Immigration, Education, and Social Contract Pressures Bring Changes

03/27/2006

by Paul Munnis

As crowd demonstrations form across America in protest over immigration policies, we Americans are being forced to rethink how we are going to cope with worker shortages in key positions even as our American Baby-Boomers start to retire and their job presence and public service is sorely missed.

Just a few months ago we were concerned about job outsourcing in the U.S. and now as the Baby Boomer generation starts to retire we are worried about the lack of workers for critical skilled jobs. At the same time we are being challenged to examine American immigration policies. The two are related and yet in some sectors—such as in hiring of police officers—there are few ways to use immigrant labor. 

This is happening at a time when the American people no longer trust their government as government incompetence, war, corruption, and other social forces create pressure for major government overhaul with all of the change leading to high levels of frustration for American citizens.

Meanwhile the American worker shortage is a growing issue especially among skilled workers and it can only compound in the years yet to come. We face two decades of retirement pressure and American worker shortages ahead of us.

“What you are really talking about is a major national shortage in a variety of sectors—teachers, firefighters, nurses and police officers,” said James Williams, the president of The Police Foundation. “Corporate America can move across the world to find people to work in our factories. But there are some things that you can’t outsource.” And unlike the nursing industry, which has attracted thousands of overseas applicants to the United States, most, if not all, police departments require candidates to be U.S. citizens.

This lack of workers is going to change the dynamics of the workplace in a major way and it is causing a redesign of hallowed American institutions as a direct consequence.

For example in education: the cry for smaller class size will give way to increased productivity demands upon teachers (i.e. larger class sizes), the use of the Internet in learning and more use of un-credentialed teachers having practical experience in industry in order to provide a teacher corps that will replace the current teachers. A new TV cable channel will likely form that carries quality instructional materials for people to use. Retired teachers themselves will develop education modules and become educational circuit-riders across school district boundaries teaching material to class groups on a contractual basis and as 1099 workers. Leaders in education are proposing solutions such as college students mentoring and teaching high school students and other innovations are also being discussed to solve the coming teacher shortage. Indeed Minnesota is calling for an “Educational Summit” to redesign public education and to overhaul education in order to produce students better educated than our foreign competitors in nations such as Norway for example. 

Companies such as IBM are willing to sacrifice workers to early retirement and have them retrain as teachers in math and science in an effort to spawn more highly trained workers. More self-help learning experiences are becoming common for students, plus an increase in home schooling is occurring, and all of that is coming at a time when demand for higher quality education is making itself plainly heard as America hustles to fill a shortage of high tech workers such as teachers, researchers, and scientists.

Lots of workers are needed and not just for the labor positions in society. While landscapers, cooks, dishwashers, and many other jobs for clerks and service people must be filled, millions of other jobs requiring much higher skill levels are going unfilled in professions such as programming, information technology, x-ray technology, lab technology, and in skilled areas such as forensics and even in mortuary science.

In the meantime, self checkout kiosks are appearing in American supermarkets and department stores while cafeteria self-service is replacing the classical wait-staff based restaurant. We see fast food restaurants closing as a worker shortage forces them to bar their doors.

While worker benefits such as healthcare are under siege new programs are jockeying to fill the void such as universal healthcare for all workers including immigrant workers.

As we look back in time we can see that our space programs created job opportunities in America and we filled them with an immigration policy that favored the high IQ, and skilled worker. We imported many of these people from Europe by offering not only relocation assistance but also cash incentives and an option of citizenship in America even as we differentiated ourselves from Europe as a place to live, raise a family, and for work and retirement.

Europeans termed this “The Great American Brain-Drain,” as we sucked their best and brightest to our shores. These programs are going to have to be overhauled and refurbished to meet the challenges that lie ahead. They have cornerstones that permit their adoption such as “Separation of Church and State (creating social calm),” and an American Bill of Rights (creating personal freedom mechanisms that form a social contract).

As we look back on the development of America with the laying of railroad tracks across the nation, in developing our roads and bridges, and at other aspects of our national infrastructure creation, we brought-in immigrant labor to get the job done. These immigrants are the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Americans. They are the ones who made America.

Millions of criminals are wasting their lives in our jails and we are going to have to put them to work in a meaningful and safe way and make them more self-sufficient.

We also had to create a ”New Deal,” as the evils of Capitalism had to go and in order to create a new worker class called the “middle-class,” a group that is now shrinking in America and that thus signaled a need for the redesign of the American social contract. Democrats are at the forefront of that redesign today as the GOP increasingly chooses to represent the Capitalist base and to foster shrinkage of the middle class. Voters are showing that they realize this and reflect it in polls.

We have historically welcomed immigrants to America because we were desperate for their skills and for their labor. It is no different today. The cycle is repeating itself but this time there is a difference. We have larger work forces forming right behind the current generation that will replace the baby-boomers. There are a lot more of them and so the worker shortage is thought to be temporary and the industry base must be expansive.

In some sectors of the nation we continue to welcome immigrants but in other sectors we want them rounded up and sent back home as felons. Our present politicians seek to run a middle course by offering guest worker programs similar to the failed programs used in Germany.

The German programs are said to have failed because citizenship was not offered to guest workers. Thus a Turk coming to Germany to drive a cab was an exploited worker and was discriminated against, he was ostracized, put on separate busses, and was called “smelly, and rank” by ordinary citizens who would not rub elbows with them partly because of all things—the use of garlic in their diet. The Turks in turn resented the smell of stale beer on the German breath. Such things apparently can cause social unrest.

Then the Berlin Wall came down and millions of East Germans from across the iron-curtain flooded into West Germany creating a worker surplus. The new workers however were unproductive people with experience in Soviet style work methods and were badly out of tune with the demands and the ethics of a modern industrial society. Germany is still coping with the consequence.

The Democratic Party sees things in a context of social pragmatism. We must have workers, we must redesign society to obtain and accommodate them, and we need to get it done pronto. We also need to provide for their successors. All of this is happening as cash bloated companies realize that we are shifting from a consumer based economy to a capital expansion economy and that explosive growth will rapidly follow as investment is made and return on investment is sought. The enabler for that return on investment is a competent American work-force. Democrats must solve the social contract and the immigration challenges to create a gateway for change. We know it and so does most of America.

In some American cities that are gateways for immigration such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, the new immigrants have settled in and become productive and welcomed citizens. Inter-marriage happens and barriers to discrimination fall in the process. New life is born and what is being called a “café-au-lait” society forms consisting of children of mixed race and blood.

The author of the book “Hawaii,” Mr. James Mitchner, describes the problems of settling the Hawaiian Islands as workers from Japan, China, and America all descended upon paradise, many in press-gangs. They brought new diseases that killed off large numbers of native Hawaiians, they formed banks, they worked the land bringing agricultural development and they spawned new industry built around shipping, import, export, and they brought new items to the American dinner table such as pineapples, a foreign fruit never heard about before in America but now a staple of American diets. Indeed foreign cuisine such as is found in Indian and Asian diets are now considered gourmet dining experiences in America but just 60 years ago they were considered peasant food unfit for the American table. They married, bred, and produced a new race that Mitchner termed: “The Golden People.”

In the meantime groups such as the Klu-Klux Klan and others, sought to create a white elitist society in those areas that were not gateways for immigration, such as much of the American South. Here a demand for separatism and white supremacy resided and brought cultural and ethnic division across America. We are still not over that even as we are forced to face the facts about the shortage of workers in America and the realization that we can only advance our society by welcoming lots of replacement workers from other cultures.

Workers have always been fearful about being displaced by foreigners who would work for a fraction of the wage and would displace workers who had fought their way up the earnings ladder only to be threatened. American workers are still very fretful on that score. Their worry is the best assurance that we have that quality programs will result for they will not permit of anything less. In time we expect to see the pressures of Unionism ease and to be replaced with a recognition that Labor must have seats on the Board of Directors of a Corporation and that they have as much at stake as managers, executives, and investors do.

These workers are middle class workers and they are finding their numbers are shrinking as the new immigrants squeeze them out. They have vital interests to protect.

In our communities, tax-payers—especially property owners—are unhappy at having to hire Spanish speaking teachers, and to subsidize the illegal immigrants and their children with heath-care, education, and other societal services tied to their property taxes. They feel they are being exploited by having to pay for workers that cause them to lose their jobs. This is causing redesign of local government and its cash sources.

The key to better earnings for millions is better education and it is exactly in the field of education that worker shortages threaten to short-circuit our society and to hurt us the most.

In those fields marked by skilled worker shortages, existing workers are complaining of sixty and seventy hour work weeks, incredible demands on their times and energies, burn-out, and stress. It is taking a toll on American family life too.

These factors of worker and skill shortages are thus made worse by a lack of teachers and training and are compounded by a sense of poor Federal and State governance. Schools are under pressure to train, educate, baby-sit, and manage millions of children all across America and they are poorly staffed for the job at hand.

America will work through this mess okay we think. We believe that retiring baby-boomers will be used in many ways to solve the workers shortage, that we will put together an enlightened plan for immigration, that innovations in education will empower new educational opportunities and that productivity can still be raised in many areas of our American society. We trust in the resiliency of American society and in our ability to innovate even as we realize that things will have to change to make progress possible. We feel we can reinvent government to meet the new challenges of American Society.

With so much challenge life will not be boring for Americans. The single most important character trait for Americans may well be their ability to adopt and adapt to change.