Adama wrote:Ladislav makes an excellent post. Hard to refute any of that.
In my field, I have seen advertisements which directly target the Filipino community above all others. These H1B visas certainly seem to prefer foreigners from that country above all others. Then possibly India is second. I can't imagine them importing a Dutch or German on an H1B visa to work.
Filipinos- Asian clones of Americans with the same education at one third the cost who speak English.
Indians- Asian clones of Brits with the same education at one third the cost who speak English.
But there are exceptions if you have a PhD and you are willing to work in the USA, and they pay you as much as in Europe- maybe this is anecdotal, but I am at Akron Uni in OH and there are two Germans and a Brit here. The Brit just got his US passport. All have PhDs and all are making over 100K.
It seems that now the US immigration is based on these things:
English proficiency and education of the candidate as well as his willingness to come and live in the USA.
The costs and whether they are justified
With non English speakers as laborers- how cheap they are.
The thing is Euros/Canucks/Aussies, by and large do not want to come to the USA to live. That is the reason. None of them need any visas to visit the US for more than 3 months ( or they can get them online). They can mostly just walk in at the airport. How many such white tourists visited the US in 2012, do you have any idea?
English speaking white people such as Aus, NZ, Ca, UK see the USA as a crime ridden, poorer country with guns everywhere, with no medical care and fat, dumb, unfriendly people. Why TF would they want to fight to come and live here? But for tourism, they do:
Here are the tourist numbers for just 2012:
Canadians 21,190,487
Brits: 3,384,731
Germans: 1,748,845
France: 1,357,519
Oz: 1,013,896
Swiss: 440,685
Dutch: 306,894
So, we are talking about some 30 million mostly of what you call white tourists in this country for the total of 54 million tourists per year. About one half of all tourists to the USA. So, how come they are not overstaying the way some Filipinos do? And then look for some illegal job paying 7 dollars an hour?
Or work on an HB1 visa making 40-60 thousand a year when they can make 100 thousand Euros a year back home and have mandatory long vacations and free medical care and paternity leave? They would be nuts to come to the USA.
And given the huge populations of India, only a tiny percent of one percent will come to the US. And another reason they hire Filipinos and Indians is obvious-
they got their education in English. Swedes and Dutch did not. Indians and Filipinos will work hard, not quit and cost sometimes one third of what an American will cost. An American wants big money, and he can just walk out the door any time he wants. A Brit would want even more.
Recently I had some editing done on my book. I paid an American $1K for one week's sloppy work. A Filipino editor would be happy to do the same work for $300. And the quality would be decent.
As far as refugees go, the US took in big numbers of Kosovars during the war in the 1990s. Any Soviet citizen would be immediately granted a political asylum in the US- just stop by any US embassy if you happen to be outside the USSR before 1991. They issue you a travel document and in you go. No one was refused. Many were jumping off ships in US ports and were given asylum on the spot. And that was way after the 1965 immigration rehaul. Many people even complained that it was because they were white and the US was turning away Salvadorans because these were not. And they did not allow refugees from Chile and all to get any visas. They did not want Hispanics. But white Slavs were welcome.
And I know one Russian doctor who just immigrated to the US. His English is still bad. He can only do his medical activities online to Russians back home. He is still making 10K a month. He hates living in the USA, though.
Yes, siree, the fact that most Euros do not speak English is another factor why they want cheap Indians and Filipinos.
Just a side note: the backlog at the US embassy in the Philippines is 24 years now. Some parents who wanted to petition their kids to come to the US waited for 20 years. No tourist visas are ever be granted to most Filipinos. Some parents die before they see their kids immigrate! Their kids were not even allowed to come over for the burial. How sad! But you don't hear those stories, do you? Because you are not there.
None of that would happen to the kids of Dutch people- they would just walk in at the airport any time they wanted. And no, they don't want to overstay and work at a supermarket for a minimum wage which is one half of what it is at home.
And their English isn't good enough for top line jobs in the USA.