Tom Friedman wrote his column "Open Door Bailout" a couple of weeks ago, but I just read it last night.
I should not have - because it put me in a foul mood with its premise summarized by these two paras:
"“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”
and
“If you do this(curb free trade), it will be one of the best things for India and one of the worst for Americans, [because] Indians will be forced to innovate at home,” said Subhash B. Dhar, a member of the executive council that runs Infosys, the well-known Indian technology company that sends Indian workers to the U.S. to support a wide range of firms. “We protected our jobs for many years and look where it got us. Do you know that for an Indian company, it is still easier to do business with a company in the U.S. than it is to do business today with another Indian state?”
I am a fierce defender of immigration (being an immigrant myself) and free trade but I found those statements racist and hypocritical:
- This country was not built only by the Indians or the Chinese or the Koreans. It was also by the Irish and the Italians and plenty of other nationalities. Including recent Filipinos, Brazilians and Mexicans. Our process of immigration, not any particular ethnic group, is what has made this country what it is.
- Immigrants are inherently risk takers but many Indians and Chinese and Koreans are also salaried employees in this country. Vice versa, there are plenty of Americans who start businesses. Outside of Silicon Valley, most small businesses and entrepreneurial activities are started and nurtured by second, third, fourth generation descendants of immigrants.
- You have money to invest in our sub-prime loans? Nothing stopping you from doing it today. Even better, invest in software and bio-med and high-tech factories here that we have talent for. The Japanese opened auto factories in the US and have done well with that. You can too - at today's bargain basement pricing.
- You don't need to immigrate here to do make investments here. You want to immigrate - we have a process for that. Don't short circuit that.
- You want us to be generous with our H-1B program? Allow a few hundred thousand of our kids and younger workers to come work alongside yours in your programming shops and call centers.
- Finally, to the Infosys comment. If your domestic market is so closed, how come IBM, an outsider, has managed to garner 50% of the Indian domestic outsourcing market? Admit it - your culture and your government encourage exports. Try and balance that with an import culture. Buy more of our planes and our software and our farm equipment. Encourage your citizens to spend money at Disney World. Don't run big trade surpluses with us.
End of rant.
Now let me tackle Lou Dobbs on the other side :)
