Economic Nationalism, Immigration, and Higher Education
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Economic Nationalism, Immigration, and Higher Education Pedro Gonzalez
Accepted: 21 July 2020 # The National Association of Scholars 2020
Kevin Flanagan studied computer science and philosophy at California State University in Long Beach. By all accounts, he was an analytically minded problem-solver, so no one was surprised when Flanagan graduated and went on to work as a programmer at Bank of America's Concord Technology Center in San Francisco's East Bay in 1996. It was there that Flanagan bought himself a house in Pleasant Hill, and it was there that in 2003, he killed himself in the Bank of America parking complex at the age of forty-one. For months, Bank of America forced Flanagan and his colleagues to train their foreign replacements before laying them off, tying their severance packages to the humiliating task. These replacements had entered the United States on the H-1B visa. Created as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the H-1B program enables foreign nationals with specific skills to enter the country and work in a relevant industry. The original intent, as Senator Barack Obama recognized in 2007, "is that H-1B visas only be issued if qualified American workers are unable to take the jobs in question." Unfortunately, that's not what happens, and Flanagan's fate marked the beginning of the long night for American workers. "Week after week," wrote journalists Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, "Kevin saw his little group of programmers whittled down." Flanagan watched helplessly as his longtime programming colleagues were let go until finally "his unit was down to one—him." On April 17, 2003, Flanagan met with a bank official who went over the details of his departure. He was reportedly "in good spirits and had been taking it Pedro Gonzalez is assistant editor of American Greatness and a Mount Vernon Fellow of the Center for American Greatness; [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are the author’s, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Association of Scholars or of Academic Questions.
P. Gonzalez
well." Flanagan collected his personal belongings, walked out of the office where he had labored for nearly a decade, climbed into his Ford Ranger, and shot himself in the head. Since then, things have only worsened for college-educated Americans as companies continue to outsource at breakneck speed. The process is parasitic. American companies contract with so-called "body shops," really foreign head-hunters, to find cheap labor. These are firms that specialize in hiring out visa workers. As a consultant under the American company's umbrella, the body shop facilitates transfers of visa workers to the United States, where they replace Americans. In some cases, entire divisions of companies end up exported abroad. There are too many examples to count, but here are a few. "AT&T is poised to send thousands into the new year hunting for new jobs after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements," Axios reported late last year. "They aren't being offered sever
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