There have been quite a few complaints about companies hiring foreign nationals to work in the USA to save money (and costing citizens jobs or reducing their pay). The way the laws are now, companies are only suppose to hire people to work in the USA that can’t be met with USA workers. The whole process is filled with unclear borders however – it is a grey world, not black and white.
I think one of the things I would do is to make it cost more to hire foreigners. Just slap on a tax of something like $10,000 per year for a visa. If what I decided was actually going to adopted I would need to do a lot more study, but I think something like that would help (maybe weight it by median pay – multiple that by 2, or something, for software developers…).
It is a complex issue. In general I think reducing barriers to economic competition is good. But I do agree some make sense in the context we have. Given the way things are it may well make sense to take measures that maybe could be avoided with a completely overhauled economic and political system.
I believe there are many good things to having highly skilled workers in your country. So if the problem was in recruiting them (which isn’t a problem in the USA right now) then a tax on the each visa wouldn’t be wise, but I think it might make sense now for the USA.
I think overall the USA benefits tremendously from all the workers attracted from elsewhere. We are much better off leaving things as they are than overreacting the other way (and being too restrictive) – but I do believe it could be tweaked in ways that could help.
Outsourcing Made by India Seen Hit by Immigration Law
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Indians received more than half the 106,445 first-time H-1Bs issued in the year ending September 2011, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report. The second-biggest recipient was China with 9.5 percent.
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While the legislation raises the annual H-1B cap to as much as 180,000 from 65,000, it increases visa costs five-fold for some companies to $10,000. It also bans larger employers with 15 percent or more of their U.S. workforce on such permits from sending H-1B staff to client’s sites.
The aim is to balance the U.S. economy’s need to fill genuine skills gaps with protection for U.S. citizens from businesses that may use the guest-worker program to bring in cheaper labor
Related: Relocating to Another Country – Working as a Software Developer – Science PhD Job Market in 2012 – Career Prospect for Engineers Continues to Look Positive
The extremely large investment risks due to global climate change are in the minds of sensible investors. One risk people often fail to consider is the damage that can be done to our electronics and our electrical system (large scale distribution) by solar storms.
That’s not a lurid sci-fi fantasy. It’s a sober new assessment by Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market. The report notes that even a much smaller solar-induced geomagnetic storm in 1989 left 6 million people in Quebec without power for nine hours.
“We’re much more dependent on electricity now than we were in 1859,” explains Neil Smith, an emerging-risks researcher at Lloyd’s and co-author of the report. “The same event today could have a huge financial impact” — which the insurer pegs at up to $2.6 trillion for an especially severe storm. (To put that in context, Hurricane Sandy caused about $68 billion in damage.)
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A truly severe geomagnetic storm could create currents powerful enough to overload electric grids and damage a significant number of high-voltage transformers, which can take a long time to repair or replace. That could leave millions without power for months or years.
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there are technologies that could harden the grid, such as capacitors that can help block the flow of ground currents induced by a geomagnetic event. In Quebec, the Canadian government has spent about $1.2 billion on these technologies since the 1989 blackout.
Likely in the event of extremely large solar storms that knock out a significant number of large transformers would provide business to companies that manufacture replacements and companies that offer protection (once insurers raise insurance rates for unprotected equipment the economics will quickly justify the expenses).
I am still looking for investment ideas that stand to benefit from global climate change. We seem pretty determined not to take actions to reduce the risks so reducing the impacts seems unlikely. Mostly this will cause great damage to our standards of living (and even endangering many lives). But even so I image there will be some investments that should benefit.
Even if say global climate changes reduce global economic well being by 10% I don’t think it will be 10% evenly distributed. Some places/businesses.. will go down 20%, some 12% some 3% and I would think there is also the chance some will actually increase. But I have not been successful in thinking of investments that will benefit due to global climate change (and our refusal to take sensible steps to reduce the damage). If you have ideas add a comment.
I wish we would take significant action to reduce the damage global climate change will cause. But since we are not, and the damage will be huge, reducing what I can expect from average investment returns, seeking investments to help balance those losses is a wise step to take.
Related: Investment Risk Matters Most as Part of a Portfolio, Rather than in Isolation – Disability Insurance is Very Important – Unless We Take Decisive Action, Climate Change Will Ravage Our Planet – Solar Cycle Prediction – Don’t Expect to Spend Over 4% of Your Retirement Investment Assets Annually