Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers
Book Review
Authors, Michelle Malkin and John Miano ISBN 978-1-5011-1594-3 336 pages including appendixes, excluding approximately 100 pages of notes/citations and the approximately 20 page index.

Our visa system is broken. It is a tool for big businesses and political cronies to get rich from the power of pull, not production. Despite the constant propaganda there is no shortage of American workers with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degrees. Despite the rhetoric that they are all trying to look out for American workers and create more American jobs, the truth is the complete opposite. They are interested in American jobs all right; they are interested in stealing them, outsourcing them and undercutting the wages.

The H1B visas are being used to bring in foreign workers as indentured servants, to force American workers to train their own replacements before being given pink slips or face being fired and risk their severance pay and unemployment benefits. Most are being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements also in order to receive their severance and layoff notices. Many of these foreign workers are not highly skilled, are actually holding worthless pieces of paper from overseas diploma mills, and are paid far less than the workers they are replacing. Once trained, the foreign nationals are often sent overseas along with the jobs to nations with lower wages and regulations. The politicians are pressured and rewarded with big contributions by the Industry giants; they have a vested interest in increasing the number of visas and ensuring that there is lax enforcement and data collection regarding overstaying of the visas. The result is depressed wages and fewer jobs for American workers.

Even the F1 visas (student visas) are sources of vast amounts of corruption. Fake colleges and universities have cropped up all over America in order to attract foreign "students" for a fee, going so far as to promise green cards and immediate job opportunities contrary to law. The corruption is rampant and massive. Many come here with full knowledge that they will not have to attend one single class and be free to take whatever jobs they can find, so long as they pay the "school" its annual fee in order to avoid being blackmailed and turned in to the INS for deportation. Many take even low wage and entry level jobs, so it is not just the highly educated Americans that lose opportunity, it is also the poor and less educated that are adversely affected.

In all cases the Sword of Damocles is held over the heads of the foreign visa holders. If they complain about their wages or indenture to their employers, since they are required in many cases to work for them for a number of years, they face deportation. Many if not most are lured here under the false pretense that they will eventually be granted a green card, if not citizenship. Even though the government record of tracking and deporting overstaying of visas is a joke, the threat of deportation when initiated by the sponsor is real. It seems this is the only time the INS will actually act, because they do virtually no investigation and tracking on their own, which is the way the cronies want it.

The astounding and horrifying list of players range from big businesses like Microsoft, Intel, Disney, Apple, etc., etc., the politicians from the Gang of Eight, and a legion of others.

Dear reader, this book is not an enjoyable read. It reads like a dry report of cases and statistics so voluminous that it is difficult to get through. Were it not for the wonderful word-smithing of the authors and the occasional personal stories of some of those directly affected it would be unbearable as well as depressing. Nonetheless, I would recommend those that can handle such dry reading to give it a try, but be prepared to be outraged, yet empowered with the facts.

Respectfully,
O.A.

Addendum: It is a generally excepted principle among the best economists that outsourcing is mutually beneficial to the economies involved. It is so, as long as it is done along laissez-faire principles. It is not necessarily so when it is the result of crony capitalism and political entrepreneurship as apposed to economic entrepreneurship. That is the main premise of this book and my concern.