Visa article strikes some as borderline
Re “The missing innovators,” Opinion, Nov. 7
Andres Martinez doesn’t tell the complete story. Until the 1960s, the U.S. produced televisions, radios, tape recorders, broadcast studio and moviemaking equipment and automobile electronics. Now that is all done overseas. Bringing in more immigrants with H1-B visas further reduces the market for U.S. engineering graduates, particularly if the foreign workers put downward pressure on salaries. I believe also that our shortage of engineers is exaggerated. I was an engineer for 30 years. The academic community and industry were screaming for more engineers while massive layoffs were occurring. The defense industry would hire when a contract came in, and lay off when it was completed. Engineers wandered from company to company and contract to contract.
Dov Menkes
Fullerton
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Martinez is probably correct about the California economy suffering. But if one views a larger panorama of economic justice, then the tunnel vision Martinez suffers from becomes obvious. He remains a flyweight propagandist for economic mullahs preaching the new world order, which is a recipe for robbing regular Americans by running up massive trade and national deficits, then borrowing from Asia to cover the shortfall. The recipe then adds socialism for multinational corporations coupled with free enterprise for working stiffs. This heady concoction that neoliberal groupies find so seductive just needs a pinch of low-wage labor importation to spike the brew to a silky finish, with fragrances of corruption, hubris, decline and collapse. Have a wee dram yourselves, but save a big swig for Martinez.
Jack Devine
Torrance
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Martinez’s argument would be laughable if it were not so disingenuous. H1-B visas are handed out on a lottery basis, not to the most qualified recipients. There are also many American engineers and computer programmers who are not eligible for certain jobs that are only available to foreigners. And an H1-B visa holder cannot start up his own company -- that falls under a different visa program. And to be perfectly clear, there are already on the American books several different visa programs.
Karen Weston
Lancaster
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Foreign talent in the science and technology fields aren’t the only ones whose skills are being denied entry into our once-welcoming country. Since 9/11, performing artists are either being denied visas or being forced to undergo such onerous and expensive procedures to obtain them that it simply isn’t worth the effort to perform here. Courtesy of our government’s isolationist policies, we are being denied exposure to internationally acclaimed artists.
Jaycie Ingersoll
Beverly Hills
