In either instance, international competition to the US, and international penetration of the domestic US market, the very core asset that the INS and DOL are supposed to protect, and which preservation is the raison d'etre of US government policy, becomes more effective and less capable of being deterred by our response. Finally, it is sadly ironic to note that when the reverse happens, when the INS and DOL facilitate the hiring and retention of intellectual capital with appropriate safeguards for the legitimate interests of US workers, the wage differential between the US and the sending nations shrinks. As a result, the wages in these nations go up in response to the shrinkage in talent. Hence, the US business is under less pressure to leave when the immigrant comes not when he is turned back. For too long, the INS and DOL have been allowed to pose as the champions of US workers.
Nothing is further from the truth.
By insisting on overly inflated prevailing wages that lack any link to the global market, these government agencies are one of the most insistent forces for unemployment now on the economic scene. Sure, the few US workers who hang on to their jobs will earn high wages but this will be cold comfort for the thousands of other US workers who see their jobs become the prize captured by foreign competitors who understand, as do their governments, that immigration is an economic strategy not a political problem. Tell that to the steel workers and coal miners who used to be proud practitioners of their craft but saw their jobs flow out of this country to Korea and other places when irresistible wage pressures made it impossible for American employers to compete or to modernize aging plants. The question literally answers itself. The stewardship of US employment-based immigration policy should be entrusted to those who know how to answer this query or, even better, know enough not to ask it.