't
even pay taxes. Most people will be sympathetic to this.
Your time is valuable. Don't waste it in arguments. If the person
tries to argue or object, or simply refuses to sign, politely excuse
yourself and go on to the next house.
As I said, when properly expressed, a lot of people are sympathetic to
what we are trying to accomplish. When you are interacting with our
fellow citizens, pay close attention to their reactions and comments,
and look for people who express views that would make them good
prospects for membership. For such people, tell them that European
Americans United shares their views; then leave them with the
informational handout, and write our web addresses (www.wvwnews.net
and www.europeanamericansunited.org) on the top of it if they express
interest.
Doing it this way, rather than handing them an EAU brochure, gives the
general public a feel that any recruiting efforts we are making are
spontaneous. Writing the web addresses down for a prospect gives him
or her a personal touch: this isn't some flyer littering the lawn from
some anonymous distributor. Rather, it is a personal reference written
face-to-face. In all likelihood, the prospective member will have
looked up the websites before you get back to the sidewalk.
This sort of activism is a double-win for us. Lots of people, black
and white, will sign the petition and help us make an impact on our
elected officials. At the same time, we'll be making personal one-on-
one contact with our people in a positive way that bypasses media.
Some of our people will be referred to our websites, and a proportion
of those will see fit to join their efforts to ours.
And this is the whole point. EAU's approach to activism is
unambiguously positive. It is good for our members, good for our
target demographic and good for America as a whole. Obviously, this
campaign will only be as effective as the number of people we can
mobilize to get out into neighborhoods and reach out to our Folk. So
your participation is important. If you are one of the many people
sitting on the fence and wondering if there is anything you can
contribute to our efforts, now is the time to join. Our people deserve
a bright future, and it is up to us -- up to you -- to make it so.
This has been John Young with European Americans United, thank you for
joining me again today.
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1638
Abolish the H1 and L1 Visas
by John Young
Welcome to Western Voices, I'm John Young.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, America became a powerhouse that
delivered living standards, levels of personal freedom and class
mobility that made it the envy of the world. As developments in the
European homeland were not analogous, the unparalleled prosperity of
the United States cannot be explained on an ethnic basis alone. The
main difference
was ideological. The ideas and conditions that gave America the
crucial edge continue in many forms to this very day, and can be seen
in rates of ownership of real property that aren't even approached
anyplace else in the world.
Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation that would separate the United
States from Europe, and create the greatest nation the world has ever
seen with his often-misunderstood words in the Declaration of
Independence that "all men are created equal." His true intent was
given life in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Sections 9 and 10
in which both the United States and the Several States were expressly
prohibited from granting titles of nobility; and in Article III,
Section 3 in which Attainders of Treason are specifically prohibited
from working Corruption of Blood.
The importance of these matters to our Founding Fathers can be seen in
the fact that they were included in the Constitution itself, rather
than in the subsequently ratified Bill of Rights. They didn't want to
entrust it to the amendment process. And the amendment process was a
risk. Today, we think of the first ten amendments to the
Constitution as a monolithic article containing only ten amendments.
But what most Americans don't realize is that the Bill of Rights, as
sent to the States for ratification, actually contained twelve
amendments, two of which weren't ratified at the time.(1)
As a result of this strong foundation, with a few setbacks along the
way, the United States guaranteed that all citizens would be treated
equally under the law without regard to social class, abolished the
system of inherited aristocracy, and eliminated the most severe abuses
employed by the ruling classes of Europe. In this environment, class
mobility flourished with people like Thomas Edison, impoverished as
children, founding business enterprises on their own ingenuity and
industriousness. These success stories became celebrated and known
throughout the country, and every school child had faith that with a
little education -- or even self education -- and some hard work, a
fulfilling life lay just ahead. When America put men on the moon, the
thousands of scientists and engineers required for that task often had
parents or grandparents who had been farmers.
The destruction of inherited class distinctions served to mobilize an
entire population to achieve to its highest levels, and brought a much
larger proportion of our population to its highest level of
productivity compared with our cousins in the European homeland. For
the first time, ordinary Americans of European descent had the ability
to build for a long range future, and work to ensure their children
had greater opportunities than themselves. To top it all off, the Bill
of Rights, at least in theory and quite often in practice, created a
system that ensured liberty and justice for all, and protected a
citizen's property and effects from abuses of a government controlled
by a handful of individuals. These ideas energized the new nation.
While our brethren in Europe were struggling under the yoke of a vast
aristocracy that they later replaced with the even more destructive
yoke of socialism, we in America were experiencing the greatest levels
of class mobility ever seen on earth.
Our Constitution even ensured that inventors and thinkers wouldn't
have their ideas and inventions stolen, by guaranteeing them a period
where they could exclusively use and profit from the products of their
mind and imagination. This fostered an environment that inspired
Americans, no matter how humble their origins, to be the hardest
working and most innovative people on earth. The results can be seen
in history, and all around us even today.
But inventing a new philosophy or changing a law doesn't change human
nature or the psychological traits that have been expressed by people
of European origin for millenia. Class mobility is not only the
exception rather than the rule in all human societies to this very
day, but a departure from known European history. Strict social
stratification has been a prominent feature of European societies
since such societies existed, and as such a philosophical and legal
change such as that wrought by America's founding fathers will
ultimately succumb to the weight of history and revert to prior
methods unless it is vigilantly guarded and energetically maintained.
So let's take a look at the social conditions prevailing in Europe
prior to America's founding.
European society was characterized by extreme social stratification
and lack of not only class mobility, but lack of even the most basic
mechanisms to allow a person to achieve based upon personal merit if
that person were born in the lower social strata. In fact, many of our
ancestors here in America were Europeans sent here as indentured
servants for committing the unspeakable crime of being poor. This
mindset was long-established and deeply ingrained in the European
psyche. Some of our earliest myths, such as the Lay of Rig(2),
attribute the establishment of the social classes to divine
intervention, and support the idea of inherited social class based
upon blood. Even the more modern Arthurian legends justified Arthur's
kingship through resort to blood and supernatural forces.
Because so many attributes of an individual are the result of genetic
inheritance, and because the abilities of individuals differ markedly
even within the same ethnic group, the idea of a natural aristocracy
cannot be entirely dismissed. This is especially the case in
circumstances where the aristocratic class takes upon itself the
burden of upholding and defending the lives, property and freedoms of
the other classes. When this occurs, the aristocratic class
effectively becomes the servant and guardian of the other classes,
outward appearance notwithstanding.
As in so many things, the practice of inherited aristocracy fell far
short of the ideal. In practice, the aristocracy became corrupted, and
ultimately became a parasite upon the body politic that ill-served the
people. Rather than manifesting traits that would be expected of an
inherently superior class of people, they instead showed themselves to
be nasty, brutish, short-sighted and unfit to rule. Hordes of
essentially unemployed aristocrats became wastrels supported on the
backs of those least able to afford it. Nevertheless, the idea of the
aristocratic class being an inherently superior grade of human being,
separate from the rest of the ethnic group, persisted in the European
zeitgeist.
Against this backdrop, then, we see a Europe in which starvation
figured prominently, persons were owned as property, people were
persecuted over minor theological differences and people were
wholesale accused of a variety of crimes simply to deprive them of
their property. Justice was capricious and seldom punished wrongdoers
of the upper classes severely if the victim was of a lower class.(3)
This echoes the Frisian Laws, some of the oldest recorded laws of
Europe, that established different punishments for crimes based upon
the social classes of the perpetrator and the victim.
When it came time for America to assert its independence, these
observations were clearly in the minds of our nation's founders; and
it is within THIS context that Thomas Jefferson penned his most famous
words -- that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights." When Jefferson wrote these words,
race was the furthest issue from his mind. Instead, the idea of
birthright nobility was foremost.
But as I mentioned earlier, words on paper prohibiting the existence
of titles of nobility did nothing to change either human nature or the
mindsets peculiar to European-derived peoples. The worship of
aristocracy was simply replaced with the worship of wealth. Folks who
were able to garner great wealth were therefore given all of the
access, influence, rights and respect that had previously been
reserved for aristocracy. Early in our nation's history there was at
least some basis for this. People like Edison, Ford and Whitney gained
wealth through a combination of intellect, hard work, luck and
honorable behavior. But as stock markets and fiat currency came to the
fore, the process of amassing wealth came to rely more on connections
than upon hard work and honorable behavior. The man who had inside
information on a company's new product details could make more money
in a day than the designer of that new product could make in a year.
So at some point after 1913, we reached a tipping point where wealth
could no longer be equated with creativity, hard
work and virtue in a majority of cases.
Nevertheless, in spite of this change in the character of too many
persons with wealth, the idea of aristocracy is so entrenched in the
European-American mind that far too many of us subconsciously think of
fugitive financiers, stock swindlers, bad musicians, vapid actors and
people who make a living by destroying our jobs as if they were
royalty. So
this faux aristocracy, unlike the older European aristocracy that at
least had to present the illusion of acting in the best interests of
the people at large, and even acted within certain gentlemanly moral
codes ... this faux aristocracy of wealth in a new land of radical
individualism saw the end itself -- wealth -- as adequate
justification for its actions. Combined with the ingrained notion of
the upper class being an entirely different People than the lower
classes, we created a ruling class accountable to nobody with no
loyalties other than to itself. This is why, with so many wealthy
European Americans in positions of influence, very few can be counted
among the friends of their ethnic group. They don't consider
themselves to be part of the ethnic group from which they hailed, and
therefore owe it no loyalty whatsoever. So in this sense, the
aristocracy of wealth is worse than the system it replaced.
I discussed the influence of money on politics in the preceding
Western Voices. Money is a determinative factor on the positions
supported by our politicians, and he who has the gold makes the rules.
We don't get to elect who becomes wealthy. Instead, we usually get to
choose between candidates supported by people with money. So we end up
with an oligarchy.
Just as the old aristocratic system had barriers to entry, our ruling
oligarchy has erected barriers as well. These barriers run the gamut
from a "progressive" income tax that assures that even people with
high incomes won't be able to amass substantial wealth ... to a
federal reserve system that diminishes the value of people's savings
every day of the week. It also includes a maze of regulatory systems
that can only be navigated by the anointed. If you don't believe me,
just do a little research into the regulatory requirements of building
an electric power plant, starting a chemical factory or starting a
television station. If you decide to build a small power plant, count
on spending millions of dollars just in lawyers to figure out all of
the paperwork.
In the late 1990's, employee stock options for software ventures
started turning a lot of highly intelligent engineers, scientists and
technical workers into overnight millionaires. The oligarchy was
unprepared for this -- a situation unprecedented in history -- and
articles started appearing about the emergence of a new elite class
composed of engineers, scientists and computer programmers -- almost
all of whom were European-American, individual thinkers, and not
terribly concerned about what other people thought of them. The ranks
of unconventional nouveau riche started new charities, created trusts
to protect and pass down their wealth across generations and trust
management offices started popping up like daisies across the country.
It soon became apparent that engineers and scientists were on the
verge of converting their wealth into political power, with a number
of engineers running for public office. Prominent engineering journals
started running articles describing how much better Congress would
work if it were populated by engineers and scientists rather than by
lawyers.
Scientific and engineering fields in the United States have been
overwhelmingly staffed by European Americans for decades. There can be
little doubt that an emergent scientific class in the mid-to-late
1990's would have been so overwhelmingly white in composition that at
least some of its members would have to look around and say: "Hey, has
anybody noticed that almost all of us are white?" So the emergence of
this new class, and its solidarity, posed a significant threat to the
existing order.
The oligarchy struck back. The dot-com crash was not based strictly on
a lot of vaporware coming home to roost. Rather, a deliberate
contraction of the money supply through the raising of interest rates
put the brakes on many companies. This was accompanied by a number of
"reforms" including new limitations on the distribution of stock
options to employees(4) in order to prevent the re-emergence of a
scientific elite that could challenge the existing oligarchy, and
bolstering the H1 and L1 visa programs in order to push wages lower
and create a multicultural scientific and engineering workforce that
would lack the unity inherent in a homogeneous workforce.
Certainly, even though I am both a scientist and an engineer, I don't
suffer any illusion that an engineer put into our extremely corrupt
political system would automatically do any better than a lawyer at
resisting temptation. Replacing lawyers with engineers without
changing the underlying flaws in the system would be like rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic. And if the system were fixed, a lawyer
would be able to do just as well as an engineer.
But science and engineering are crucial fields of endeavor for the
United States and for European Americans generally. They are so
important that scientific labor has been called by some observers the
"new wealth of nations."(5) The reason for this is the comparative
rarity of scientists and engineers among the population. You see, the
completion of an undergraduate scientific or engineering curriculum
requires not only a strong grasp of advanced mathematics, but an IQ of
130 or higher. Only 2% of European Americans have IQs that high, and
of those, a goodly number could choose to pursue high finance,
medicine, law or other highly compensated professions. These latter
professions are, of course, well within the hands of the existing
oligarchy.
Nevertheless, the scarcity of any needed resource makes it valuable.
At one point during the late 1990's, it was not unusual for a
hardworking Unix(6) expert to take home more income than a doctor or
lawyer.
Going back to scarcity for a moment, there are a finite number of
people in the United States who are capable of becoming scientists or
engineers, and of that finite number, some percentage has no
particular inclination in that direction. Meanwhile, engineers and
scientists stand at the center of all of our consumer products such as
cars and cell phones and our most vital infrastructure like
electricity generation, the telephone system, and the Internet.
Naturally, the new biotechnology field is almost entirely a purely
scientific undertaking. These are the sorts of things that not only
drive our economy, but even make it possible. So demand for scientists
and engineers is rising, but the supply is limited by genetics and
inclination. This latter factor, inclination is largely governed by
the perceived status and expected salary of such jobs.
Because our Federal Reserve system is designed in such a way that
infinite growth is necessary in order to prevent collapse, the need
for technical personnel -- just like the need for taxpayers to support
social services -- is growing.
This situation is, of course, a man-made problem. It is man-made to
the extent that our monetary system is in need of drastic reform, but
it is also man-made by virtue of the values we push to kids via
television and movies that undervalue the hard work that even a highly
intelligent person will have to undertake to become a scientist. We
also undervalue intelligence in and of itself, and push anti-
intellectualism in movies, music and television. Our educational
system has been re-oriented so that its primary purpose is to produce
equal outcomes for some 100 ethnic groups and keep them all from
squabbling rather than to educate each child to the fullest extent of
his or her own potential. In other words, our current system is doing
practically everything it can to make sure that even the 2% of
children we produce who have the potential to become scientists never
realize that potential. As a result, in many of our engineering and
science schools, over half of the student body is composed of Asians
rather than European-Americans, and the business community is
clamoring for expansion every year of the H1-B program.
Let me take this back, now, to the wealthiest European-Americans,
people like Bill Gates. I explained the fundamental mechanisms earlier
that led to the wealthiest European-Americans having no loyalty to the
people from whom they sprang. But it goes beyond that. Bill Gates has
established a scholarship fund, for example, for whom only people of
non-European ancestry are qualified.(7) While people are dying from
AIDS in this country, he has donated $100M to fight AIDS in India.
This should be no surprise because India constitutes his preferred
talent pool, as his endless and prestidigitory Congressional testimony
in favor of expanding the H1 visa program will attest.(8)
This is nothing more than a way to force down the wages of the very
people who should be earning the most, while people like Bill Gates
who already have enough money to buy their own countries get to pocket
the difference. Even worse, the never-ending flood of H1 workers has
forced huge numbers of European-American workers out of the
engineering and scientific job markets altogether. This discourages
bright European-Americans from even trying to enter fields for whom
the primary job requirement seems to be the possession of an
unpronounceable name. Just this past weekend I was speaking with a
European-American who is an IT worker and a member of EAU. I was
discussing some options for upgrading his IT skills when he stopped me
and pointed out that in his area, highly qualified European-Americans
with those credentials can't find work.
He isn't exaggerating. In 2001, for example, 9 out of 10 newly-created
jobs in the computer field were filled by H1 visa holders. Nine out of
ten!(9) And that wasn't because we didn't have enough native talent.
Despite the fact that we faced record unemployment after the 9/11
tragedy, and high tech workers were laid off left and right with the
dot-com crash, 312,000 new H1 visas were issued in 2002. Every year
the cap is expanded, and there are currently nearly two million H1
workers in the United States.
Things aren't all wine and roses for the H1 workers, by any means. The
attitudes among our upper classes that drove the Irish and African
slave markets, indentured servitude, child labor and a host of other
humanitarian disasters in our past are still with us today. Indentured
servitude was not finally abolished in this country until the early
20th century, but the H1 visa program gives daddy Warbucks a way to
bring it back.
It is here that I must interject that H1 and L1 workers are not
automatically evil or bad people. Most of them come from countries
with serious problems developing even the most basic infrastructure
outside the major cities, like India and Pakistan. These societies are
hampered by a lack of class mobility, institutionalized corruption
that is truly breathtaking, and difficulty feeding their own
populations. A person from such a country who takes advantage of our
H1 and L1 visa programs is following the natural human tendency to try
to better his circumstances and that of his family. Blaming someone
for that is fruitless. Rather, the blame lies with the governments of
these Third World countries, with our own government and with our own
aristocracy of wealth. It is important that if we are going to vent
our righteous indignation, that we vent it in the right direction. And
taking the brightest and best from the Third World further
impoverishes these nations in the interests of the First World
oligarchs, constituting a new form of imperialism and exploitation.
So, as I was saying, H1 and L1 workers are the new indentured
servants. A 2003 article in Business Week makes this abundantly clear:
"Immigrants have long complained about employers who cheat or abuse
them and threaten to have them deported if they protest ... nowadays,
the weak economy has sparked an outbreak of abusive treatment among
the legions of white-collar employees who flocked to the U.S. on
perfectly valid visas during the late-1990s boom. ... Indeed, labor
law violations involving workers on H1-B visas ... have jumped more
than fivefold since 1998, according to the Labor Dept. ... there could
be thousands of H1-B workers who don't file complaints because they
fear the loss of their visa. ... The abuses have been particularly
widespread in high tech, which used H1-Bs to bring in tens of
thousands of programmers and other professionals when companies were
desperate for help during the boom. But with the jobless rate among
computer scientists and mathematicians at 6%, vs. a mere 0.7% in early
1998, many workers are more vulnerable. Experts point out that the
U.S. work-visa system gives employers tremendous power over
immigrants. ... says Eileen Appelbaum, a professor of labor economics
at Rutgers University. "You're essentially an indentured
servant.""(10)
Hardly a week goes by when the news doesn't carry a report about some
company being fined for underpayment of H1 workers.
The repercussions of this among our own best and brightest cannot be
overstated. For one thing, it distinctly discourages our own people
from even attempting to enter these fields. There are just too many
stories about experienced Americans being forced to train low-paid
foreign replacements before being laid off. The fields are now
considered just too unstable to justify the extraordinary time, effort
and dedication necessary to obtain the training and keep up to date. I
know a PhD chemist who is now a salesman. I know a software engineer
with 20 years of experience who works at a convenience store.
Kids in high school look at their own fathers and wonder why they
should even invest the effort in high school, much less college.
Because H1 & L1 workers are essentially indentured servants, it is
extremely difficult for free labor to compete against them. But wage
differential is only one reason. The other is that such workers are an
incredible tax-dodge for corporate America. According to Donald
Barlett and James Steele:
"Visit most any large American company and you will find two people
working on the same computer project. One is a permanent company
employee who pays taxes through withholding. The other a temporary
employee who enjoys the kind of payday that more than 100 million
American workers can only dream about - a full paycheck with zero
deductions.
"Because they are employed by the consulting firm that recruited them,
many of these foreign workers are paid either in cash or by check -
and no money is withheld for U.S. income tax, Social Security,
Medicare, state, or local taxes... Still others receive a paycheck
that is banked in India, and, while they're living and working in this
country, they're paid an 'allowance' that is also free of all U.S.
taxes."(11)
In some cases, no taxes need to be paid at all due to special tax
treaties. One such outrageous example is outlined by professor Norm
Matloff of University of California: "there are many other related
dodges. Did you know that universities don't have to put taxes on
[withhold] their teaching/research assistants from China, due to a tax
treaty?"(12)
Most Americans are unaware of the fact that their employers have to
pay additional taxes on their employees beyond what is withheld from
paychecks. For example. employers are required by law to match the
employee's social security contribution. This tax-free edge for H1 and
L1 workers, even if their wages were identical to those of our home-
grown workers, gives them a crucial competitive edge. Because of this,
major U.S. corporations are donating big money to political campaigns
in order to make the H1 and L1 programs even more lucrative.
For example, between 1997 and 1999, Microsoft spent over $2 million on
political campaigns because of this issue.(13)
And that's where we are left today. We have an aristocracy of wealth
and celebrity, too many of whom have no loyalty to the European-
American people from whence they came. This aristocracy of wealth has
left the American people behind, and rather than comply with the hard-
won laws protecting American workers, has opted to replace us with
indentured servants with the support of our corrupted elected
officials.
And, of course, true to their lack of caring for anyone, they are
enabling the largest brain-drain that the Indian subcontinent has ever
seen. Since intelligence is a heritable characteristic and their
brightest people are leaving their shores for opportunity in the West,
subsequent generations of Indians will be less intelligent than the
current generation. As the average IQ in India is only 81(14), the
physical removal of hundreds of thousands of Indians with IQs of 115
or higher from the country is an unspeakable crime that will
impoverish that nation for generations to come. This will doom a
billion people to lower standards of living than they would otherwise
have. But our business leaders don't seem to care about THAT either.
They just care about money in their bank accounts. Morality, ethics,
and even basic humanitarian instincts are just baggage to them. If it
were otherwise, they wouldn't be simultaneously destroying our own
best and brightest while dooming the Indian subcontinent to a darker
future.
Clearly, it is not enough to merely "reform" the H1 and L1 laws. In
order to protect American workers, keep the wages for scientists and
engineers high enough to make the training worthwhile and provide
incentives for our own population by making sure these careers are
accorded the social status they deserve, AND to improve the future
prospects of the developing world we need to utterly ABOLISH these
visas. It's really that simple.
To that end, we have initiated a campaign to abolish the H1 and L1
visas. The campaign is a petition drive, and you can find both the
petitions and informational handouts at the www.wvwnews.net website.
Just click on the link in the left hand column.
I covered the procedures for conducting the petition drive in the
spring membership newsletter, but we've had a lot of new members join
since then, so I want to go through the procedures again today.
For collecting petitions, you need at least the informational handout
and petition that you can download from the wvwnews.net website. You
should also have pens, a clipboard, and a partner.
Neither the petition nor the information sheet is labeled with the
name of our organization. You'll see why shortly.
As I mentioned, you need a partner. People these days are often scared
to open doors for strangers, and I can't really blame them. Probably
the most scary thing in the world at your door is an unaccompanied
male, particularly if he is poorly dressed. So at a minimum, dress
well. Carry your clipboard with petitions and handouts, and bring a
partner. It works best if the partners are male and female, but they
can be the same sex in a pinch. This is just because of certain
aspects of human psychology that I won't get into today, so for now
take my word for it.
Before you get started you need to choose a community. Once the
community has been chosen, check the local ordinances or call the
local police department to check whether you have to register before
collecting signatures door to door. Collecting signatures to petition
for redress is constitutionally protected, so they won't shut you
down; but you may need to register in order to stay on the right side
of the law. The reason for this is because there are a lot of people
who will be scared to death when a stranger knocks on their door, and
instead of opening the door will call the police once you walk away.
If the police know you are in the neighborhoods and why, they can
instantly put the concerned citizen's mind at ease. Not all towns
require registration, but check just in case.
Naturally, do not go anywhere that has a "no soliciting" sign. But
everything else is fair game. When you knock on the door, stand back
away from it far enough that the resident can see you from a side
window, and can open the door without hitting you. Make sure your
clipboard is displayed prominently. When the resident opens the door,
remain at least a pace from the door, and introduce yourself: "Hi, I'm
Joe Schmoe and this is Bryan Doe. We're collecting signatures on a
petition to abolish the H1 and L1 Visas." Because our materials aren't
labelled in any way, you can confidently approach people of ANY
ethnicity with the petition.
A likely question from the resident who answers the door is: "Who are
you with?" At this point, you can be honest. "We are with an advocacy
group called European-Americans United." Another likely question is
"What are H1 and L1 visas, and why should I want to abolish them?" In
preparation for this question, you should have already reviewed the
material in our informational handout. You can give the handout to the
person, and briefly explain that we have hundreds of thousands of
highly-skilled Americans either out of work or underemployed, and they
are being replaced with below-market labor from overseas that doesn't
even pay taxes. Most people will be sympathetic to this.
Your time is valuable. Don't waste it in arguments. If the person
tries to argue or object, or simply refuses to sign, politely excuse
yourself and go on to the next house.
As I said, when properly expressed, a lot of people are sympathetic to
what we are trying to accomplish. When you are interacting with our
fellow citizens, pay close attention to their reactions and comments,
and look for people who express views that would make them good
prospects for membership. For such people, tell them that European
Americans United shares their views; then leave them with the
informational handout, and write our web addresses (www.wvwnews.net
and www.europeanamericansunited.org) on the top of it if they express
interest.
Doing it this way, rather than handing them an EAU brochure, gives the
general public a feel that any recruiting efforts we are making are
spontaneous. Writing the web addresses down for a prospect gives him
or her a personal touch: this isn't some flyer littering the lawn from
some anonymous distributor. Rather, it is a personal reference written
face-to-face. In all likelihood, the prospective member will have
looked up the websites before you get back to the sidewalk.
This sort of activism is a double-win for us. Lots of people, black
and white, will sign the petition and help us make an impact on our
elected officials. At the same time, we'll be making personal one-on-
one contact with our people in a positive way that bypasses media.
Some of our people will be referred to our websites, and a proportion
of those will see fit to join their efforts to ours.
And this is the whole point. EAU's approach to activism is
unambiguously positive. It is good for our members, good for our
target demographic and good for America as a whole. Obviously, this
campaign will only be as effective as the number of people we can
mobilize to get out into neighborhoods and reach out to our Folk. So
your participation is important. If you are one of the many people
sitting on the fence and wondering if there is anything you can
contribute to our efforts, now is the time to join. Our people deserve
a bright future, and it is up to us -- up to you -- to make it so.
This has been John Young with European Americans United, thank you for
joining me again today.
