Sunday, May 20, 2007  Quick fix or cold turkey?  Alan Greenspan
seems to think relaxing rules on immigration will help America.
I think this is short-sighted.  If it's about keeping down wage
costs, remember that low-paid workers also claim on a range of
social benefits, and the people they are undercutting even more
so. The last thing a country needs is a hereditary class of
long-term unemployed.  If it's about skill shortages, highly-
skilled foreign workers are getting harder to find: as emerging
economies develop, they want the same people. My brother in
America notes that over the years, his university has attracted
fewer foreign mathematicians for this reason.  The quick-fix
approach is not a lasting solution. Like the UK, America needs
to improve education and vocational training. If times get tough
and foreign workers go home, the USA's dependence on them could
result in economic "cold turkey".  No comments: