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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (145456)	11/2/2005 10:33:56 AM
From: aladin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793970

Karen, Don't presume this guy isn't a bigot and don't concede the wage issue. My company does not have different wage scales for immigrants and no others that I know of in RTP or Silicon Valley do either. John ps I once hired an Indian who was finishing his Masters at a US University on a Student visa. We hired him as an H1-B and now 11 years later - he is my boss :-)

To: Lane3 who wrote (145456)	11/2/2005 10:41:54 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793970

"Gun-Toting Toad Killers How can federal regulations survive the new Supreme Court? Jacob Sullum When Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated, Democrats worried that he was willing to overturn the Endangered Species Act. Now they're warning that Samuel Alito, President Bush's latest Supreme Court pick, is hostile to federal gun control. Together, presumably, Roberts and Alito would bring us two votes closer to an America where Congress is powerless to prevent the machine-gunning of arroyo toads. I wish. Both men have expressed doubts about the idea that Congress may pass whatever legislation it pleases under the pretext of regulating interstate commerce. But a closer look at their positions suggests neither is inclined to enforce serious limits on congressional power. For statists of both parties, the main cause for concern about Roberts was a 2003 case in which a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld federally imposed land use restrictions aimed at protecting the arroyo toad. When the full court declined to rehear the case, Roberts dissented, noting that the panel's analysis meant "regulating the taking of a hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California constitutes regulating 'Commerce...among the several States.'" But as Roberts emphasized during his confirmation hearings, he did not join a dissent in which Judge David Sentelle concluded that the regulations were unconstitutional. During the Senate hearings Roberts implied that he would have been happy to uphold the regulations under a Commerce Clause test different from the one used by the three-judge panel. Roberts reinforced the impression that he takes a broad view of the Commerce Clause by taking a narrow view of U.S. v. Lopez, the 1995 case in which the Supreme Court overturned a federal law prohibiting gun possession in or near schools. This was the first time in 60 years that the Court had deemed an act of Congress to be outside the bounds of the Commerce Clause, and it was widely seen as signaling a new determination to enforce the distinction between state and federal powers. Yet according to Roberts, the crucial defect in the Gun-Free School Zones Act was its lack of a "jurisdictional element" requiring the government to show that a firearm involved in a violation had traveled at some point in interstate commerce. In 1996 Congress passed a new version of the law that includes this requirement, which (as Roberts noted) is generally easy to meet. At first blush, Alito has a broader take on Lopez. In 1996 he dissented from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit that rejected a Commerce Clause challenge to the federal ban on machine guns. Alito noted that, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the machine gun ban prohibited mere possession within a single state, lacked a jurisdictional element, and was not based on a finding that the proscribed behavior had a "substantial effect" on interstate commerce. "If Lopez does not govern this case," he wrote, "then it may well be a precedent that is strictly limited to its own peculiar circumstances"—a kind of "constitutional freak." At the same time, Alito indicated that he would have voted to uphold the law if it had included a jurisdictional element and that "it might be sustainable" if Congress had made findings concerning the effect of machine gun possession on interstate commerce. These readily satisfied requirements would have little practical impact on the scope of federal legislation. As Justice Clarence Thomas has been arguing for years, the Supreme Court cannot enforce principled limits to the Commerce Clause as long as it allows Congress to regulate not only interstate commerce but anything (including, we discovered this year, homegrown medical marijuana) said to have a "substantial effect" on it. Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee he has "no agenda to overturn or revisit" that doctrine, and it seems unlikely that Alito does either. Sadly, it looks like the "constitutional freak" is Thomas. " reason.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (145456)	11/2/2005 10:50:25 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793970

I think you are missing at least part of the point when you focus on wage levels. There's a skill level issue as well. I'd bet that companies would still need this program to fill positions even if they had to pay more in salaries for them. Our dumbed down education system isn't producing enough talent. I think another thing that is missing from the debate is that these people create jobs. A person with a Masters degree in engineering or a PHD in computer science isnt a net drain on the economy in any way shape or form. I would much rather have them innovating and creating jobs in the US than doing so in their home countries. One of the substantial hidden costs of the war on terrorism is that some of the elite in other countries are staying home rather than coming to the US to get their education or start their career. We have been skimming the cream of the crop from the rest of the world's educated work force for decades and that process has slowed somewhat in the last five years. Some of that is inevitable due to the modernization in other countries but some of it is due to a less hospitable atmosphere for those who do choose to come here. I'm thinking particularly of some articles I read a while back about the additional requirements we have imposed since 9/11 on those who want to study here. The security procedures might be necessary but we are going to be paying for them for a very long time. Slacker