Well, that didn’t take long. I’ve seen this happen a hundred times, and it’s one of the primary reasons I think all governments everywhere and at all times are completely worthless and utterly untenable.
In the recent US elections, the MAGA crew united en masse to elect some ideas, among them being an end to out-of-control illegal immigration, thanks to millions of folks pouring over the border in the past four years. The minute the MAGAs won, they started arguing over what flavor of “no immigration” they wanted. Pre-election: enforce the existing laws. Post-election: no, not THOSE laws.
Ultimately, the problem is giving government the power to take a slice of your pie and re-distribute it according to majority rule. You always end up arguing with millions of other folks about how the pie should be doled out and to whom, and not whether anyone should get a piece of your pie in the first place.
The solution is quite simple, though no one wants to hear it: stop all social safety nets and go with a strict meritocracy. That’s it. Problem solved. Take away the government’s ability to hand out “freebies,” and let everyone sink or swim on the basis of their talents, skills and achievements, widely known as “equality”.
In the case of the US, everything went sideways with FDR and his “progressive democratic socialism”. If you eliminate Social Security and the personal income tax, nearly all of the social issues that have divided the country for a century vanish overnight. If Congresscritters no longer have the ability to buy votes by handing out shiny baubles they stole from you, then suddenly government is nothing more than a Zamboni going in endless circles to keep the ice smooth and level, and we certainly can’t have THAT.
Here’s the crux of the immigration problem and the current argument over H-1B visas: Social Security (tied to your taxpayer number) is a Ponzi scheme that forces the upcoming generation to provide “free” bennies to the outgoing generation — and it is flat broke and always has been. The system garnishes the wages of every productive person to dole out to every non-productive person.
Over the past century, the definition of “productive” person has shrunk, while the definition of “non-productive” person has grown, to the point that there aren’t enough “productives” to pay for all the bennies (e.g. housing, education, health care) of the “non-productives”. This has led to a political crisis, where half the country is battling the other half over who should get how much of the “free” stuff.
The core issue with the H-1B visas currently raging in the US is not who gets to work in the US for a couple of years, but how many people the US can spear with a Social Security Number (SSN).
The US and Eritrea are the only two countries on the planet that garnish wages of tax number-holders wherever they reside anywhere in the world on any “income” and assets they have from any source.
In the US, the Social Security Number (SSN) is the taxpayer number, and every H-1B visa recipient is required to get an SSN. The catch is that once someone has an SSN, they are required to pay US federal taxes for the rest of their lives, no matter where they live and/or earn income. That’s the part no one ever talks about, especially Congresscritters.
If the H-1B visa holder leaves US employment and wants to cancel their SSN, it is a very long, painful and expensive process and almost no one does it. In most countries, there is a final audit based on an application, usually filed by the employer/sponsor, and generally the taxpayer number is cancelled along with the work visa.
I currently have permanent residency in Indonesia called an ITAP, and an Indonesian taxpayer number called an NPWP. If I get a “job” at a company, they have to apply for my work permit, called an IMTA. If I get a job in Singapore and pay taxes there, I owe no tax in Indonesia, even though I have an ITAP and NPWP. However, I would still be required to pay US taxes because of my SSN, no matter where I live or work.
As an aside, I should note that “wages” are not “income,” they are remuneration to make me whole for my time, skills and talents used by an “employer”. Income is strictly defined as profits generated by an asset after deducting cost of acquisition and maintenance. That’s why we are no longer called “personnel,” and now classified as “resources”.
At ground zero of all US federal immigration laws and policies is the unspoken imperative to hang an SSN albatross on every neck they possibly can. Having foreigners with H-1Bs working from 3 years to to a maximum of 6 years in the US causes very few problems in the general economy. It is the panicked scramble to get as many people as possible locked into the Social Security system that is the root of all evil.
Without an ever-expanding roster of SSN holders, the federal government will not be able to afford the ever-increasing bloat of “free” bennies used to buy votes and loyalty.
