Well, of course
The politicians are acting all shocked and outraged that "stimulus" money meant to provide jobs to laid-off residents of central Oregon went to bring in foreign nationals to do the work. But what did they expect? They themselves sent out a vague and poorly thought out order for the government to start printing money and hand it out to anybody and everybody on their good side, starting immediately. Is it really a surprise that a lot of it went astray? And now we'll have to pay it back to the Chinese. This is what passes for "economic development" in the United States these days. It's going to be a sad day when our fantasy world comes to an end.
| Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (8)
If we enforced our immigration laws or even effectively reformed them foreign nationals would have a lot less work in our state and many Oregonians would consequently have more.
Posted by LL | October 21, 2011 11:15 AM
Our fantasy world already has come to an end. Many have yet to realize that reality.
Posted by Abe | October 21, 2011 11:38 AM
"Even so, the contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs."
Oh, I'm familiar with that game from the tech arena. I used to be amazed at how many tech recruiters would call up about a position and offer two to three times the normal pay, and ask "Is this all right for you?" What idiot would pass up a massive pay raise? What most applicants never found out, though, was that the recruiters would then turn around and tell the employers "Gee, we looked, and we couldn't find anybody willing to work for anything less than three times what the job pays. Tell you what, though: we've got thirty guys facing deportation if they don't get a new H1-B gig, and they'll even sleep under their desks so they can work on weekends!"
I used to get a lot of these calls, and I still get the occasional one for some three-week position in North Carolina or the like. I discovered that my answering their question "Is this all right for you?" with "Actually, I can work for a lot less: normally, I work for $6 an hour, but I can go as low as $3 if I can walk to work" meant that this particular recruiter never called me again. The problem is, they breed like rats, so there's always another one.
Posted by Texas Triffid Ranch | October 21, 2011 11:47 AM
I'd like think that Congress will eventually take some interest in how the federal government was made fool of by planners, manipulators, and politicians.
Posted by Mr. Grumpy | October 21, 2011 12:00 PM
More accurately, most of the $2B went to shore up the budget which means employee benefits.
I sure didn't see $2B worth of better roads here.
Posted by Steve | October 21, 2011 12:48 PM
Funny how the article only mentions these folks as "foreign nationals". Have we gotten so brainwashed that you cannot utter the country's name?
Another example of paying off the bosses to fund the next election cycle- workers be damned.
But somehow the news got out, so now all the politicians have to pretend to give a s**t.
Posted by Ralph Woods | October 21, 2011 2:26 PM
Hey, DeFazio's all over this.
Posted by Cows | October 21, 2011 3:46 PM
So they hired a bunch of Canadians? No bueno.
Posted by Jo | October 22, 2011 4:41 PM