Free traders will never answer this... if immigrants are needed here...

[leveymg]

53. There are millions of Americans working abroad. And, I don't mean just the US Army.

Last edited Sat Oct 6, 2012, 07:07 PM - Edit history (1)

The "State Department estimate suggests the number may be between three and six million." Wiki: American Diaspora

The United States enjoys a huge balance of payments SURPLUS in Trade in Services. We enjoy a surplus of more than $170 billion, in large part because skilled Americans work on projects and export their knowledge around the world. If we closed the door to H-1B and other skilled foreign workers, and the rest of the world followed suit, the US would end up much poorer. BTW: there is a cap on the number of new H-1B workers the US will admit each year - only 85,000 H-1B visas are issued each year. Compared to the US technology sector, which employs about 20 million, foreign workers are only a tiny fraction of the total job market here.

The problem with US Balance of Payments is due to de-industrialization of America and the lack of regulation of domestic reinvestment by manufacturing industries, which creates the even bigger deficit in Trade in Goods, more than $730 billion.

Your whole anti-immigrant, shut out H-1B workers argument is based in a gross fallacy.

Here are the figures for US Balance of Payments, 2000-2011, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt


Balance Exports Imports
Period Total Goods BOP Services Total Goods BOP Services Total Goods BOP Services


2000 -376,749 -445,787 69,038 1,072,783 784,781 288,002 1,449,532 1,230,568 218,964
2001 -361,771 -421,276 59,505 1,007,726 731,189 276,537 1,369,496 1,152,464 217,032
2002 -417,432 -474,491 57,059 980,879 697,439 283,440 1,398,311 1,171,930 226,381
2003 -490,984 -540,409 49,425 1,023,519 729,816 293,703 1,514,503 1,270,225 244,278
2004 -605,357 -663,507 58,150 1,163,146 821,986 341,160 1,768,502 1,485,492 283,010
2005 -708,624 -780,730 72,106 1,287,441 911,686 375,755 1,996,065 1,692,416 303,649
2006 -753,288 -835,689 82,401 1,459,823 1,039,406 420,417 2,213,111 1,875,095 338,016
2007 -696,728 -818,886 122,158 1,654,561 1,163,957 490,604 2,351,289 1,982,843 368,446
2008 -698,338 -830,109 131,770 1,842,682 1,307,499 535,183 2,541,020 2,137,608 403,413
2009 -379,154 -505,758 126,603 1,578,945 1,069,733 509,212 1,958,099 1,575,491 382,608
2010 -494,737 -645,124 150,387 1,842,485 1,288,882 553,603 2,337,222 1,934,006 403,216
2011 -559,880 -738,413 178,533 2,103,367 1,497,406 605,961 2,663,247 2,235,819 427,428
U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Division.
NOTE: (1) Data presented on a Balance of Payment (BOP) basis. Information on data sources and methodology
are available at www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/press.html.