Some Lost Jobs Never Leave Home

With global trade expanding to all sectors, the US is now witnessing not just its goods being produced abroad, but increasingly, services as well. Many American companies, seeing the advantages of hiring foreign workers, have moved a step further – instead of moving service centers abroad, many companies are now importing foreign professionals into the US to do the job. This kind of outsourcing is known in the parlance of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as "movement of natural persons" and is considered to be a form of trade in services. Today, however, this agreement is bringing in worries, says Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies. American jobs in service sectors such as technology, nursing and teaching are being transferred to foreign professionals under various guest worker programs under the current US immigration law, among them the H-1B and L visa programs, which allow companies to invite foreign workers to complete part of the work in the US. While these visas are temporary non-immigrant visas, says Vaughan, many of the visa holders end up applying for permanent resident status, and ultimately acquiring American citizenship. Currently there are some efforts to stop this trend in the US Congress, but the legislation process is slow as it is encountering opposition from groups that fear trade retaliation from other countries. Indeed, Canada and India are already wary of the pending legislation in Congress to put restrictions on guest worker programs. To stop the potentially disastrous effects from the flow of permanent "guest workers," concludes Vaughan, Congress must "clean up our immigration laws and fix these visa programs now." – YaleGlobal