Comments on: How to Balance the Benefits of Foreign Workers and the Potential Damage to Citizen’s Job Prospects

By: Global Workplace at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Global Workplace at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 13:35:36 +0000

[…] How to Balance the Benefits of Foreign Workers and the Potential Damage to Citizen’s Job Prospects – Leading Economic Freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland […]

By: Ketley

Ketley — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 01:01:00 +0000

Having lived and worked in two foreign countries – and immigrated to both, and recruited from overseas for both, I find this topic rather interesting both personally and theoretically. In general I would say that companies only import talent as a last resort – it’s expensive, can be slow, and risky. The need for such imports probably indicates a problem with the training and educational history of the nation concerned, and such problems cannot be fixed overnight. MThere is much to say on such a complex subject!

By: Steven Fromm

Steven Fromm — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 18:42:00 +0000

You raise some interesting methods to address the problem. The Senate has also approved some of these measures. But this is a tough problem and we as a country should not deter the entry of talented to people from other countries. We have always stood for our freedoms and it should continue that way without harming our people. Tough balancing act to be sure.

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 23:34:00 +0000

The idea of taxing companies for hiring foreign workers is only done AFTER the country decides it wants to discourage this practice and the other methods are not being effective enough. That seems to be the case in the USA now (though certainly some people want to discourage foreign hiring less than we are now – but overall the view seems to be we have hired too many foreign workers).

There is a great deal of work moved out of the USA to save money. But the reason the companies want to hire for jobs in the USA is those doing the hiring want them based in the USA. Often this is big global USA company want more IT people in their Ohio office and they are hiring some overseas consulting firm who want to bring in people from India or wherever. Pretty much the companies have already moved as much out of the USA as they are comfortable with due to the current difficulty hiring foreign workers in the USA – though my guess is this would also increase to some extent with a tax.

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 16:19:31 +0000

I think with the trends towards more globalisation, your idea of taxing companies when hiring foreigners might not hold water for long and whats stopping those companies from setting up say departments in foreign countries and hiring on the “cheap” there and thereby not only robbing the nation of those jobs but also of revenues.

But as you point out, its a very grey area and there are many factors to be weighed. On one hand companies need to be wary of the bottom line, they need talent, on the other we have to think of the wider implications for the country, unemployment rates etc.