President Donald Trump has fully demonstrated his total ignorance of the real immigration issue with the proposed estimated $21 billion wall along the Mexican border.
Martin Ford, in his book titled “Rise of the Robots,” summed it up this way: “I find it somewhat ironic that many conservatives in the United States are adamant about securing the border against immigrants who will likely take jobs that few Americans want, while at the same time expressing little concern that the virtual border is left completely open to higher-skill workers who take jobs that Americans definitely do want.”
Trump is focused on the illegal physical immigration across the Mexican border while absolutely ignoring the real issue of virtual immigration by corporations using offshoring.
If your occupation involves manipulating data and it is not anchored by face-to-face interaction with customers, then you are in the crosshairs of offshoring.
Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, has conducted surveys that assess the impact of offshoring.
According to “Rise of the Robots,” Blinder estimated in 2006 that a quarter of the U.S. workforce (30 million to 40 million) was potentially offshorable.
It is easy for Trump to identify a manufacturing facility outside the U.S. and talk about bringing it back or threaten to impose an offshoring tariff when importing a product.
Virtual immigration is where you are offering offshore “labor-as-a-service (LaaS).”
Remember your call about a credit card charge when you talked to “Bill” in India?
Trump won’t to be able to tariff the photons on the fiber-optic networks connecting extensive worldwide LaaS providers with U.S. corporations.
Michael McCarty,
Port Angeles