Bush Claims Not Enough "Skilled American Workers" Exist, Invites 90,000 Foreign Workers To Fill American High Paying High Tech Jobs

Bush and some of the conservative Republican leadership have promoted a steady war on higher education over the last few years. Some wanted to eliminate the Department Of Education. Others have sought a steady assault on this very important American society priority, such as the vote yesterday in Congress that cuts tuition aid and raises the interest rates for college loans closing many young Americans out of a college education. Despite this steady attack by many in the Republican Party, including by the President who often acts as though English is a second langauge because of his very clumsy command of the language, his State Of The Union Address claimed support for education for the U.S. to remain competitive in the world economy.

Now the schizophrenic and inconsistent claims of Bush are again called into question as 90,000 foreign workers are being extended special visas to take high paying high tech jobs in the U.S., because Bush now claims that not enough "skilled American workers" exist in the U.S. Conservatives have made such an effort to cut education funds, cut tuition support, and often raise banners of outright social ignorance as campaign themes to appeal to the worst of base instints in some voters, and now this bitter harvest is resulting in American citizens being passed over for 90,000 of the very best jobs in America, and workers from foreign nations who put a high priority on education including advanced math and science skills are being called to come to America to fill these jobs.

One area where these high tech skills are greatly needed is in the area of advanced computer skills for designing military wares. In the 1980's such strict laws existed that restricted foreign companies from any involvement in companies that produce goods for the U.S. military that American Motors stood to lose U.S. military contrcts because the French automaker Renault had bought a 49% share of the company due to severe financial problems at AMC. AMC lost more than $320 million in one 14 month period with their car production operations and needed the investment of Renault in order to stay in business. Vehicles such as the military HumVee and Jeep stood to lose out in military contracts, so the American General division was spun off as a separate new corporation to continue to garner U.S. military contracts for the HumVee. Eventually Jeep itself was sold to Chrysler, but now Chrysler is a German owned company. With such a creeping influence of foreign ownership of companies that produced military goods, foreign ownership have been gradually relaxed. Today as much as 80% of some U.S. military missile parts are now produced in China. This means not only the export of many high tech jobs to China in sensitive military computer parts, but includes the possibility of Chinese military espionage to sabotage these chips or to build in features that can be defeated by Chinese military technology. Because of a lack of "skilled American workers" in this important military high tech industry, increasingly China is becoming a major military supplier to the U.S.

And increasingly the U.S. is producing less and less of the integrated circuits of the world. America produced about 49% of all the IC chips in the world during the mid 1980's. Today that figure is down to only about 10%. And less and less U.S. produced electronics exist, with the U.S. computer industry still the only area of U.S. manufacturing strength, but increasingly both South Korea and China are challenging this in area of both components and parts.

Both in business and in military wares, the U.S. is losing an important edge to nations who put a far higher priority into education than our own society, and increasingly foreign workers both outside and within America as "guest workers" are being called to fulfill important high tech jobs that misplaced Republican priorities have prevented many American workers from being able to fill. It should have become apparent to conservatives some years ago that when you make a top priority attacks on education, you only reap a harvest of social ignorance as well as young Americans not able to fill important high tech jobs. You reap what you sow.