I guess I'm on the side of the slimy lawyers and greedy capitalists here

George Borjas posts this video which apparently is making the rounds on Youtube. The lesson: American employers are exploiting loopholes in immigration law to hire cheap foreign labor and screw qualified American workers out of a job.

I've been on the hiring end of this type of situation a couple of times. We do a national search for a faculty position and find the person most qualified to do the job. That person happens to be a non-US citizen. He shows up, does his job well, and in a few months or a year wants to apply for a green card. Immigration law requires the College to advertise his job again in places like the Chronicle of Higher Education, which we do. But look, we've already done a national search, we've already concluded that this guy is the most qualified we could find; why make us go through this process again? Forcing this guy to face competition for his job again is patently unfair. If the response of some employers to this requirement is cynical, that's really the fault of the immigration laws, not the employers.

We could use to loosen the immigration laws considerably, especially at the high end of the skill distribution. On a related note, this op ed piece from the New York Times makes me want to cry. Here I am forcing down greasy mu shu from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant, and the Zagats inform me that Chinese chefs capable of introducing me to a gajillion exotic types of Chinese food are being turned away in droves by the INS. Let their people come!