1nc—XO Broadband CP
Text: The President of the United States should sign an Executive Order establishing a
National Broadband Strategy Commission to implement broadband network
deployment for every American household by the end of 2015.
CP solves all their advantages
Rintels, 08—President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media (Jonathan Rintels,
“Using Technology and Innovation to Address Our Nation’s Critical Challenges,” Benton Foundation,
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf)
On his first day in office, the new President of the United States should sign an Executive Order that gives high
priority to exerting federal leadership on broadband policy. This Order should: a. Establish a National
Broadband Strategy Commission, composed of members from the public, private, aca- demic, nonprofit, and
other sectors, that by January 1, 2010, should deliver to the President an ambitious, yet achievable, comprehensive
National Broadband Strategy to deploy robust, affordable broadband to every household in America. The Commission
should also lay out a roadmap and timetable to deploy within five years to the vast majority of American
households modernized broadband networks that are as robust, reliable, and affordable as those of our global
competitors. b. Appoint a White House–based Chief Technology Officer to work in conjunction with the Commission.
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should take responsibility for the successful design and execution of the NBS
through- out the public sector. c. Direct the Commission to include measurable deploy- ment and subscribership goals
in the NBS. The NBS developed by the Commission should set goals on broad- band network deployment,
subscribership, price, and speed. At a minimum, these goals should include: i. By the end of 2010, every household
in America will have access to robust and affordable broadband. ii. By the end of 2015, the vast majority of
American households will have affordable access to modern- ized broadband networks that are as robust as
those of any other nation. d. Direct the Commission to propose broadband initia- tives and applications that
address the most pressing challenges facing our nation. As we discuss in subse- quent sections, the demand for
robust and affordable broadband will grow significantly if America utilizes broadband to: _ i. Modernize our economy to
compete globally; ii. Reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide gas emissions and address the threats that energy insecurity
and environmental degradation pose to our nation; iii. Deliver better health care at lower costs by imple- menting telehealth
and digital health information technology; iv. Improve education through the use of advanced online technology tools; v.
Build a 21st-century public safety and national security telecommunications system; and vi. Increase government
transparency and empower greater citizen participation in decision making. e. Establish a cabinet-level interagency task
force to exe- cute the NBS throughout executive branch departments and agencies. Modeled on the Information
Infrastructure Task Force, this task force should be made up of high- level representatives of federal agencies, including the Office
of Management and Budget, in coordination with the CTO. The agencies should develop comprehensive plans and policies to quickly
and effectively execute the NBS, including interagency efforts that will cut across bureaucratic silos and stovepipes. f.
Direct the OMB to issue an annual report on the status of the execution of the National Broadband Strategy, with
recommendations for additional steps and funding to ensure that the NBS realizes its goals. 2. The President should
immediately on taking office pro- mote policies to stimulate both demand for, and supply of, robust and affordable broadband,
including: a. Direct the heads of all federal departments and agencies to take specific action to: i. Ensure that affordable, robust
broadband is available to all Americans; ii. Include the use of broadband in meeting the mission of their agencies; iii. Cooperate
with the National Broadband Strategy Commission, make the implementation of the NBS one of their highest priorities, and prepare
action plans on initiatives their agencies are undertaking to help achieve the goals of the NBS; and iv. Report annually to the
President on the progress of these initiatives. b. Direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to create a
national online broadband mapping system that will aggregate useful and highly granular data on the nationwide availability, speed,
and price of broadband; c. Open underused spectrum currently reserved for both public and private use for a new generation of
wireless devices that will provide robust broadband service over great distances and rough terrain without interference to existing
licensed uses; d. Support and co-fund state and municipal broadband initiatives to encourage the build-out and support of nextgeneration broadband networks. Eliminate state and local impediments to state-, municipal-, and com- munity-funded deployment of
broadband.
1nc Waivers CP
Text: The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services should permit the filing of
adjustment of status applications before the priority date becomes current, allow applicants
with approved I-130 or I-140 petitions to receive Employment Authorization Documents and
parole benefits, and exclude derivative family members from the caps on employment-based
immigrant visas.
CP solves case but avoids politics
Gary Endelman, immigration law at BP America Inc, Editorial Advisory Board of Immigration Daily and
Cyrus D. Mehta, founder and managing attorney of Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC, a New York law firm
which concentrates in the area of US immigration law, 4-25-10, comprehensive immigration reform through
executive fiat, insightful immigration blog, http://cyrusmehta.blogspot.com/2010/04/comprehensiveimmigration-reform.html
For instance, there is nothing that would bar the USCIS from allowing the beneficiary of an approved
employment based I-140 or family based I-130 petition, and derivative family members, to obtain an
employment authorization document (EAD) and parole. The Executive, under INA § 212(d)(5), has the
authority to grant parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits. The crisis in the
priority dates where beneficiaries of petitions may need to wait for green cards in excess of 30 years may
qualify for invoking § 212(d)(5) under “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits.” Similarly,
the authors credit David Isaacson who pointed out that the Executive has the authority to grant EAD under
INA §274A(h)(3), which defines the term “unauthorized alien” as one who is not “(A) an alien lawfully admitted
for permanent residence, or (B) authorized to be so employed by this Act or by the Attorney General”
(emphasis added). Under sub paragraph (B), the USCIS may grant an EAD to people who are adversely
impacted by the tyranny of priority dates. Likewise, the beneficiary of an I-130 or I-140 petition who is outside
the U.S. can also be paroled into the U.S. before the priority date becomes current. The principal and the
applicable derivatives would enjoy permission to work and travel regardless of whether they remained in
nonimmigrant visa status. Even those who are undocumented or out of status, but are beneficiaries of
approved I-130 and I-140 petitions, can be granted employment authorization and parole. The retroactive
grant of parole may also alleviate those who are subject to the three or ten year bars since INA §
212(a)(9)(B)(ii) defines “unlawful presence” as someone who is here “without being admitted or paroled.”
Parole, therefore, eliminates the accrual of unlawful presence. While parole does not constitute an admission,
one conceptual difficulty is whether parole can be granted to an individual who is already admitted on a
nonimmigrant visa but has overstayed. Since parole is not considered admission, it can be granted more readily
to one who entered without inspection. On the other hand, it is possible for the Executive to rescind the grant
of admission under INA §212(d)(5), and instead, replace it with the grant parole. As an example, an individual
who was admitted in B-2 status and is the beneficiary of an I-130 petition but whose B-2 status has expired can
be required to report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). who can retroactively rescind the grant
of admission in B-2 status and instead be granted parole retroactively. Historic Role Of Executive In Granting
Immigration Benefits While the authors have proposed the use of parole and EAD benefits to those who are
beneficiaries of approved immigrant petitions and are on the path to permanent residency, but for the crushing
backlogs in the employment and family quotas, parole and EAD can also be potentially granted to other noncitizens such as DREAM children or those who have paid taxes and are otherwise admissible. The Executive’s
use of parole, sua sponte, in such an expansive and aggressive fashion is hardly unique in post-World War II
American history. The rescue of Hungarian refugees after the abortive 1956 uprising or the Vietnamese
refugees at various points of that conflict comes readily to mind. While these were dramatic examples of
international crises, the immigration situation in America today, though more mundane, is no less of a
humanitarian emergency with human costs that are every bit as high and damage to the national interest no
less long lasting. Even those who are in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed, and are
beneficiaries of approved petitions, will need not wait an eternity for Congress to come to the rescue
1NC EU Brain Drain DA
A. Unique internal link—EU’s increasing immigration measures to maintain competitiveness
Nielson, 09 (Johanna, B.A. University of Victoria, Thesis submitted for masters degree European Graduate Studies, “The Blue
Card”, April 2009, https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/7097)
Thus, the Commission felt that it was high time to review immigration policies for the longer terms, in particular an
economic migration strategy. This discussion led to the adoption of a Policy Plan on Legal Migration for the period of
2007-2009. It lists the actions and legislations that the Commission intends to take in order to pursue a consistent
development of the EU legal migration policy. 93 The Policy Plan envisages the adoption of five legislative proposals: a
general Framework Directive and four specific directives on labour immigration. The attempt with this package of
legislative measures is to lay down simplified admission procedures and conditions for specific categories of migrants
(highly skilled workers, seasonal workers, remunerated trainees and intra-corporate transferees) and to secure the legal
status of third-country workers already residing in Member States. 94 The Policy Plan is an important document because
it “defines a road-map for the remaining period of the Hague Programme (2006-2009) and lists the actions and legislative
initiatives that the Commission intends to take, so as to pursue the coherent development of EU legal migration policy.” 95
Hence, the proposal for a Council directive on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the
purpose of highly qualified employment (EU Blue Card), which the EC published in October of 2007, is part of the Policy
Plan’s actions and legislative initiatives. It was amended by the European Parliament in earlsy November 2008 and on
November 20th the Parliament voted on the proposal and it was backed despite divisions between the different political
groups. 96 The central principle of this proposal is the enhanced freedom to access labour markets that comes with Blue
Card status for TCNs. The proposal is presented together with the proposal for a ‘Framework Directive’, which is in
accordance with the December 2005 Policy Plan on Legal Migration. The proposal aims to improve the EU’s ability to
attract and where necessary retain third-country highly skilled workers. The increase of legal labour migrants will enhance
the competitiveness of the EU economy and complement the set of measures that the EU is putting in place to achieve the
goals of the Lisbon Strategy. By facilitating and harmonising the admission of highly skilled migrants at EU level, the
Commission believes that the proposal will respond effectively to the fluctuating demands for highly skilled immigrant
labour and that it will be more successful in counterbalancing present and future skill shortages. 97
B. Link—US action brain drains EU immigrants
CNET News, 07 (Anne Broach, “US firms fear Europe will snatch up foreign tech workers”, 10/25/07,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9804359-7.html#ixzz0y9dPfBCn)
The European Union's new proposal aimed at fast-tracking the immigration process for workers in "highly skilled" is
making some U.S. technology heavyweights nervous. It's no secret that American tech firms prize vast quantities of H-1B
temporary visas and permanent residency permits, otherwise known as green cards. The companies argue that these tools
are necessary to bring in foreigners for positions they claim suffer from shortages of qualified Americans, particularly the
foreign nationals who represent the majority of masters and Ph.D. graduates from U.S. universities in relevant technical
fields. Flag of the EU Now they're concerned that unless Congress acts fast to increase the cap on those rapidly grabbed
prizes, they'll soon lose out on foreign talent to EU countries. The EU's proposal would provide a "fast-track" immigration
program known as the "blue card"--a sort of green card competitor, offering card holders all EU social benefits--which will
bring 20 million additional workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America over the next 20 years, according to various news
reports. The plan's drafters hope to award workers the cards within one month to three months--a far cry from U.S. green
cards, whose processing time averages 5 to 10 years. "Europe has laid down a challenge to the United States Congress,"
Ralph Hellman, a lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council, said in a statement. "The EU will attract the
best and brightest workers in the world if the United States continues to create new burdens to hiring these valuable
workers." ITI's members include Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Cisco Systems, IBM and Intel. American tech companies may not
have anything to get worked up yet, though. The EU has been considering such a move since 1999, and even now, the plan
still must be ratified by all 27 member states, which would then set "quotas" based on their worker needs. It reportedly
faces resistance from some major members, including the United Kingdom and Germany. Meanwhile, proponents of
increased U.S. visa quotas are also fuming this week over the U.S. Senate's approval of an amendment that increases by
$3,500 the filing fees for employers seeking H-1B visas, which allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their
area of specialty to work in the United States for up to six years. That bill must still be reconciled with a House of
Representatives version, however, so that section may not survive in the end. "Europe has sent a message. They are
aggressively pursuing the professional talent they need to compete on the global stage," said Robert Hoffman, Oracle's vice
president for governmental affairs and co-chairman of Compete America, a coalition of technology companies and probusiness groups. "The Senate has unfortunately also sent a message, and it doesn't bode well for the U.S. economy."
C. Impact—absent growth and competitiveness European unity will collapse
NYT, May 3rd, 10 (Timothy Heritage, “Crisis exposes fragility of European unity”,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/global/04inside.html)
Mr. Heath’s reasoning for joining the bloc was that the only way Europe could have clout in a world of superpowers was to
unite politically. The Union’s founders set their sights on ever-closer political, economic and monetary union, but the E.U.
has often failed to speak with one voice, a flaw highlighted by recent crises. Germany has increasingly been made the
scapegoat for holding out against emergency loans for Greece because its voters oppose bailing out a nation they regard as
profligate and less hard-working. Germany’s image as a force for European solidarity has been tarnished. But current
European leaders do not have the same emotional commitment to political union as predecessors like the former German
and French leaders Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand. They survived World War II, when their countries were
enemies, and were united in the desire to prevent another war. “I remember Kohl saying to John Major, my former boss,
that he and Mitterrand represented the last generation of leaders who would really see the case for European union,” Sir
Stephen Wall, a former British foreign policy adviser, said during a visit last month to Brussels. “He said there will be one
more generation after us who will just about get it, and after that, unless we take real steps now, we will have lost that
impetus forever,” Mr. Wall said. The fear of Moscow that united West Europeans during the Cold War ended with the
collapse the Soviet Union, even if some concerns have now been revived. Reunification firmly established Germany as
Europe’s most powerful state. Granting membership to countries in Eastern and Central Europe made it even harder to
make rapid decisions and widened the gap between the rich and the relatively poor. Global economic crisis forced leaders
to think about domestic problems more than ever, and pan-European interests became secondary for voters. Even the
success of the euro was put in doubt when Greece acknowledged its deficit was twice as high as previously reported and
markets lost confidence in its ability to avoid a debt default. On a more strategic level, the European Union is accused of
lacking visionary leaders and a “big idea” — a project all its member countries can rally behind. That ought to come from
the European Commission’s Europe 2020 plan for stimulating growth and creating jobs, but the plan has generated little
enthusiasm. Critics see it as a rehash of a failed initiative to make Europe the world’s “most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-based economy” by this year. At the heart of the Union, something is rotten. President Nicolas Sarkozy of
France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have failed to click, and a lack of a common vision means the E.U.
engine is at best stuttering. Gloomy predictions suggest that the Union is in perpetual decline, that one or two of the
weaker member states will drop out of the 16-country euro zone and that economic growth will remain slow and
unemployment high for years. In this scenario, the Union would be increasingly marginalized, seen by emerging powers
like China and India as little more than a trading bloc and by the United States as having ever less relevance. But the
predictions are not all gloomy. The Union has often used crises to its advantage, forced by necessity to carry out tough
reforms it would otherwise have avoided. Under this view, the euro zone would hold together and reforms would force
member states to show more fiscal discipline and comply with targets set by the E.U. Stability and Growth Pact. Countries
would implement labor market reforms, end the economic imbalances between member states and become more
competitive. E.U. experts are erring on the gloomy side but say not to write off the Union just yet. “I don’t have a crystal
ball. We’re at a tipping point. We still have leverage and potential if we get our act together, though I don’t see much of
that,” said Ulrike Guérot of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
And, a unified EU is key to China cooperation, that solves global warming
EU Committee, 10 (House of Lords 7th Report of 2009-2010 Session, “Stars and Dragons”, March 23rd, 2010,
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldeucom/76/76i.pdf)
One impetus for action is that China is itself vulnerable to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), currently observable effects include increases in flooding in the north east and eastern regions of
China; an increase in the frequency of glacial lake outbursts due to the retreat of glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau; and water
shortages. The IPCC has indicated that future temperature increases in China are likely to be greater than the global
average increases. If emissions continued unabated, temperatures in China could rise to about 2°C above pre-industrial
levels by 2050, or 4°C by 2100. An estimated one billion additional people would be at risk from water stress by the end of
the century (DECC p 250). Much of the Chinese population lives on the eastern coast of China and would be very
vulnerable to an increase in sea level. 202. Ambassador Wu88 underlined the importance of climate change in EU-China
relations. He thought that developed countries should find a formula to help developing countries, including through the
transfer of advanced technologies which the Chinese could not afford. In contrast, the EU Chamber of Commerce
commented that China held US$ 2.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves which could be used to purchase such
technologies 89 . 203. Jiang Kejun90 thought that China should set high targets for the reduction of carbon emissions but
this could not be achieved through targets alone. There were many possibilities for international collaboration. 204. China
is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, its overriding concern is delivering economic growth. The
Chinese Communist Party sees continued economic development across China as the basis of its legitimacy. All other
policy considerations, including climate change, take second place. 205. China has set a target for reduction in energy
intensity of 40–45 per cent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This is welcome. However, China’s refusal to set targets for
emission reductions means there is no realistic prospect of its transition to a low carbon economy, without which limiting
global average temperature increases to 2°C will become impossible. The EU and China: partners in addressing climate
change? 206. John Ashton (the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change) told us in April 2009 that
the EU, the world’s largest single market, and China, the world’s fastest growing large economy, were “absolutely critical”
to achieving a low carbon global economy (Q 216). Nancy Kontou, then head of cabinet to the Environment Commissioner,
agreed that the EU’s relationship with China was one of the most important in the context of the international climate
change negotiations (Q 441). John Ashton thought that it was difficult for the Chinese to see how they could contribute to
the global response without adding to the existing risks to their own stability and prosperity. The security and prosperity
of the EU depended on building a more transformational engagement with China. The Obama administration had
declared its interest in building a transformational strategic relationship with China on energy and climate. The EU should
seek to do the same. However, the EU’s record in engaging China on climate change was drowned out by Member States
competing against each other for short-term, partly illusory, commercial advantage (QQ 218–21)(see also Chapter 3). . We
are concerned that competition for short-term commercial advantage between the Member States is undermining EU
engagement with China on climate change. We recommend that the Member States put collective EU interests before
short-term commercial advantage in the area of climate change.
Extinction
Henderson 2k6 [Bill Henderson, environmental scientist, “Runaway Global Warming Denial.” Countercurrents.org August 19, 2006. http://www.countercurrents.org/cchenderson190806.htm.]
The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just
Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to
human extinction. If impossibly Draconian security measures are not immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases
out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of man's several million
year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.Runaway global warming: there are 'carbon bombs': carbon in soils, carbon in warming temperate and boreal
forests and in a drought struck Amazon, methane in Arctic peat bogs and in methane hydrates melting in warming ocean waters. For several decades it has been hypothesized that rising temperatures
from increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels could be releasing some of and eventually all of
these stored carbon stocks to add substantially more potent greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.Given time lags of 30-50 years, we might have
already put enough extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to have crossed a threshold to these bombs exploding, their released greenhouse gases
leading to ever accelerating global warming with future global temperatures maybe tens of degrees higher than our norms of
human habitation and therefore extinction or very near extinction of humanity.
warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears.
Midterms 1NC
A. GOP will gain control of the House now
Nate Silver, political statistician and analyst, “Holding Pattern in House Forecast,” 9/25/2010,
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/holding-pattern-in-house-forecast/#more-1425
There is little change in the House forecast from last week. Republicans
are assigned a 65 percent chance of taking over the
House by our forecasting model, up slightly from 62 percent last week. They are projected to control 224 House
seats in the new Congress, up a single seat from 223 last week; this would imply a gain of 45 seats from the 179 they
have now (counting one vacant seat most recently held by a Republican member). Substantially larger — or smaller — gains are possible, however.
The Republicans’ lead among likely voters on the generic ballot is down slightly to 6.5 points this week from 7.5 points last week, according to our
estimate. However, any potential penalty from this was offset by gains made by Republican candidates in the characterizations of individual races made
by some expert forecasters, which are also used in our model. Cook Political, for instance, moved 7 races in the Republicans’ direction, while CQ Politics
— which had been more conservative about projecting Republican gains — did so in more than a dozen races.
Polls of local districts, another indicator that our model uses, are becoming much more plentiful, but continue to show ambiguous results. In
general, Republicans are doing very well in polling in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan and are poised to win a
large number of seats there and in other parts of the Midwest.
Elsewhere in the country, however, the polling tends to be more equivocal. Local polls tend to become considerably more accurate in the final weeks of a
campaign; Republicans would need to emerge with somewhat better results in these other regions to make a gain as large as 50 to 60 seats nationwide in
the most prudent forecast.
B. Action on immigration is key to Dem victories.
Lawrence, 8/12/10 – Washington, DC-based immigration policy specialist (Stewart J. “Obama and Latinos.” Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lawrence08122010.html)
President Obama’s
decision to sue Arizona over its proposed immigration enforcement law may have reflected the administration’s
election-year politics, a
way of stigmatizing the GOP, and rallying the liberal faithful, especially Latinos. A Gallup poll in June found that
Latinos were increasingly disaffected from Obama and his policies, while the President’s favorability rating with Whites and
honest judgment that such laws are repugnant and violate federal authority. But the lawsuit was also calculated
Black was unchanged. From a high of 69% in January, Obama's rating with Latinos had fallen 12 points to 57%. Among Spanish-speaking Latinos, the
drop was even more precipitous: 25%. According to Gallup, the slide was largely due to Obama’s failure to pursue
comprehensive immigration
reform, a cause that is near and dear to the country’s fastest-growing ethnic
constituency, which some pollsters rightly refer to as the “sleeping giant” of American politics.
But thus far the Obama gambit isn’t working - and that spells trouble. According to the most recent polls, a
majority of Latinos - nearly 60%, in fact - are still disappointed with his handling of immigration. Unless that
perception is reversed, the Democrats face electoral disaster this November.
Without a strong Latino turnout in at least 30-35 congressional races where their votes could sway the outcome,
the GOP is almost certain to recapture the House, regaining control of the key committee and subcommittee
chairmanships that will shape the nation's policy agenda – including immigration - leading up to 2012. And Republicans could also
win a majority of the governorships and state legislatures which would allow them to dominate the upcoming federal redistricting process, influencing
the composition of the House for at least another decade – perhaps two.
C. GOP-controlled House gets SKFTA passed
Green, 9/13 – senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Matt, 9/13/10. “[Viewpoint] U.S. midterm elections and us.” http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2925891)
Americans came back from a three-day holiday the week of September 7 to see new public opinion poll numbers from
most of the news media confirming that the Democrats will take a major hit in mid-term Congressional elections in
November. The general favorability rating for Republicans and Democrats is now roughly even after several years in
which the Democrats had a significant lead, and polls in specific House and Senate races have influential political analysts
predicting the Republicans will take the House of Representatives and could take the Senate as well. Politics is always a
guessing game, but by some calculations these are the most dismal polls for an incumbent party before a mid-term
election in over fifty years. This is not an election about U.S.-Korea relations or even foreign policy, of course. The big
issues are a lack of new U.S. jobs and concern that the Federal Government has grown too large and fiscally irresponsible
under Barack Obama’s administration. (Many also blame the final Bush years for this as well, but he is not running this
time). That said, a change of leadership in the House and maybe the Senate could have some impact on U.S.-Korea
relations. One potentially positive impact could be on the U.S.-Korea FTA (Korus). When President Obama announced
that he wanted to pass Korus by the end of the year, over 100 Democratic members of Congress sent him a letter
expressing their opposition to the FTA. Republicans in the House are much more supportive of free trade than
Democrats, and Obama could have the numbers to pass Korus if he were willing to work with a new Republican majority.
(Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has to approve all commercial treaties). There is a precedent for this. Bill Clinton
ran for president in 1992 under the slogan, “It’s the economy stupid,” and initially pushed more protectionist and
interventionist economic policies after he was elected. When the Republicans took the House in November 1994, they cut
spending for Clinton’s industrial policy initiatives and forced a rethink about economic strategy in the White House.
Clinton ended up advancing the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which had been negotiated by the
administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, and he did so by reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans
over some strong objections within his own caucus. There is some speculation that Obama may do the same thing this
time. He has already highlighted trade promotion as one way to create new jobs and his political advisors will be looking
for some area where they can make progress with an opposition-controlled Congress.
That’s key to US-ROK relations – failure to pass SKFTA after the midterm tanks them
Snyder et al, 10 – adjunct senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Center for
U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation and Pacific Forum at CSIS (Scott A, June. With Charles L. Pritchard, John H.
Tilelli, and the CFR Independent Task Force. “U.S. Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula.” Council on Foreign Relations
Independent Task Force Report No. 64.
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Korean_PeninsulaTFR64.pdf)
The KORUS FTA also helps bind the United States and South Korea more closely together strategically, economically, and
politically.52 The economic significance of the KORUS FTA is substantial, but the oppor- tunity to bring South Korea closer
to the United States as a partner— especially given that China is currently South Korea’s primary trade and investment
partner—is significant. Failure to approve the agree- ment would send a negative message: that despite South Korea’s role
and significance as one of the top twenty economies in the world, there are limits to U.S. economic and, by extension,
strategic cooperation with South Korea. Following U.S. midterm elections and in the context of steady U.S. economic
improvement, ratification of the KORUS FTA should be a top Obama administration priority for 2011.
US-ROK relations key to prevent a North Korean nuclear crisis
Pritchard et al, 09 – President of the Korea Economic Institute (Charles L, 6/16. With John H. Tilelli Jr., Chairman and
CEO, Cypress International, and Scott A. Snyder, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, CFR. “A New Chapter for U.S.South Korea Alliance.” Council on Foreign Relations.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/19635/new_chapter_for_ussouth_korea_alliance.html)
While all eyes have been trained on North Korea's belligerent and aggressive actions in recent weeks, it is important to
note that the U.S.-South Korea alliance has emerged as a linchpin in the Obama administration's efforts to successfully
manage an overcrowded global agenda, and a pivotal tool for safeguarding U.S. long-term interests in Asia. When South
Korea's President Lee Myung-bak meets with President Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday, the two leaders must
effectively address three main areas: policy coordination to address North Korea's nuclear threat, the development of a
global security agenda that extends beyond the peninsula, and collaboration to address the global financial crisis as South
Korea takes a lead on the G-20 process. By conducting a second nuclear test in May, followed by a number of missile
launches, North Korea has forced its way onto the Obama administration's agenda. First and foremost, effective U.S.South Korea alliance coordination is critical to managing both the global effects of North Korea's nuclear threat on the
nonproliferation regime and the regional security challenges posed by potential regime actions that lead to further crisis in
the region. North Korea's internal focus on its leadership succession, and the apparent naming of North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il's little-known and inexperienced youngest son as his successor, make the task of responding to North Korea's
aggressive and destabilizing actions all the more challenging. Both deterrence and negotiation must be pursued on the
basis of close consultations. Presidents Obama and Lee must also develop coordinated contingency plans in the event of
internal instability in North Korea. Through effective U.S.-South Korea alliance coordination, it should be possible to forge
a combined strategy capable of managing the nuclear, proliferation, and regional security dimensions of North Korea's
threat. A coordinated position would also strengthen the administration's hand in its efforts to persuade China to put
pressure on North Korea.
North Korean crisis causes nuclear war and triggers every impact
Hayes and Green, 10 - *Victoria University AND **Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute (Peter and Michael, ““The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia”, 1/5,
http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/10001HayesHamalGreen.pdf)
The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related
political and economic issues, are serious, not only for the Northeast Asian region but for the whole international
community. At worst, there is the possibility of nuclear attack1, whether by intention, miscalculation, or merely accident,
leading to the resumption of Korean War hostilities. On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within
short or medium range missiles. The whole of Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a
population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million. Even a
limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. But the catastrophe within the region
would not be the only outcome. New research indicates that even a limited nuclear war in the region would rearrange our
global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies modelling the effects of
even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should be
noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent
in yield to a range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas).The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a
decrease in global temperature by 1.25 degrees Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global
winter, but the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years. The
temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the global average. A decrease in rainfall over the
continents would also follow...The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in grain production than
5% and it will continue for many years...hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger...To make matters even
worse, such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective
ozone.4 These, of course, are not the only consequences. Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and
downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use. Millions of refugees
would flee the affected regions. The direct impacts, and the follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and
food insecurity, could make the present global financial crisis pale by comparison. How the great powers, especially the
nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to
nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and disarmament regimes. There could be many
unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships5, with subsequent nuclear breakout and geopolitical
turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and aftermath
chain-reaction affects involving other potential proliferant states. The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a
regional threat but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community.
Solvency 1NC
1. Turn- The plan causes backlash and labor certification guts solvency
Tiger, 08 (Joseph Tiger, The Author Is A J.D. Candidate At The Georgetown University Law Center. He
Graduated From Georgetown University In 2006 With A Degree In Economics. While In High School, He
Earned An Associate Degree In Mathematics From The Santa Rosa Junior College, California, In 2003, ReBending The Paperclip: An Examination Of America's Policy Regarding Skilled Workers And Student Visas,
Spring 2008, 22 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 507)
Offering all students green cards but not H-1B visas would be even more problematic. If all students were made
automatically eligible for EB status upon graduation, acceptance at an American university would, in essence,
constitute a near guarantee of future citizenship. Thus, to maintain its power to control citizenship, the
government would have to exercise even stricter control over the granting of student visas. These procedural
hurdles could act as a disincentive if not an actual barrier to foreign students interested in studying at
American universities. n197 Additionally, working under a green card has procedural hurdles of its own, not
associated with the H-1B visa program (notably, labor certification). As such, foreign students who do not wish
to stay in the United States beyond a temporary period of work would face the choice of accepting the green
card and becoming a permanent resident, or leaving immediately upon the termination of F-1 status.
2. Green cards are not key to retention- they’ll return anyways and remittance takes out
their impact
Matloff, 06 (Norm Matloff for The Center For Immigration Studies, Best? Brightest? A Green Card
Giveaway For Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0531-matloff.shtm)
One Argument Involving Entrepreneurship. One common argument made by industry lobbyists is that
unless we have a liberal green card program, the foreign students in U.S. universities will take the training we
give them back home, where they will start businesses to compete with us. This argument has never made
sense, for two reasons.
First, if this is a realistic fear, why do those who make this argument advocate bringing in so many foreign
students in the first place? It would seem counter to the national interest to train so many foreign students.
Thus it is clear that the industry’s argument is just a pretext for bringing in cheap labor, which the NSF
advocated explicitly.
Second, Professor Annalee Saxenian of UC Berkeley has shown that many foreign graduates who get green
cards eventually go back home and start businesses there to compete with us anyway. In fact, Saxenian found
that even those who do not return home actively help the development of industry in their native countries. 35
After surveying members of Silicon Valley networking groups such as the Asian American Manufacturers
Association and the Indus Entrepreneurs, Saxenian found that half of those who run startup companies here
have set up subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other business operations in their home countries. Most
respondents are from India, China, and Taiwan.
Whether they run their own business or not, half of foreign-born professionals travel to their homelands on
business every year, the study found. More than 80 percent said they share information about technology with
people back home.
"The most interesting findings are the extent of the ties that these immigrants are building between Silicon
Valley and their home countries, not only transferring information but advising companies, arranging
contracts, investing in startups, working with governments, and even starting companies in their home
countries," Saxenian said.
So again, if the lobbyists were truly concerned with foreign business competition in the tech industry, they
would be advocating a large reduction in the number of foreign students, not incentives to increase that
number.
The industry lobbyists also are fond of pointing to prominent businesses founded by immigrants, with Intel
and Google being two commonly cited examples. The lobbyists claim that this shows the importance of having
so many foreign students. Let’s look more closely at that claim.
First, neither Intel nor Google’s founders came here as foreign students. Google cofounder Sergey Brin
immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was five years old. Andy Grove, frequently described as a
cofounder of Intel,36also immigrated with his parents, as a refugee.
Much more importantly, no firm in the computer industry has been pivotal to the development of the field.
Intel and Google have certainly not been indispensable. Back in 1981 when IBM needed to select a CPU chip for
its new PCs, IBM had many alternatives to its choice of Intel as a CPU supplier. Actually, the IBM engineers
who designed the original PC favored a competing chip by Motorola.37 And though Google arguably is more fun
to use than other search engines, they are all about equally effective in their search capabilities.38
3. No delays- EB1 EB2 solves, wage deflation turns the aff, and immigrants share tech
anyways
Matloff, 08 (Norman, Computer Science Professor at UC Davis, “badly misinformed George Will column”
June 26, 2008, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/GeorgeWill.txt)
To be fair, it must be mentioned that spouses and minor children are included in the cap. On the other hand,
Will doesn't explain why we need all these PhDs anyway. His main example, the late American inventor Jack
Kilby, didn't have a doctorate, nor do Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs or the vast majority of others who've
made big impacts on the tech industry. Andone has to wonder why Will thinks we need to bestow green cards
on, for instance, all those doctorates with dissertations on color change in chamaeleons.
It gets worse. Though Will may be correct in his statement that "1 million educated professionals are waiting
[for green cards] -- often five or more years," had he done his due diligence he would have found that these
people don't have PhDs, nor do they even have Master's degrees. These are Bachelor's-level people, in the EB-3
category, the lowest of the three employment-based green card categories. Those PhDs Will wants so much are
in the EB-1 and EB-2 categories, and the wait in those categories is quite short. Indeed, as of Sept. 2007, the
wait was ZERO for EB-1, and it has been zero or short for a long time. See the details at
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/WadhwaIII.txt.
Will speaks of these foreign workers in the same breadth as Jack Kilby, inventor of the computer chip. Yet he
offers no evidence for this implicit comparison of brilliance or creativity. On the contrary, the vast majority of
the foreign tech workers being sponsored for green cards are ordinary people, doing ordinary work, for
ordinary wages. (See http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html)
Will offers the argument that at worst, it doesn't hurt to have these people around. Well, it DOES hurt. If Kilby
were to come of age and enter the field today, he likely would never get a chance to innovate. Upon graduation,
he would probably be shunted into one of the "talking" jobs, such as customer support or production control,
while the foreign workers are hired to do the real engineering work. If he did manage to get engineering work
at first, he would find it more and more difficult to get such work once he reached age 35 or so, as young
foreign workers are paid much less than older Americans. Even the pro-industry NRC report, commissioned by
Congress, documented extensively that engineers have trouble getting work in the field 10 or 15 years after
graduation. All this is even more interesting in light of the fact that Kilby filed his patent for the computer chip
when he was 36.
In fact, Will's point that large numbers of the PhDs that U.S. universities produce are foreign students itself
shows why it DOES hurt to have these people around. Back in 1989, our National Science Foundation called for
an increase in the number of foreign students in order to keep PhD salaries down--yes, this was their explicit
rationale--and moreover, the NSF pointed out that the resulting low salaries would drive domestic students
away from pursuing doctorates, which of course is exactly what happened. (See
http://nber.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html)
The proposals now in Congress to give automatic green cards to new foreign graduates in science and
engineering would make things even worse than what the NSF wanted. As mentioned above, young workers
have lower wages than older ones, and almost all the new grads are young. So the proposals would swell the
labor pool at the young end, making it even harder for our Jack Kilbys to make a viable career out of
engineering. No wonder our brightest young people with top math talent are finding it far more lucrative to
pursue careers in finance than in engineering.
Does that matter? You bet it does. America's only advantage over the rest of the world is its innovativeness.
Most of the foreign workers come from cultures which do not foster innovativeness and in fact tend to suppress
it. In other words, the muddled thinking Will exhibits here is ruining the only good thing we have going for us.
So YES, it matters.
Lastly, Will brings up that constant industry lobbyist refrain that "We'll lose these people to our competitors" if
we don't give them green cards. Again, the putative good ones, the ones in EB-1 (for "foreign nationals of
"extraordinary ability" and for "outstanding professors") and EB-2 (for those who are either of "exceptional
ability" or possess an "advanced degree"), are getting their green cards quickly, so we're NOT "losing" them.
However: Even with green cards, the fact is that they often don't keep their technology in the U.S. anyway. The
study by UCB Prof. Annalee Saxenian found that many eventually return to their home countries even after
attaining U.S. citizenship, that many who do stay here start businesses back home, and that more than 80%
share technology with people in the home country. This may not be all bad, but it certainly shows that the shrill
"We've got to give them green cards to prevent them from helping our competitors" argument is nonsense.
4. Plan kills education and global diplomacy
Miano 09 [John Miano has been with the Center for Immigration Studies since 2008 and his area of expertise is in guest worker programs,
particularly in how they affect the technology work force. Mr. Miano has a BA in Mathematics from The College of Wooster and a JD from Seton Hall
University. Mr. Miano is also the founder of the Programmers’ Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional
workers; “No Green Cards for Grads”, July 20, http://www.cis.org/miano/grads]
What Mr. Frank advocates is tantamount to granting universities the ability to sell U.S. immigration benefits.
How much is a green card worth on the open market? If Mr. Frank had his way, we would soon find out.
The U.S. would have quickie graduate programs spring up all over. Fourth tier and for-profit universities would
set up programs tailored to foreign students. The ability of universities to sell immigration benefits could
justify high tuition prices for such programs.
Consider the simplest case. U.S. universities could market graduate programs to people who already have a PhD or MS from foreign institutions. Take one or two
courses at the U.S. school and get an MS degree in the exact same field. The university could even include it as
part of the package employment.
What Mr. Frank has completely lost in his call for foreign student to remain in the U.S. is the benefit gained
from such students returning home. Foreign students create a pool of people who have learned about American and
Americans in general. When they return home they serve as American ambassadors to the world. If foreign
students remain in the U.S., our national investment in them (financial investment that could have been used
to fund education for Americans) is squandered.
That turns the case
Hanushek and Wößmann 07 [Eric, policy researcher at the Hoover institution and Stanford University; Ludger, professor at
University of Munich and Ifo Institute for Economic Research and CESifo, “Education Quality and Economic Growth,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-1099079934475/Edu_Quality_Economic_Growth.pdf]
For an economy, education can increase the human capital in the labor force, which increases labor productivity and thus leads to a
higher equilibrium level of output.10 It can also increase the innovative capacity of the economy—knowledge of new technologies,
products, and processes promotes growth.11 And it can facilitate the diffusion and transmission of knowledge needed to understand and process
new information and to implement new technologies devised by others, again promoting growth.12 Just as in the literature on microeconomic returns to education, the majority of the
macroeconomic literature on economic returns to education employs the quantitative measure of years of schooling, now averaged across the labor force. Using average years of schooling as
an education measure implicitly assumes that a year of schooling delivers the same increase in knowledge and skills regardless of the education system. This measure also assumes that formal
schooling is the primary source of education and that variations in the quality of nonschool factors affecting learning have a negligible effect on education outcomes. This neglect of crosscountry differences in the quality of education is the major drawback of such a quantitative measure. The standard method of estimating the effect of education on economic growth is to
estimate cross-country growth regressions where average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over several decades is expressed as a function of measures of schooling
and a set of other variables deemed important for economic growth. A vast early literature of cross-country growth regressions tended to fi nd a signifi cant positive association between
quantitative measures of schooling and economic growth.13 The
research reported here suggests that each year of schooling boosts long-run growth by
0.58 percentage points (fi gure 2). There is a clear association between growth rates and school attainment.
5. Plans not key to innovation
Matloff, 06 (Norm Matloff for The Center For Immigration Studies, Best? Brightest? A Green Card
Giveaway For Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0531-matloff.shtm)
Most F-4s Would Not Be "the Best and the Brightest." Industry lobbyists have often made the argument that the H-1B
program is working well for those who have graduate degrees, as they are the top talents from around the world. The lobbyists’ claim is that these H1Bs are being hired for their superior abilities, not for cheap labor. We saw above that the H-1B program in fact is used as a
source of cheap labor even at the graduate level, so the lobbyists’ argument already fails. But let’s set that aside for a moment and address the quality
issue itself.
Some foreign PhD students are indeed the world’s "best and brightest." I fully support the immigration of such individuals, and have played an active
role in the hiring of outstanding foreign nationals from China, India, and other countries to my department’s faculty at the University of California,
Davis. However, only a small percentage of all foreign PhDs are of this caliber, as will be seen below.
Remarkably, even some analysts who have been critical of industry’s usage of imported engineers for cheap labor are nevertheless susceptible to the
industry lobbyists’ "best and brightest" argument. They extrapolate from a few success stories to a romantic, starry-eyed view that all the foreign students
are Einsteins.
Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman is a prime example. [27] On the one hand, he agrees that
...the huge influx of foreign students and workers keeps wages and employment opportunities below what they would otherwise be. This discourages
U.S. citizens from investing in science and engineering careers...
Yet he then says
[the U.S.] has attracted large numbers of the best and brightest students, researchers, and science and engineering workers from foreign countries.
According to the 2000 Census of Population, 38 percent of Ph.D.s working in science and engineering
occupations were foreign-born—a massive rise over the 24 percent foreign-born figure for 1990.
Apparently Freeman considers all or most of those 38 percent to be "the best and the brightest." But the reality
is quite the opposite.
Posssesion of a graduate degree does not imply that one has outstanding talent—far from it. The fact is that
virtually anyone with a Bachelor’s degree can be accepted into some graduate program. Thus one should not
assume that workers with graduate degrees are "smarter."
In fact, foreign PhD students are disproportionately enrolled in the academically weaker universities:[28]
6. Diploma Mills- The Plan causes it
Thibodeau, 10 (Patrick, Senate Dems aim to staple Green Cards to tech diplomas, April 30, 2010 ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/043010-senate-dems-aim-to-staple.html?page=1)
Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said the proposed
bill moves in the right direction, but added that it doesn't resolve a number of immigration issues.
For instance, the criteria for a Green Card "are so loose that the it invites some bad outcomes." A master's
degree can be completed in one academic year without oversight by accepted accreditation bodies. For
example, a program accredited by a state body may lack approval by Abet Inc., formerly known as the
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, he said.
The Green Card change proposed in the framework would "create huge opportunities for educational
institutions to provide degrees tailored to take advantage of this immigration proposal," said Hira. "There is
nothing that prevents 'diploma mills' from sprouting up."
That causes terrorism
Cutler, 08 (Michael Cutler, Diploma Mills Could Enable Terrorist Infiltration, June 29, 2008,
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/06/todays_edition_of_the_new.php)
Today’s edition of the New York Times reports on the nefarious activities of a “diploma mill” that has been
successfully operating for some time, amassing huge profits while conspiring with its customers to provide anyone with the money, a
worthless diploma that provides the illusion of academic achievement. These diplomas undermine the integrity of our workforce and may even
undermine national security. As the article notes, visas can be issued to aliens who are able to document that
they have degrees that would qualify them for employment in the United States, when in fact they have no such education
and may have no intention of securing the job they apply for but simply desire to enter our country for other purposes.
When I first began working for the INS as an immigration inspector, students who sought entry into the United States were required to produce Form I20 issued by the school they intended to attend. They were admitted for a period of one year that had to be renewed every year. Several years later, the
INS changed the one year admission policy to call for the admission of foreign students for the duration of status as students. Today inspectors simply
note the arriving student is admitted for D/S (Duration of Status). This removes a potential area of monitoring whether or not a student is still enrolled
in school. There is a program known as SEVIS that is supposed to keep track of foreign students and exchange visitors in our country.
The problem is that with the lack of resources at ICE, a student who stops attending school may well be reported to our government, but in the game of
“hide and seek” the student who decides to drop out of school may hide but the government has precious little in the way of resources to “seek.”
The news report on the diploma mill is disturbing but it only addresses one area of immigration fraud while there are many other areas in which the bad
guys, including terrorists, are easily able to game the immigration bureaucracy through committing fraud that goes undiscovered.
A green card, that signifies that the bearer has been accorded resident alien status in our country and especially
United States citizenship truly represent the “Keys to the Kingdom.” The only distinction that our nation draws between a
native-born American citizen and a naturalized citizen is the fact that the President and Vice President of the United States must be native-born citizens.
The federal agency that is charged with the adjudication of applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits including the conferring of resident
alien (lawful immigrant) status and even United States citizenship is USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).
The emphasis at that agency for far too long has been to attempt to keep up with the massive influx of
applications each and every day with inadequate resources. I have previously compared the plight of the
employees at USCIS with an old episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy and her friend Ethel become employed at a candy factory and they are supposed to
wrap bits of candy that are sent to them on a conveyor belt. Initially they find the job to be relatively easy but then, the conveyor belt begins moving at an
ever increasing speed. The candy begins flying at them at warp speed and they try to keep up but quickly are overwhelmed by the onslaught of candy. To
try to keep pace with the speed of the conveyor belt they stuff the candy bonbons down their dresses and try to eat others. The studio audience howls
with laughter at this hilarious predicament that Lucy and Ethel are placed in.
The adjudicators at USCIS are not able to stuff the applications down their clothes nor can they eat them, so to
attempt to keep pace, the easiest course of action is to approve as many applications as possible. There is
nothing funny about this situation. Indeed, this situation has serious national security ramifications.
The 9-11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel begins with the paragraph:
“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are
unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no
agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed,
even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the
United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for
reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”
With all of the noise and drama associated with the immigration issue, all too few politicians have been willing
to address the critical issue of immigration fraud even as we approach the 7th anniversary of the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001.
While the “911 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel” addresses this issue in clear and unambiguous
terms, it is not the only document or report that makes the national security risks to be associated with
immigration benefit fraud and visa fraud.
In October, 2006 the GAO issued a report of an investigation it conducted at the behest of Senators Chuck
Grassley and Susan Collins, who had learned about how USCIS had apparently “lost” 111,000 immigration
alien files relating to aliens seeking a wide array of benefits including 30,000 such alien applicants for United
States citizenship.
The report confirmed this abysmal situation at USCIS in the report that was innocuously entitled:
“IMMIGRATION BENEFITS: Additional Efforts Needed to Help Ensure Alien Files Are Located when
Needed."
Clearly immigration fraud is a huge problem and one that our government is all but ignoring! Its not that they
don't know, there have been enough hearings and GAO reports, it seems that most of these leaders believe that
the flood of illegal aliens into our country will create new voters that they hope will vote for them and their
party.
When you read the article a fact that you must first pay attention to is the fact that with all of the talk about the
nexus between fraud and visas and national security is that you will see that not one single word of the news
reports deals with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or USCIS or what they are doing to deal with
the sort of fraud detailed in the news report than undermines the immigration system.
Take out a moment to let this madness really sink in! Diploma mills are cranking out thousands of bogus
diplomas that can be used to enable aliens, including aliens from countries that are identified as being "Special
Interest" countries because of their sponsorship of terrorism and ICE is missing in action!
Extinction
Corsi 05 - Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University [Jerome Corsi (Expert in Antiwar movements
and political violence), Atomic Iran, pg. 176-178]
The United States retaliates: 'End of the world' scenarios - The combination of horror and outrage that will
surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be
that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City.
Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were
radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear
device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building .
Nor will there be any possibility of finding any clues, which either
were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble. Still, the
president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known
enemy –Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole
religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity.
Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more
than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact
after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us. Then, too, we would face
an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this
as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin
Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could possibly be pre-emptive.
Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible?
Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our
newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not
concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States. What if the United
States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and recover . The North Koreans might calculate
even more recklessly. Why not launch upon America the few missiles they have that could reach our soil? More confusion and chaos might
only advance their position. If Russia, China, and the United States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just
because it was overlooked while the great nations focus on attacking one another. So, too, our supposed allies in Europe might relish the immediate reduction in power
suddenly inflicted upon America. Many of the great egos in Europe have never fully recovered from the disgrace of World War II, when in the last century the Americans a
second time in just over two decades had been forced to come to their rescue. If the French did not start launching nuclear weapons themselves, they might be happy to fan the
diplomatic fire beginning to burn under the Russians and the Chinese. Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be
the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world
calculation. Muslims around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of New
York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So
weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this
there would be no effective answer. That the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political party
in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be
paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge
7. Immigration- The plan causes it
Miano, 09 ( John Miano, No Green Cards for Grads, July 20, 2009, http://www.cis.org/miano/grads)
In a recent piece in Washington Monthly entitled “Green Cards for Grads,” Mr. T. A. Frank disagreed this
wise policy and called for any student with a graduate degree in technology who can obtain employment to be
given a green card. Clearly, Mr. Frank has not thought through implications of what he has called for.
Let us assume for the moment that Mr. Frank's proposal were enacted. What then would happen?
What Mr. Frank advocates is tantamount to granting universities the ability to sell U.S. immigration benefits.
How much is a green card worth on the open market? If Mr. Frank had his way, we would soon find out.
The U.S. would have quickie graduate programs spring up all over. Fourth tier and for-profit universities would
set up programs tailored to foreign students. The ability of universities to sell immigration benefits could
justify high tuition prices for such programs.
Consider the simplest case. U.S. universities could market graduate programs to people who already have a
PhD or MS from foreign institutions. Take one or two courses at the U.S. school and get an MS degree in the
exact same field. The university could even include it as part of the package employment.
That causes opop
Mark Nowak Executive Director Population-Environment Balance, Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony August 3, 1993
Perhaps most important, many of the countries from which prospective immigrants come are countries with very high and entirely
unsustainable population growth rates. Many have population doubling times of between 20 and 30 years, large numbers of
children per family, and an extremely large proportion of the total population which is very young. For example, if present trends
continue, Central America (including Mexico) will add 50 million people by the year 2010. Since many in these countries hold the
illusion that the Untied States has unlimited resources and an unlimited capacity to accept immigrants, and will continue to accept
large numbers of them, their governments have no real incentive to take steps to limit their own population by encouraging small
family size and making contraception more widely available. The conclusion which they can justifiably draw from the present
"open door" U.S. immigration policy is that a significant portion of their "excess" numbers can always go to the United States.
This misconception only delays their attempts to slow their own population growth.
Extinction
Brown, 6 professor of physiology at West Virginia University (Paul, Notes from a Dying Planet, p. 3-4)
The threats we face stem from overpopulation and environmental degradation. The resulting climate change
and mass extinctions are leading to ecological collapse, in which the once-robust tapestry of interrelationships
among living creatures, climate, and our physical environment has been weakened and is starting to unravel.
Clinical indicators of our planet’s serious illness are illustrated in the graph. I’ve adjusted the vertical scales for
population, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, temperature, and extinction of species per year so they all have a
common minimum and maximum. All the minima occurred tens of thousands of years BC, and all the
maxima are now. The state of the Earth today is unique. We’re consuming the world’s resources faster than
they can be restored. The world’s population is now doubling in less than fifty years. Around mid-century the
world’s population is expected to level off at eight to twelve billion people. The lower number is far too high:
population must start to decline before 2050 if we are to survive. The upper limit, to put it simply, will never be
reached because we would all die first.
Because of population growth and increasing consumption,
concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere are the highest in
human history, as are global temperatures. This is not normal climatic fluctuation, as fossil-fuel industry shills
would have you believe. The rate of species extinctions is comparable to mass extinctions that have occurred
only five times before, and is likely to exceed those. The total decline of species since the Industrial Revolution
will soon be worse than the mass extinction caused by the asteroid impact sixty-five million years ago off the
Yucatan peninsula, which wiped out 83% of species including the dinosaurs. Before we came along, species
evolved and went extinct for billions of years, creating and filling a diversity of ecological niches. Organisms
used energy from the sun to grow and reproduce, recycling the materials needed for life through an
interdependent worldwide ecosystem. Mechanisms existed to maintain ecological stability, ensuring that the
environment didn’t change too fast for evolution to keep up. Our biosphere recovered from calamitous events
like asteroid collisions, even though only a minority of species made it through some of those catastrophes.
Today’s ongoing catastrophe may eliminate all but the smallest and simplest of life forms.
Our species has
flourished, but without realizing it we’ve changed our environment too fast for other species to adapt. A
system’s stability can only be eroded so far, after which it becomes unstable. We’re approaching a point where
the world’s ecosystem will change too fast even for us to adapt. We will become extinct. It’s already too
late for us to return to the world as we found it or even as it was ten years ago. We’ve wiped out too many
species. But we can protect the remaining fragile stability. In a word, we must seek sustainability, which means
consuming resources only as fast as they’re replenished. All the trends on our graph have to be reversed, until
they’re all back to pre-industrial levels or lower. This doesn’t mean returning to a pre-industrial quality of life –
in fact, we should all be able to live much better once there are fewer of us. But we have to take effective action
very soon, before it’s too late.
Econ FL
No labor shortages—multiple studies prove
Fulmer 09, Lewis and Clark Law School, J.D., Fall [Christopher,
"A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE H-1B VISA PROGRAM AND ITS EFFECTS ON U.S.
AND FOREIGN WORKERS - A CONTROVERSIAL PROGRAM UNHINGED FROM ITS ORIGINAL INTENT", Lewis & Clark Law Review Fall, 2009 13
Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 823, lexis law, accessed: 7-19-10]
Moreover, critics
of the program, many of whom are highly skilled but unemployed U.S. workers, argue that if a labor shortage really
existed, IT salaries would be on the rise. n196 Disagreement also persists whether H-1B workers are truly the
"best and brightest" n197 workers without whom our technological edge will erode, or whether they are simply
"ordinary people doing ordinary work" for cheap. n198
Norman Matloff, a well-known and long time critic of the program, claimed in 2003 there is not a single study confirming a worker shortage
that was not funded by the IT industry. n199 The Help Wanted Reports were a prime example. n200 To support their worker shortage claim, they
pointed to three main findings - a staggering number of IT job vacancies, low unemployment, and rising wages in the IT sector. n201 A number of
methodological flaws were revealed, and none of the findings were replicated by non-industry studies. The
results of the industry-funded studies were questionable.
The Help Wanted studies surveyed a random sample of small, medium, and large-size IT companies - 271 companies responded to the 1997 survey, n202 532
responded in 1998. n203 Each survey asked "How many vacancies does your company have for employees skilled in information technology?" n204 ITAA reported
191,000 vacancies based on its 1997 responses n205 and 346,000 vacancies based on its 1998 responses. n206 The 1998 figures reflect a staggering ten percent vacancy
GAO report cited the fact that the surveys counted a position as "open" when the work was
actually performed by outside consultants. n207 The fact that computer programmers commonly work as
consultants undermines the accuracy of the finding. n208 Further, the survey's director noted that "even if 346,000 qualified
applicants ... appeared today, in all probability immediate positions would not be available - to translate this number to an
absolute would be misleading." n209 As it turns out, companies post vacancy ads even when there is no position to be
filled. n210
rate. However, a [*846]
More criticism followed. "[The ITAA] survey response rate of 14 percent is inadequate to form a basis for a nationwide estimate of unfilled [IT] jobs. n211 ... [In] order
to make sound generalizations, the effective response rate should usually be at least 75 percent." n212 Further
undermining ITAA's claim was the
fact that employers who responded did not specify whether the vacancies existed because the wages offered
were not enough to attract qualified applicants. n213 Peter Cappelli, author of a University of Pennsylvania study in 2000 on the disputed IT
labor shortage, summed up the irreconcilable views of IT employers claiming a shortage and others calling into
question the existence of one for employers. n214 This key point is cited by critics like Matloff who claim there is a shortage of cheap labor.
The IT industry also says that low unemployment among IT workers is indicative of a worker shortage. However, there is
more actual unemployment among IT workers than is apparent:
A major drawback in using ... unemployment rates in analyses of shortages is that the unemployment rate is
calculated based on a person's last job, rather than the longest job held or occupation in which he or she trained
and is actually looking for work. This means an individual with experience as a computer programmer who is
seeking a programming job, but who last worked as a cashier, is classified as an unemployed cashier, not an
unemployed programmer. n215
[*847] "Or better yet," Matloff points out, "if the programmer is currently employed as a cashier, he/she is counted as an employed cashier rather than as an
unemployed programmer." n216
Finally, generally speaking, if
a shortage truly existed, a rise in IT wages would reflect demand for skilled workers. n217
However, the rate at which IT wages were rising at the time mirrored the general increase in earnings of most
professions. Yet, none of those professions claimed to have a shortage of workers. n218 More recently, studies
have shown that wages for new computer science graduates were stagnant or falling between 2001 and 2005. According to a
survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the starting pay in 2001 was $ 52,473, and $ 53,051 in 2007 n219 - this is a mere 1 percent
increase during a period that saw 16 percent inflation. n220
Despite the unreliable indicators of a worker shortage raised in the Helped Wanted studies, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998
was passed. n221 Congress gave the IT industry "the benefit of the doubt" of a worker shortage and "accepted claims ... that it can only be alleviated through an
increase of foreign workers through the H-1B program." n222 The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 passed by a large margin
despite the potential negative impacts of raising the H-1B cap and calls for longer term solutions like IT internships for high school and college students, modernizing
the IT certification system, and company-sponsored training. n223 The final version contained enforcement provisions that appeared to protect American workers from
layoff and unfair working conditions, but actually only applied to a very small percentage of employers. On the bright side, it provided for a five hundred dollars per
petition fee to be used for educating and training [*848] Americans and eventually eliminating reliance on foreign skilled workers. The fee was expected to raise
seventy-five million dollars a year.
The Twenty-First Century Act passed by an even larger margin, raising the H-1B cap to 195,000 in FY 2001; 195,000 in FY 2002; and 195,000 in FY 2003. n224 The
cap was to revert to sixty-five thousand in FY 2004. The Twenty-First Centry Act Senate Report claimed "the error Congress made [in 1998] was in underestimating the
workforce needs of the United States in the year 2000." n225 Remarkably, the Report did not acknowledge the weaknesses of the worker shortage claim like the
American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 House Report had. Moreover, it touted the insufficient enforcement provisions enacted by the
American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 which applied only to H-1B dependent employers. In response to H-1B critics, the Senate Report
highlighted some of the main reasons the Twenty-First Century Act was enacted: the hiring of foreign skilled workers creates new jobs for Americans, failure to raise
the cap would accelerate offshoring, and low unemployment rates controvert critics' claims that job prospects for Americans were harmed by H-1Bs in any way. n226
Buried within the Senate Report is section XIII, which airs out some of the reservations held by members who voted in favor of the Twenty-First Century Act. Herein
lies a considerable concern that should have undermined the claimed shortage and passage of the Twenty-First Century Act:
Although many new jobs are created in the IT industry each year, we also know that thousands of IT workers were laid off in 1999. For example 5,180 workers lost
their jobs at Electronic Data Systems, 2,150 at Compaq, and 3,000 at NEC-Packard Bell... . According to a February 8, 1999, article in "Computerworld" magazine,
U.S. Census Bureau data show that the unemployment rate for IT workers over age 40 is more than five times that of other unemployed workers... .
As we address the needs of the IT industry, we must strive to first place those laid off workers in new jobs and to enforce our labor and employment laws so that the
current IT workforce gets the pay, benefits, and working conditions to which they are entitled. n227
Within the IT industry in particular, replacement of American workers with H-1B labor might be less objectionable if all H-1B workers had unique or better skills.
According to Norman Matloff, however, this appears not to be the case. Matloff, Professor of Computer Science at the [*849] University of California, Davis, says
what matters most is general programming talent, not knowledge of particular programming languages. n228 Bill
Gates agrees - "We're not looking for any specific knowledge because things change so fast, and it's easy to learn stuff. You've got to have an excitement about
software, a certain intelligence ... . It's not like the specific knowledge that counts ... ." n229 Matloff would claim that IT
workers over age forty are laid
off more often than their younger counterparts because there are more savings to be had by replacing older,
higher paid American workers, not because they lack proficiency in newer programming languages. n230
The fact that the IT industry is claiming a shortage at the same time when thousands of IT workers continue to
be laid off and displaced by H-1B workers should raise a red flag and, at the very least, force Congress to question
the propriety of permitting more foreign workers to enter the U.S. job market. n231
Their ev is tech industry propaganda – the numbers all point to stable labor levels now and
foreign labor isn’t key to competiveness
Norman Matloff, prof. of computer science at UC Davis, “H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest,” May 2008,
http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html
The lobbyists for the tech industry and the American Immigration Lawyers Association know that crying
educational doom-and-gloom sells. Even though it was people born and educated in the United States who were primarily responsible for
developing the computer industry, and even though all major East Asian governments have lamented their educational systems' stifling of creativity,
the lobbyists have convinced Congress that the industry needs foreign workers from Asia in order to innovate.
The data show otherwise. Most foreign tech workers, particularly those from Asia, are in fact of only average
talent. Moreover, they are hired for low-level jobs of limited responsibility, not positions that generate innovation.
This is true both overall and in the key tech occupations, and most importantly, in the firms most stridently
demanding that Congress admit more foreign workers.
Note again that the analyses presented here confirm and provide much sharper quantitative insight into previous work showing that the H-1Bs are of just
average talent. It has been shown for instance that foreign students in the U.S. tend to be concentrated in the less-selective
universities, and that they receive a lower percentage of research awards relative to their numbers in the
student population. In the workforce, the foreign nationals in the U.S. participate in teams applying for patents
at the same percentage as do the U.S. citizens, and so on.
To be sure, the author is a strong supporter of facilitating the immigration of the world's best and brightest. He has acted on that belief, by championing
the hiring of extraordinarily talented researchers, mostly from India and China, into his department faculty. But as seen here, very few of the foreign
workers are of that caliber.
Expansion of the guest worker programs - both H-1B visas and green cards - is unwarranted.
Economic crisis doesn’t result in war
Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire
magazine, columnist for World Politics Review, 09 (Thomas P.M. “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid
Financial Crisis,” World Politics Review, 8/252009, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--securityremains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary
predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading
to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging
markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly
worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of
the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global
recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic
crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts
listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia
conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the
most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost twodecade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a
most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides
the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are
both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends . And
with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistanbleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to
and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military
exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability
we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa
Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No
significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece,
Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-
on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great
improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite
all that diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan
power (inevitable given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or
supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western
hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and
India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending
surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets
created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging
was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to
political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by
center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the
short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much
protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World
Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have
not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly
overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such
as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as
disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently
frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a
spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's
primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing
in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world
of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests"
hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy
goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has
proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read
any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fear-mongering to
proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.
Economy resilient—multiple warrants
Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, 09 (Fareed, “The Secrets of Stability,” 12/12
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226425/page/2)
One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global financial system, which had fueled a great
expansion of capitalism and trade across the world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of globalization—about
the virtues of free markets, trade, and technology—were being called into question. Faith in the American model had
collapsed. The financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil were
sinking. Worldwide trade was shrinking to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been
vindicated predicted we were doomed to a long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after
country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the
International Monetary Fund, wrote: "The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be
as bad as the Great Depression.' This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression."
Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At
his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the
Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market
nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover
story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the
same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really
changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional
banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe
problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—
soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic
and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable
countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned
168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy.
And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of
my head is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now we're back to
business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather,
governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once
this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they
buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive
social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times
are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national
economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash
and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in
stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful
economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed
government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the
animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a
fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the
stock-market crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the techbubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. The world today
is characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each historical in nature.
No risk of economic depression: status quo economic growth proves- prefer analysis from
economists
Finfacts ’10 (US Economy Growth Scare: Still on track for moderate, sustainable growth By Finfacts Team Jul
7, 2010 - 5:40:23 AM Finfacts Ireland, Ireland’s top financial website)
US Economy Growth Scare:
The United States economy is still on track for moderate, sustainable growth according to
say that despite market turmoil and softer incoming data, the
economy remains on track for moderate (3-3.5%), sustainable growth. However, they have trimmed their second-half 2010 growth
Morgan Stanley economists, Richard Berner and David Greenlaw. They
outlook fractionally in response to slightly more restrictive financial conditions and now expect a slower rise in underlying inflation. In response, the
economists have substantially changed their expectations for Treasury yields and the Fed: They now think that 10-year Treasury yields will probably
trade in a 2¾-3½% range for the balance of this year. While a significant rise in yields over the course of 2011 isn't expected, Fed officials will raise rates
in 2011 a bit more cautiously than the economists expected in May/June, to 1.75% by the end of 2011, or 50bp lower than the MS earlier forecast.
However, the MS economists say cyclical forces still outweigh the threats from the contagion of the European sovereign credit crisis; the threat of fiscal
drag, including likely tax hikes as soon as next year; and uncertainty about economic policies. Overwrought about the slowdown: Berner and
Greenlaw say there's no mistaking the recent string of weaker data, capped by the disappointing 83,000 June gain in private
nonfarm payrolls and dip in the workweek. But the data certainly don't validate market fears of a 1-2% second half, much less
a double-dip recession, in their view. Instead, they signal a step down from annualised 3.8% growth in 2Q to about
3¼% in the second half. Most important, despite the June downdraft in wage income implied by the data, the
economists believe real income gains are sufficient both to sustain 2-2½% consumer spending growth and
rebuild saving. The data may well understate actual gains, given the stronger pace of withheld income and
payroll taxes through June; they estimate that the three-month average of such receipts rose by 4.5% from a
year ago. Even ignoring the tax data to be conservative, the economists estimate that real disposable income
rose at a 5% annual clip in 2Q and will slow only slightly to 4% in 3Q, leaving scope for upside in spending if
consumers have reason to turn less cautious. The US economy is slowing down and the earnings season will
reflect limited visibility for companies in the second half, says Peter Boockvar, equities strategist at Miller Tabak &
Co. He talks to CNBC's Martin Soong, Karen Tso and Sri Jegarajah: Forecast myths: Berner and Greenlaw say three myths pervade current negative
thinking about the outlook. One is that the ‘sugar high' from fiscal stimulus is over; now it's payback time. In their view, fiscal thrust - measured by the change in the standardized deficit/GDP - - is peaking and probably will decline in the second half. But the impact of fiscal
policy lags behind and is still supportive of growth, especially through stepped-up infrastructure outlays. Such
outlays through May aren't close to reversing all of the decline since last summer, but the 20.1% annualized increase over the last three months is a
favourable portent. Moreover, only about one-third of the infrastructure monies budgeted has been spent. And with
state and local government revenue now improving, noticeable cutbacks in their spending seem less likely as
they head into a new fiscal year. Inventories leaner by the day: A second myth is that the inventory ‘cycle' has run its course. In fact, the MS
economists see inventories getting leaner in relation to sales by the day. Excluding motor vehicles, the real manufacturing and
trade I/S ratio in April declined to 1.28 months, not far from all-time lows. Accumulation has just begun, and the pace of production in 2H10 and
through 2011 will likely run a few tenths of a percent ahead of demand simply to keep I/S ratios from falling too low. For example, new production
schedules from the car manufacturers show significantly higher-than-expected production levels over the next few months. One OEM (original
equipment manufacturer) has decided to break tradition and keep production lines running in the first two weeks of July because dealers lack vehicles in
showrooms needed to bring in traffic. “It’s all about deflation in the near term,” Kirby Daley, senior strategist from Newedge Group, told CNBC. “The
signs are that the sort of pick-up in growth we saw earlier in the year is fading,” added Sarah Hewin, from Standard Chartered Bank, added to the
discussion on the US economy Tuesday. Sustainable support from net exports: A third myth: The fast-growing EM (emerging markets) economies are
too small and fragile to provide a material boost to US exports, and rising US imports will swamp any gains. In contrast, Berner and Greenlaw
say strong growth in domestic demand in the larger EM economies in Asia and Latin America will promote
strong gains in exports. Moreover, slower growth in US final demand seems likely to restrain imports. Imports have recently jumped, but the
economists believe that much of the rise has reflected a significant swing in inventories as companies liquidated them more slowly. Between August
2009 and April 2010, real imports jumped by $16bn (13.5%), while the swing in real manufacturing and trade inventories (the change in the change in
the stocks) was more than five times that magnitude ($84bn) over the same period. The magnitude of such changes likely will slow, as will the rise in
imports. Slower rise in inflation: Berner and Greenlaw say inflation is bottoming and is poised to rise gradually. At work:
narrowing slack in the economy and the Fed's ultra-accommodative policy stance, which will sustain inflation
expectations. Both are lifting pricing power. Although slack in the economy remains significant, the change in slack also matters for
inflation, and slack continues to narrow as companies cut back capacity and industrial production continues to boom. While factory operating rates
probably slipped in June, they are up 660bp (basis points - - 6.6%) from the trough last June and at the highest level since October 2008. Surveys of
consumers evince stable inflation expectations; in the June University of Michigan poll, 5-10 year inflation expectations hovered at 2.8%. Climbing rents,
accelerating prices at the early stages of the processing pipeline, and rising import prices all are starting to signal that inflation is bottoming. Apartment
rents, which enter popular price gauges on a six-month moving average basis, have turned higher, and surveys suggest they are rising 3-5% from a year
ago. Despite the dollar's recent strength, consumer import prices rose 0.4% in the year ended in May. Nonetheless, the ongoing slide in market-based
inflation expectations implies a slower rise into 2011. By one measure, 5-year forward breakevens have tumbled 70bp since April to 2.1%, and by the
Fed's own measure they have declined by 50bp to 2.6%. Such declines likely will keep inflation tame for longer, and slow the
pace at which inflation increases over the next year as businesses and consumers have turned more cautious.
Competitiveness FL
No risk of competitiveness or heg decline- competitiveness theory is false
Fallows 10 [James, correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, studied economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has been an editor of The Washington
Monthly and of Texas Monthly, and from 1977 to 1979 he served as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. His first book, National Defense, won the American
Book Award in 1981; he has written seven others. “How America Can Rise Again”, Jan/Feb edition, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/american-decline]
This is new. Only with America’s emergence as a global power after World War II did the idea of American “decline” routinely
involve falling behind someone else. Before that, it meant falling short of expectations—God’s, the Founders’, posterity’s—or of the previous virtues of America in its lost,
great days. “The new element in the ’50s was the constant comparison with the Soviets,” Michael Kazin told me. Since then, external falling-behind comparisons have
become not just a staple of American self-assessment but often a crutch. If we are concerned about our schools, it is because children are learning more in Singapore or India; about the development of
clean-tech jobs, because it’s happening faster in China.
Having often lived outside the United States since the 1970s, I have offered my share of falling-behind analyses, including a book-length comparison of Japanese and American strengths (More Like Us) 20 years ago. But at
this point in America’s national life cycle, I think the exercise is largely a distraction, and that Americans should concentrate on what are, finally, our own internal issues to resolve or ignore.
Naturally there
are lessons to draw from other countries’ practices and innovations; the more we know about the outside world the better,
as long as we’re collecting information calmly rather than glancing nervously at our reflected foreign image. For instance, if you have spent any time in
places where tipping is frowned on or rare, like Japan or Australia, you view the American model of day-long small bribes, rather than one built-in full price, as something similar to baksheesh, undignified for all concerned.
Naturally, too, it’s easier to draw attention to a domestic problem and build support for a solution if you cast the issue in us-versus-them terms, as a response to an outside threat. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon …, their
new book about making government programs more effective, William Eggers and John O’Leary emphasize the military and Cold War imperatives behind America’s space program. “The race to the moon was a contest
between two systems of government,” they wrote, “and the question would be settled not by debate but by who could best execute on this endeavor.” Falling-behind arguments have proved convenient and powerful in other
countries, too.
But whatever
their popularity or utility in other places at other times, falling-behind concerns seem too common in America now. As I have
my latest stretch out of the country has left me less and less
interested in whether China or some other country is “overtaking” America. The question that matters is not whether America is
“falling behind” but instead something like John Winthrop’s original question of whether it is falling short—or even falling apart. This is not the mainstream American
thought about why overreliance on this device increasingly bothers me, I have realized that it’s because
position now, so let me explain.
First is the simple reality that one kind of “ decline”
is inevitable and therefore not worth worrying about. China has about four times as many
people as America does. Someday its economy will be larger than ours. Fine! A generation ago, its people produced, on average, about one-sixteenth as much
as Americans did; now they produce about one-sixth. That change is a huge achievement for China—and a plus rather than a minus for everyone else, because a business-minded China is more
benign than a miserable or rebellious one. When the Chinese produce one-quarter as much as Americans per capita, as will happen barring catastrophe, their economy will become the world’s
largest. This
will be good for them but will not mean “falling behind” for us. We know that for more than a century, the consciousness of
decline has been a blight on British politics, though it has inspired some memorable, melancholy literature. There is no reason for
America to feel depressed about the natural emergence of China, India, and others as world powers. But second, and more important,
America may have reasons to feel actively optimistic about its prospects in purely relative terms.
The Crucial American Advantage
Let’s start with the more modest claim, that China has ample reason to worry about its own future. Will the long-dreaded day of reckoning for Chinese development finally arrive because of environmental disaster? Or via the
demographic legacy of the one-child policy, which will leave so many parents and grandparents dependent on so relatively few young workers? Minxin Pei, who grew up in Shanghai and now works at Claremont McKenna
College, in California, has predicted in China’s Trapped Transition that within the next few years, tension between an open economy and a closed political system will become unendurable, and an unreformed Communist
bureaucracy will finally drag down economic performance.
America will be better off if China does well than if it flounders. A prospering China will mean a bigger world economy with more
opportunities and probably less turmoil—and a China likely to be more cooperative on environmental matters. But whatever happens to China,
prospects could soon brighten for America. The American culture’s particular strengths could conceivably be about to assume new importance and give our
economy new pep. International networks will matter more with each passing year. As the one truly universal nation, the United States continually
refreshes its connections with the rest of the world—through languages, family, education, business—in a way no other nation does, or will. The countries
that are comparably open—Canada, Australia—aren’t nearly as large; those whose economies are comparably large—Japan, unified Europe, eventually China or India—
aren’t nearly as open. The simplest measure of whether a culture is dominant is whether outsiders want to be part of it. At the height of the British Empire, colonial subjects from the Raj to Malaya to the
Caribbean modeled themselves in part on Englishmen: Nehru and Lee Kuan Yew went to Cambridge, Gandhi, to University College, London. Ho Chi Minh wrote in French for magazines in Paris. These days the
world is full of businesspeople, bureaucrats, and scientists who have trained in the United States.
Today’s China attracts outsiders too, but in a particular way. Many go for business opportunities; or because of cultural fascination; or,
as my wife and I did, to be on the scene where something truly exciting was under way. The Haidian area of Beijing, seat of its universities, is dotted with the faces of foreigners who have
come to master the language and learn the system. But
true immigrants? People who want their children and grandchildren to grow up
within this system?
Although I met many foreigners who hope to stay in China indefinitely, in three years I encountered only two people who aspired to citizenship in the People’s Republic. From the physical rigors of a badly polluted and stilldeveloping country, to the constraints on free expression and dissent, to the likely ongoing mediocrity of a university system that emphasizes volume of output over independence or excellence of research, the realities of
China has come nowhere
near the feats of absorption and opportunity that make up much of America’s story, and it is very difficult to imagine that it could do
so—well, ever.
Everything we know about future industries and technologies suggests that they will offer ever-greater rewards to flexibility,
openness, reinvention, “crowdsourcing,” and all other manifestations of individuals and groups keenly attuned to their surroundings. Everything about American society
China heavily limit the appeal of becoming Chinese. Because of its scale and internal diversity, China (like India) is a more racially open society than, say, Japan or Korea. But
should be hospitable toward those traits—and should foster them better and more richly than other societies can. The American advantage here is broad and atmospheric, but it also depends on two specific policies that, in my
view, are the absolute pillars of American strength: continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend.
I thought I could tell which Americans had spent significant time outside the country or working
on international “competitiveness” issues. If they had, they predictably emphasized those same two elements of long-term American
advantage. “My favorite statistic is that one-quarter of the members of the National Academy of Sciences were born abroad ,” I was told by Harold
Varmus, the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and himself an academy member (and Nobel Prize winner). “ We may not be so good on the pipeline of
producing new scientists, but the country is still a very effective magnet.”
Maybe I was biased in how I listened, but in my interviews,
“We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the immigrants, and the universities, we’ll be fine,” James McGregor, an American businessman and author who has lived in China for
years, told me. “I just wish we could put LoJacks on the foreign students to be sure they stay.” While, indeed, the United States benefits most when the best foreign students pursue their careers
here, we come out ahead even if they depart, since they take American contacts and styles of thought with them. Shirley Tilghman, a research biologist who is now the president of Princeton,
made a similar point more circumspectly. “U.S. higher education has essentially been our innovation engine,” she told me. “ I
still do not see the overall model for higher
education anywhere else that is better than the model we have in the United States, even with all its challenges at the moment.” Laura Tyson, an
economist who has been dean of the business schools at UC Berkeley and the University of London, said , “It can’t be a coincidence that so many innovative companies are
located where they are”—in California, Boston, and other university centers. “There is not another country’s system that does as
well—although others are trying aggressively to catch up.”
Americans often fret about the troops of engineers and computer scientists marching out of Chinese universities. They should calm
down. Each fall, Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University produces a ranking of the world’s universities based mainly on scientific-research papers. All such
rankings are imprecise, but the pattern is clear. Of the top 20 on the latest list, 17 are American, the exceptions being Cambridge (No. 4), Oxford (No. 10), and the University of Tokyo (No. 20).
Of the top 100 in the world, zero are Chinese.
“On paper, China has the world’s largest higher education system, with a total enrollment of 20 million full-time tertiary students,” Peter Yuan Cai, of the Australian National University in Canberra, wrote last fall. “Yet
China still lags behind the West in scientific discovery and technological innovation.” The obstacles for Chinese scholars and
universities range from grand national strategy—open economy, closed political and media environment—to the operational traditions
of Chinese academia. Students spend years cramming details for memorized tests; the ones who succeed then spend years in thrall to entrenched professors. Shirley Tilghman said the modern American model of
advanced research still shows the influence of Vannevar Bush, who directed governmental science projects during and after World War II. “It was his very conscious decision to get money into young scientists’ hands as
quickly as possible,” she said. This was in contrast to the European “Herr Professor” model, also prevalent in Asia, in which, she said, for young scientists, the “main opportunity for promotion was waiting for their mentor to
die.” Young Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Dutch know they will have opportunities in American labs and start-ups they could not have at home. This will remain America’s advantage, unless we throw it away.
No challengers to heg.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute, 2010.
Reason, “Overspent and Overextended,”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/07/military-spending-so-what
Today the U.S. faces no significant military threats—a circumstance Americans should celebrate, not regret. As Colin Powell famously
declared in 1991 when chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of enemies. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il
Sung.” The U.S. has no great power enemies. Relations with China and Russia are at times uneasy, but not
confrontational, let alone warlike. Washington is allied with every other industrialized state. America possesses
the most sophisticated nuclear arsenal and most powerful conventional force. Washington’s ability to intervene
is unparalleled: the U.S. possesses 11 carrier groups. Russia has one. India has one. There are no others . Other
nations, most notably China, are stirring. But it will take years for them to match, let alone overtake, the U.S. Even
subtracting the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars leaves American military outlays around five times those of
China, 10 times those of Russia, and 20 times those of India. Add together a gaggle of adversaries, enemies, and rogues—Burma,
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria—and the U.S. spends perhaps 25 times as much. Moreover, America is not alone. The European Union has 10 times the
GDP and three times the population of Russia. The United Kingdom alone spends as much as Moscow. Military outlays by the U.S. plus its NATO allies
account for about 70 percent of world military spending. Add in America’s other allies and friends and the total share of global
military outlays hits 80 percent. With the world’s second-ranking economy, Japan could do far more.
South Korea has 40 times the GDP and
twice the population of North Korea. In 2009 Australia issued a defense White Paper proposing a measured build-up in response to an expected
reduction in U.S. dominance.
Competitiveness high – laundry list
Hosek, National Defense Research Institute at RAND, PhD Economics @ Chicago, ‘8
(James, and Titus Galama, “U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology,”
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG674.pdf)
The United States still leads the world in science and technology. The United States accounts for 40 percent of total world
R&D spending, 38 percent of industrialized nations’ (OECD countries) triadic patents, and employs 37 percent of OECD
researchers (1.3 million FTE). It produces 35 percent, 49 percent, and 63 percent of world publications, citations, and
highly cited publications, employs 70 percent of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, 66 percent of its most cited individuals,
and is home to 75 percent of the world’s top 20 and top 40 universities and 58 percent of its top 100.
R&D spending is rapidly increasing in developing nations such as China and Korea. But despite this rapid growth, the U.S.
share of world R&D spending (dollars at PPP) fell only by 1.5 percent to 36.1 percent between 1993 and 2003, while the
EU-15 and Japan lost significant ground. In absolute terms, the United States increased its R&D spending by $126.3
billion (nominal value at PPP), from $166.1 billion in 1993 to $292.4 billion in 2003. This increase is more than in any
other region: Over the same period, the EU-15 added $76.6 billion, Japan added $38.3 billion, and China added $60.8
billion.
S&T employment is not growing more rapidly in other nations/ regions than in the United States, though China showed
remarkable growth. The United States added a large number of researchers (299,000) between 1995 and 2003, suggesting
a vibrant R&D sector. At the same time, China added nearly as many (289,000), the EU-15 added 220,000, and Japan
added 95,000. Both the EU-15 and China graduated more scientists and engineers than the United States.
While developing nations (China and India in particular) are starting to account for a significant portion of the world’s
S&T inputs and activities (R&D funding in dollars at PPP, research jobs, S&T education, etc.) and are showing rapid
growth in outputs and outcomes, they still account for a very small share of triadic patents, S&T publications, and
citations. Innovation and scientific discovery are still led by the United States, EU 15, and Japan. The United States
did lose 3 percentage points in its world share in publications, citations, and top 1 percent highly cited publications
between 1993–1997 and 1997–2001. But on measures such as additions to the S&T workforce and patented innovations,
U.S. growth in S&T was in line with or above average world trends. By comparison, Japan grew more slowly in additions
to the S&T workforce, and both the EU-15 and Japan had slower growth in patented innovations.
High growth in R&D expenditures, employment of scientists and engineers, and patents suggests that U.S. S&T has
remained vigorous. These U.S. developments occur at a time when increases (though at different rates) in each of these
measures are also seen in the EU-15, Japan, China, Korea, and many other nations/regions. In other words, strong growth
of R&D activity, S&E employment, and innovation in many countries suggests a future of significant innovation activity,
and, because of the greater diffusion of technology in a globalized world, the promise of economic growth for those nations
that are capable of absorbing (making economic use of) the new technology. Scientifically advanced nations and regions
such as the United States, the EU, and Japan are highly capable of implementing new technology and will benefit from it.
Developing nations such as China and India have partial capability, but are well ahead of Latin America, the Middle East,
and Africa. Though, as we will discuss in more detail later, developing nations can continue to grow their economies
rapidly by absorbing existing technology in addition to new technology.
Competitiveness theory is wrong and causes bad economic policy
Paul Krugman, MIT Professor of Economics, March/April 1994, Foreign Affairs, “Competitiveness: A
Dangerous Obsession”
Unfortunately, his diagnosis was deeply misleading as a guide to what ails Europe, and similar diagnoses in
the United States are equally misleading. The idea that a country's economic fortunes are largely determined
by its success on world markets is a hypothesis, not a necessary truth; and as a practical, empirical matter,
that hypothesis is flatly wrong. That is, it is simply not the case that the world's leading nations are to any
important degree in economic competition with each other, or that any of their major economic problems
can be attributed to failures to compete on world markets. The growing obsession in most advanced nations
with international competitiveness should be seen, not as a well-founded concern, but as a view held in the
face of overwhelming contrary evidence. And yet it is clearly a view that people very much want to hold -- a
desire to believe that is reflected in a remarkable tendency of those who preach the doctrine of
competitiveness to support their case with careless, flawed arithmetic. This article makes three points. First,
it argues that concerns about competitiveness are, as an empirical matter, almost completely unfounded.
Second, it tries to explain why defining the economic problem as one of international competition is
nonetheless so attractive to so many people. Finally, it argues that the obsession with competitiveness is not
only wrong but dangerous, skewing domestic policies and threatening the international economic system.
This last issue is, of course, the most consequential from the standpoint of public policy. Thinking in terms
of competitiveness leads, directly and indirectly, to bad economic policies on a wide range of issues,
domestic and foreign, whether it be in health care or trade.