The So Called Evils of Undocumented Workers and the Real Evil of the H1B visa program

The current congressional debate on foreign workers is discussing the wrong problem. The right is focusing on preventing, through a wall, people from crossing the Mexican border. This focus certainly appears to be racist to Latin Americans. It will do noting to stem the tide of illegal immigration from eastern Europe and other depressed areas around the world. The real solution would be setting reasonable requirements and streamlining the legal worker immigration, even temporary, process for all. The solution should include a method to grant documentation to the seasonal and manual labor force in a method similar to but more equitably written toward the workers than the H1B visa program. These workers are currently being exploited by companies, whose penalties for employing them are minimal and benefits are great in labor cost savings. When they can't be threatened with being turned over to ICE they too will ask for a living wage.

On the other hand a significant but ignored by the right is the legal workers being brought in under the H1B visa program. This statue does more harm than the Latin American undocumented workers. Do not confuse my dislike of the H1B visa program with discrimination toward any nationality. The H1B program is just as unfair to the visa holders as it is to the current american workers that are having their salaries reduce because of or by being replaced by these people. Someone on an H1B is a wage slave. If their employer terminates them or just fails to renew the sponsorship of their visa they have 30 days to find a new sponsor or they must leave the country. It leaves them unable to stand up against many forms of coercion or unfair practices. They end up working at under market rates and with minimal benefits. Their oppression depresses the market for all.

A common way that a employer exploits the H1B visa program is to post a job with a great number of detailed requirements but with an under market salary. Then they find few applicants if any for the position. Any applicants will be accepting a lower salary than their skills and experience warrant. They then are able to look outside the country for workers with the skills they want but at the lower salary they want to pay. In the most severe cases they will be less stringent on meeting the technical requirement than they were when reviewing domestic candidates thereby unfairly reducing wages for skilled workers across an industry.

Members of Congress seemed to be focused on where people come from and how things effect the corporations and not on the immigrants, their welfare, and providing them a living wage. They need to stop focusing on profits for corporations and the racial phobias of the constituents but on wages for workers skilled and unskilled, new immigrant workers and currently legal workers, from all areas of the world in all future immigration legislation.

Secrecy and Privacy Should be a Two Way Street

Nowhere in the US constitution is the federal government granted the right to privacy but there is the fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. One argument that some use when the government over reaches is "If you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to hide." Those who believe that should extent that same logic to the government and all federal documents should be made public immediately. Not doing so is the government admitting it has taken illegal actions it has to hide.

Of course this is unreasonable domestically there are presidential movements, law enforcement investigations, weapon designs, and other sensitive topics that are sensitive and need to be protected. Internationally there are diplomatic exchanges the would be best kept secret. What is needed is the realization that individuals do, say, and go places with a degree of privacy. The National Security Agency (NSA) getting every telephone call record for the cell carriers steps well beyond reasonable search and seizure. Getting records for a set of towers or a list of cell numbers with a public court order would be reasonable. The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) is not a public court. I'm not sure anything done in that court is constitutional since none of it is public record not even the judges but that is not the topic of this post. There is a reasonable expectation that your movements and who you converse with is private. Unfettered access to cell phone records give the government both. 

If the government is allow free and unfettered access to this information then they have no place to complain or prosecute anyone for leaking secret documents for the first amendment protects the press and freedom of speech which the person leaking information is exercising. I have already granted that the government needs to keep secrets but this doesn't extend to covering up it violating the law or the constitution. Both are examples where someone leaking information is doing the citizens of the US a service. That should be the first determination in any case accusing someone violating the Espionage Act of 1917 or other federal secrecy statutes. If the information is exposing the government violating the law or the constitution then the prosecution should not continue. 

If there is truly a reason for this grand data acquisition by the NSA a closed hearing with a reasonable organization representing the privacy right of the US citizens presenting opposing arguments should be held. If this needs to be secret and the records sequestered for a time so be it. In the FISA court no one was arguing against the NSA nor to my knowledge was specific evidence of the need for such wide data collection presented. 

It is a matter of fact that both the government and law abiding citizen have information they consider private and do not wish exposed. There are rules and laws that should be followed. In the case of the cell phone records given to the NSA they have been broken.
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eBook Pricing Stinks

This is a little less political than my other post but I am just frustrated as heel over the book publishers gouging people buying books in any electronic format, commonly known as eBooks.

When purchasing an eBook from Amazon or Barnes and Noble the price is set by the publisher. Currently the trend in pricing is to match the paperback book price. This adds a huge amount to the publisher's profit. None of the extra profit is shared with the authors.

With an eBook they do not have to print, warehouse, ship, or buy back unsold books. Their only new expense is an additional proofread for each electronic format. It is understood that newly published books will be at a premium but the eBook should never be the same price as a physical book. Even is the eBook was one dollar less than the physical book it would at least acknowledge the publisher's savings.

Some would argue that the price needs to be higher because of the loss of revenue from piracy. Those people have not learned the lesson of the music industry and iTunes. That lesson was that the lower the price of legitimate sources the lower the piracy rate. With the current high price they are encouraging piracy because there is a greater financial intensive to get a book from an illicit source. Most readers want to support the authors and understand piracy hurts them but they also understand that the inflated prices currently charged for eBooks does not help them either.

I have noticed that even as a published book gets older they do not have any method in place to reduce the price to put it more inline with the shrinking physical book price.

One publisher O'Rielly, a publisher of computer technical books does have a pricing model that sells  eBooks significantly lower price. Their target audience is the most capable pirating the eBook of any group. O'Rielly has realized that having a price that reflects the savings on eBooks these folks are not likely to search for an illicit source.

The book publishing industry needs to review their pricing structure in regards to eBooks and stop the greed.