More on Changing Demographics

[The Annoyed Man]

http://www.aei.org/publication/states-c ... 1974-2060/

There is a downloadable PDF on that page, which I recommend reading. The document is "bipartisan", having been produced in collaboration by both the conservative American Enterprise Institute and "progressive" Center for American Progress. The PDF has some startling information about the changing demographics of the nation. I posted another thread HERE on the topic. I think that this is a topic that is often overlooked, and it will have SEVERE implications for the 2nd Amendment if we don't get ahead of this.

This is NOT about race per se. Rather, it is about the fact that many immigrants of "other than white" ethnicity emigrated here and continue to emigrate from countries that do NOT recognize a right to keep and bear arms, and in many cases, these people will bring their cultural preferences along with them when they come here. For the most part, I do not care about foreign cultures. By "not care", I mean that I'm not "against" them. Culture is interesting and can be quite beautiful. My concern is about those parts of foreign cultures which would deny me my RKBA......if they could.

In the past, this would not have been so much of a problem. People used to come here seeking freedom more than anything else, and they recognized that with freedom came opportunity. But that seems to be less the case these days. Now, I believe that people come here motivated primarily by financial opportunity than by a yearning for American-style liberty; and with that disregard for liberty comes a desire to impose their cultural values on others already here. The obvious example is in areas where conservative muslims seek to impose local Sharia law. I am sure there are other, non-muslim examples. Certainly some of those immigrants come here from at least nominally socialist countries, and they bring their collectivist values with them; and I can probably think of other examples of imported "unAmerican" values as well.

Given that this bipartisan study has some shocking numbers, we are entering a potential time of crisis for the 2nd Amendment. The above linked PDF says:

The scale of race-ethnic transformation in the United States is stunning. In 1980, the population of the United States was 80 percent white. Today, that proportion has fallen to 63 percent, and by 2060, it is projected to be less than 44 percent. Hispanics were 6 percent in 1980, are 17 percent today, and should be 29 percent by 2060. Asians/Others were just 2 percent in 1980, are 8 percent today, and should be 15 percent by 2060. Blacks, however, should be stable at 12 percent to 13 percent over the time period.

Nothing captures the magnitude of these shifts better than the rise of majority-minority states. Right now, there are only four majority-minority states: California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. But with the ongoing demographic transformation of the country, our States of Change projections find that this
will become more and more common. A table of when we expect these newly minted, majority-minority states to emerge is displayed on the following page.

Note that since minorities are not monolithic in their policy or political preferences and because, in any case, those preferences may change over time, any assumption that majority-minority states will adopt a unified policy or political orientation would be unwise. [see my note about this below.... TAM]

The next two majority-minority states, Maryland and Nevada, should arrive in the next five years. After that, there should be four more in the 2020s: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. In the 2030s, these states should be joined by Alaska, Louisiana, and New York, and in the 2040s, these states should be joined by Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Virginia. The 2050s should round out the list by adding Colorado, North Carolina, and Washington. By 2060, that should bring the number of majority-minority states to 22, including seven of the currently largest states and 11 of the top 15. Together, these 22 states account for about two-thirds of the country’s population.

The reason I highlighted that passage in red is that WE STILL HAVE A CHANCE TO PROPERLY EDUCATE NEW AMERICANS ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN!

We cannot insulate ourselves from these people and "hope they go away". We MUST take this as an opportunity to preserve the Constitution; not by a lecturing air of superiority, but by a welcoming willingness to invite them into our homes, into our houses of worship (if they are willing), to take them to the range, to help them to understand our founding documents BEFORE some socialist bureaucrat gets his hands on them and brainwashes them with falsehoods. We have to teach them about how integral the 2nd Amendment has been to the growth of a free and sovereign people, of which they are being invited to become a part.

In other words, we need to teach them that THIS is home, and invite them into preserving it, not just for themselves, but for future generations of Americans. They ARE coming. We HAVE to deal with it. These people WILL become voters some day, and we will be very much outnumbered; so we need them voting on OUR side. My hope is that we can get these new immigrants voting to offset the poisonous influence of rich white liberals who seek the marxist utopia.........of which of course they will be in charge......

[Abraham]

TAM,

I second your thoughts.

Given that, I found out that a friends Venezuelan girl friend
was having her close his small store at 9:00 P.M. with no one there to assist her. Not even him.

I was appalled.

Yes, she had a Glock 27 to defend herself with, but I discovered with a few concerned questions, she had no clue how to shoot, load, operate, etc.

I asked her if she'd like to go to the range and learn how to operate, shoot, etc.?

She was enthusiastic about the idea.

So, I picked her up and took her to PSC and we went through the basics. She was a quick study. Oh, I forgot to mention she was a professional dancer (no, not a stripper, a real dancer) and heart breakingly beautiful, with a very sweet/kind disposition. Given, I'm old enough to be her Grandfather, I honestly was concerned about her safety, but being a guy, I was also thrilled to help her.

When we left the range, she was quite competent in her shooting and handling abilities.

That's was one of my "welcome to America" situations.

[cb1000rider]

"The Annoyed Man"
This is NOT about race per se. Rather, it is about the fact that many immigrants of "other than white" ethnicity emigrated here and continue to emigrate from countries that do NOT recognize a right to keep and bear arms, and in many cases, these people will bring their cultural preferences along with them when they come here. For the most part, I do not care about foreign cultures.

My argument with this presentation certainly isn't on the demographic facts. And I've alluded to them before, especially in light of a "conservative" border state like Texas - there should be a long term plan within the Republican party to become a bit more inclusionary and recognize the changing demographics. To not have that long term plan means that it's only a matter of time...

My argument is with the implied predisposition that people from countries where firearms are not "allowed" bring those prejudices with them. I'd think that it's exactly the opposite.. Especially coming from southern countries where firearms are a presentation of strength and the fact that the law-abiding citizens aren't allowed to have them sets them at a substantial disadvantage... I'd say that they "get it" much more than Europeans where gun culture and gun violence are statistically unusual... They come from countries where ALL the bad guys have guns and the good guys don't have guns. Do you really think they believe that having a national prohibition on handguns works?

[VMI77]

I wasn't going to engage in this particular discussion but I just can't keep my big mouth shut.

Illegal immigrant respect or lack of respect for the RKBA is the least of our problems when it comes to immigration. Our borders are open and illegal immigration is out of control. We're not being flooded with nurses, doctors, engineers, and scientists from south of the border, but by third world, impoverished, lower IQ, less than healthy, superstitious, uneducated masses with zero understanding of our culture, our Constitution, or the principles not only upon which this country was founded, but the principles that embody the rule-of-law and that are necessary for the survival of any government that wants do more than call itself a "democracy."

The left repeatedly and deliberately makes a false equivalence between 19th and early 20th century immigration, which not only was mostly legal, but occurred in a country with booming economic growth and without a generous social welfare system, so no one could come here looking for, much less expecting a handout. The left constantly harps on the necessity of "education" in a "democracy" yet are advocating the wholesale importation of some of the most ignorant, uneducated, and ineducable people on earth. This is occurring at a time when a record number of American citizens are out of work, and when the number of young Americans entering the job market each year already exceeds the number of jobs created. And the jobs being created are mostly low wage dead-end jobs with no future except debt slavery and life-long poverty. Wages in this country have been in decline now for almost 15 years.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the H1B visa program, that while "legal" is importing foreign STEM graduates that directly take jobs from American citizens at a time when the high tech companies hiring STEM grads, like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are firing their American employees. Even some liberals are admitting that there is no shortage of American STEM graduates and that the recent expansion of the H1B program is going to further suppress wages and result in more unemployed Americans. My oldest son is a STEM graduate, graduated with honors, and had to join the TSA because he couldn't get a private sector job as a STEM grad after nearly three years of trying, and acquiring additional technical education.

I personally am making good money but I can't help but wonder what my salary would be if I wasn't competing for employment with foreign STEM grads who have Phds and whose legal status is often exploited by employers who can hire highly qualified foreign employees for half what they pay an American with a bachelor's degree. At the same time, most of us with undergraduate degrees know that pursuing an advanced degree, at great effort and cost, is not likely to make any significant difference to our remuneration, and in some cases, even reduce our employ-ability because we're considered "over qualified." This exploitation alone drives down wages, and that would still be the case even if supply wasn't already outstripping demand. At both ends of the spectrum it is the wealthiest people in the country who benefit from unchecked immigration while the middle class is being destroyed.

In the economic sense it not only isn't a racial issue, it's not even a cultural issue: race and culture are irrelevant when the country is importing millions of people ostensibly looking for employment of some kind when the country can't even produce enough jobs to employ its own citizens. And none of this is happening in a technological vacuum either. There is already a effort to eliminate even low wage employees by the use of robots. It's just a matter of time before a significant number of the only jobs that are left to many young Americans, service jobs, are eliminated by technology. "Education" and "retraining" can't fix this looming problem either because in spite of all the liberal feel good rhetoric, only a small percentage of the population has the requisite IQ to perform more sophistical work, or "technological" work. The government of this country is literally destroying the future of an entire generation of its own youth through the failure to call things what they are and face reality.

It's not going to matter one iota who's what race or what culture if there is no middle class left in this country, and immigration is greatly accelerating the destruction of the middle class, as well as the lower classes. Unchecked immigration in a welfare state isn't just a demographic threat on some level or another, it's outright national suicide.

[The Annoyed Man]

VMI77 covered it for me. I included my concerns about the RKBA specifically so as to make it relevant to this forum.

[rbwhatever1]

Great post VMI77.

[Beiruty]

All High-tech employers are looking for hard working talented engineers. Innovation and Productivity are key performance measures. Virtually all Fortune 500 tech company do not care about the race, color, or gender, they advocate diversity and integration to get financial results for shareholders.
On the other hand, the lack of interest in higher educations by US young graduates or deteriorating quality of high school and undergraduate school is very much of great concern for US high-tech companies.

[C-dub]

[quote="The Annoyed Man"
This is NOT about race per se. Rather, it is about the fact that many immigrants of "other than white" ethnicity emigrated here and continue to emigrate from countries that do NOT recognize a right to keep and bear arms, and in many cases, these people will bring their cultural preferences along with them when they come here. For the most part, I do not care about foreign cultures.

My argument with this presentation certainly isn't on the demographic facts. And I've alluded to them before, especially in light of a "conservative" border state like Texas - there should be a long term plan within the Republican party to become a bit more inclusionary and recognize the changing demographics. To not have that long term plan means that it's only a matter of time...

My argument is with the implied predisposition that people from countries where firearms are not "allowed" bring those prejudices with them. I'd think that it's exactly the opposite.. Especially coming from southern countries where firearms are a presentation of strength and the fact that the law-abiding citizens aren't allowed to have them sets them at a substantial disadvantage... I'd say that they "get it" much more than Europeans where gun culture and gun violence are statistically unusual... They come from countries where ALL the bad guys have guns and the good guys don't have guns. Do you really think they believe that having a national prohibition on handguns works?[/quote]
There's no need to speculate on immigrants bringing their anti-views on our RKBA. We can point to that phenomenon within the migration patterns inside our own country from state to state. We're all the time talking about the migration of people from the north east or California for the jobs bringing their votes to Texas and the effects it has. Yeah, they've seen the violence in their home countries and many of them blame guns just like the fools in Chicago and Detroit and D.C.

[VMI77]

There's no need to speculate on immigrants bringing their anti-views on our RKBA. We can point to that phenomenon within the migration patterns inside our own country from state to state. We're all the time talking about the migration of people from the north east or California for the jobs bringing their votes to Texas and the effects it has. Yeah, they've seen the violence in their home countries and many of them blame guns just like the fools in Chicago and Detroit and D.C.

"Too many guns" or just "guns" is the superficial and perhaps even intuitive "cause" of violence, so that is the meme most likely to play and take hold with the general population everywhere. More guns equals less violence or crime is somewhat counter-intuitive and requires more thought and data to process in order to understand the true causal relationship. This, perhaps ironically, is true of many things in life: what they seem on the surface does not describe their true reality. Gun bans are an easy sell to those who are ignorant, and by ignorant, I don't mean just those who are relatively unintelligent or uninformed, but even intelligent people who have no experience with guns or concepts of self-defense.

It is ignorance in general and ignorance of firearms in particular that enables gun control and gun bans in supposedly democratic countries. Gun bans succeeded in the UK for instance at least partly because by the time they were enacted only a very small percentage of the population had experience with firearms. TPTB prey on such ignorance to expand their reach and power. This suggests to me that the majority population of most of the countries in the world are likely to have been conditioned to believe eliminating guns will reduce violence. There may be some exceptions. Pakistan, for example, supposedly has an ingrained gun culture. Also, many people from the ME are accustomed to owning guns, even of the fully automatic variety. OTOH, Latin Americans and Europeans tend to be conditioned to see guns as a problem.

That said, I don't think it necessarily follows that most immigrants are representative of the population of their country of origin. It seems that most immigrants from south of the border are anti-gun but I haven't seen the data to support it. Immigrants tend to have different attitudes and motivations than the rest of their countrymen. In the past they tended to be more industrious but there are signs our social welfare system is corrupting the motivation of some. It may be even harder to estimate the effect of European immigration because there are relatively much fewer European immigrants and they generally have to obey US law and assimilate to be US citizens. Europeans choosing to come to the US are likely not as motivated by economics as those coming from south of the border, so they may be looking to embrace elements of US culture such as gun ownership. Most immigrants from foreign governments like California and New Jersey are also probably motivated by economic considerations....like job transfers...so on the whole they probably carry the same political biases that are prevalent in the places they come from.

In my personal experience I find those I know from China and India to be predominately anti-gun ownership and those from Pakistan and the ME more likely to be pro-gun ownership. It's rare that I encounter an engineer from Europe so I have no basis for a personal judgement. It's harder for me to pin down Hispanic attitudes because, again, there are virtually no engineer immigrants coming from south of the border, so nearly everyone I know that is Hispanic is a US citizen and all of them I know own guns. My views are also skewed because most immigrants I meet are intelligent and well educated no matter what country they come from. I have met and been impressed by engineers from Mexico, but they weren't immigrants. My guess is that most of those coming from south of the border are likely to be against gun ownership because that is how they've been indoctrinated, and generally speaking, being very poor, are unlikely to have any experience with guns because they can't afford to own one, and ownership is likely to be prohibited (there is no impediment to gun ownership, btw, in countries like Mexico, IF you're wealthy....the laws are generally only applied to the peasants).

[VMI77]

All High-tech employers are looking for hard working talented engineers. Innovation and Productivity are key performance measures. Virtually all Fortune 500 tech company do not care about the race, color, or gender, they advocate diversity and integration to get financial results for shareholders.
On the other hand, the lack of interest in higher educations by US young graduates or deteriorating quality of high school and undergraduate school is very much of great concern for US high-tech companies.

I have a friend from Lebanon that was a coworker at the company I used to work for. He was being paid at the same rates as the rest of us (even though he had an ME). However, his brother's employers were exploiting his H1B status and paying him half of what a brand new engineer would make (and he had a master's degree at the time). He got so disgusted with the exploitation he experienced, and that of his friends in the same situation, that he quit working on his engineering Phd at Dartmouth and moved to NYC to be a writer. H1B employees may not be exploited by all employers but there is enough exploitation for it to be a problem. Employers should not be allowed to import engineers from foreign countries and pay them less than they would pay an American citizen.

I work with engineers from all over the world. Most are from countries like China, India, Pakistan, and countries in the ME, and in some organizations they comprise the majority, or a large plurality of engineers. Also, they are most likely to have advanced degrees and many have Phds. Out of say, 100 or so engineers, I can only think of two or three American born engineers I've worked with that have a Phd, and maybe one or two that have Master's degrees. At least in my industry, Americans aren't pursuing advanced degrees because there is virtually no economic benefit. The one American Phd I know who is currently employed makes far less money than I do (I have an MBA, but that doesn't get you more money as an engineer either). OTOH, Phd's seem to help foreign engineers get into the visa program. I've seen absolutely no evidence that these engineers get paid more than American engineers with bachelor's degrees, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

The reason American graduates are not interested in higher education is that there is absolutely no incentive other than personal desire to pursue an advanced degree: no company I've ever worked for or heard about is willing to pay me more if I have an advanced degree. I know a Phd from Iran that also makes much less than I do. If I had a Phd I wouldn't be making a dime more than I am now so it makes no sense to put the money and effort into obtaining such a degree. And one of the reasons for this is because companies can get Phds from Asia and the ME for the same amount or less than what they pay an American with a bachelor's degree. That's why all the tech companies push the H1B program and they've made their claim that Americans are not interested in higher education a self-fulling prophecy.

I'm not against hiring foreign engineers btw. But if advanced degrees are truly valuable to these companies they should have to pay for them. They don't. When that starts happening Americans will get advanced degrees. It should be illegal for them to import a Phd engineer from a foreign country and pay him the same or less than a less credentialed American engineer. If a Phd is really worth something to them then they should have to pay more than they're paying the less educated Americans they're making the pretense of claiming aren't interested in higher education.

[cb1000rider]

Illegal immigrant respect or lack of respect for the RKBA is the least of our problems when it comes to immigration. Our borders are open and illegal immigration is out of control. We're not being flooded with nurses, doctors, engineers, and scientists from south of the border, but by third world, impoverished, lower IQ, less than healthy, superstitious, uneducated masses with zero understanding of our culture, our Constitution, or the principles not only upon which this country was founded, but the principles that embody the rule-of-law and that are necessary for the survival of any government that wants do more than call itself a "democracy.".

And why is that? It's not like someone that has "average" means in Mexico or Guatemala actually has a legitimate means to gaining entry into the USA. Those options are flat unavailable. And honestly, I feel for their positions. If the USA was a wasteland of corruption (well, ok), violence, illegality, and there was limited or no opportunity to work to keep my family alive, would I do something perhaps a little illegal.. Illegal to the tune of a geographic reset if I got caught? That's the reality of it.

VM, you'll love this:
And look, the border is one thing. It's the political punching bag that the people really pulling the strings keep dumb politicians and the public focused on. It's a very hard problem to solve without militarization and massive (think war scale) spending of money we don't have. That's exactly how they want it. The people that are the political money base have caused it to go no where in the last 50 years as keeping that labor is in their financial interest. It runs their businesses and supports their wealth.

Wanna solve it? Lock up people and corporations that hire illegals. Instead, we ignore it. And honestly, we ALL profit from it, especially here in Texas. I know exactly where it's going on in my small community. We tolerate it, but if it was drug sales (just as illegal) - there'd be a massive no-knock raid. This industry benefits us too, it's why our homes are so cheap (relatively) and why our food costs what it does.

My solution - and yea, I'm not just pointing out the problem: Allow it and tax the heck out of it. $5k entry fee, 24 months, pay taxes that cover potential medical issues. No more anchor children. Allow return trips for free within 24 months. This is, realistically, what we have today, only it becomes a source of revenue and eases many of the financial concerns. You won't get blowback from the political donors that have a business interest in keeping it the way it is.

Course, we can't do that, because we didn't spin it that way. We can't revert to reality now and not be political fodder.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the H1B visa program, that while "legal" is importing foreign STEM graduates that directly take jobs from American citizens at a time when the high tech companies hiring STEM grads, like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are firing their American employees. Even some liberals are admitting that there is no shortage of American STEM graduates and that the recent expansion of the H1B program is going to further suppress wages and result in more unemployed Americans. My oldest son is a STEM graduate, graduated with honors, and had to join the TSA because he couldn't get a private sector job as a STEM grad after nearly three years of trying, and acquiring additional technical education.

I have a lot of experience with the H1B deal. I went through the period of time where everyone was off shoring and we (people in technology) thought that we'd all lose our jobs to engineers would would work for 50% less.
Yea, that didn't work out so well for most companies. Most of the engineering efforts (development) imploded with quality problems. I ran teams of engineers (testers) domestically and in India. India cost less, but the result could never be trusted. That wasn't a one-off experience, it was several experiences. If you can document a process in ridiculous detail, spoon feed every result, then it worked well. By the time you did all that work, it was less expensive to do it in-house.

There are some very talented H1Bs. Because the H1B visa costs the employer money, those employees are disadvantaged. And the H1b employee is tied to the employer - an employment change resets the the application process, so the they don't have the same flexibility as the rest of us (average employee in tech stays about 3 years). I know of on employer that took advantage of this and really brought the hammer down on H1B employees - horrible hours, no raises, and due to a non-tech location, there was nothing that the H1b could do.

There may be jobs that are taken away from STEM graduates, but not that many. Doing new grad hiring, everyone I did hiring for had a significant preference for non-H1bs due to the expense and legal hassle. Some wouldn't even consider them.

Best thing any STEM grad can do is get a job (coop/internship) prior to graduation. And math majors will have a *much* harder time than a computer science or engineering major. And I wish your son continued luck - hopefully he'll get massive career acceleration in the TSA if he can think for himself like his dad.

It's not going to matter one iota who's what race or what culture if there is no middle class left in this country, and immigration is greatly accelerating the destruction of the middle class, as well as the lower classes. Unchecked immigration in a welfare state isn't just a demographic threat on some level or another, it's outright national suicide.

It's not going to look the same in 100 years, that's for sure.

[VMI77]

And why is that? It's not like someone that has "average" means in Mexico or Guatemala actually has a legitimate means to gaining entry into the USA. Those options are flat unavailable. And honestly, I feel for their positions. If the USA was a wasteland of corruption (well, ok), violence, illegality, and there was limited or no opportunity to work to keep my family alive, would I do something perhaps a little illegal.. Illegal to the tune of a geographic reset if I got caught? That's the reality of it.

Phrased differently than I did and turned around a little that's sort of the point I was making. We're importing uneducated and impoverished people into a country with a generous social welfare system that already has plenty of poor impoverished people who will never escape their poverty because the system has relegated them to perpetual dependency. We don't need any more. If there were a couple million poor people south of the border amid a world of affluence, and inviting them into the US would change that, I'd be all for lifting those impoverished people into affluence. Unfortunately there are billions of such people in the world and there is little to nothing the US can do about it.

This US has already become a wasteland of corruption and illegality and the violence is coming. I understand your point and I understand their motives but it doesn't change what the US can or should do about it. The country can't afford to take these people in on any level. We can't lift our own citizens out of poverty. We can't employ our own youth. The corruption is going to get much worse but it's already so endemic that there is virtually no hope of a correction without the coming inevitable reset. The problem is that things are probably more likely after such a reset to get worse instead of better. Even without the corruption the economic and political path we're on is a path to social and economic disaster. However, the corruption ensures a correction within the system will be next to impossible. That's somewhat ironic, since the illegals are fleeing countries in which a correction within the system is next to impossible.

Our big luxury liner and the big European luxury liner over the horizon are sinking, and just like on the Titanic, there aren't enough lifeboats to go around. Unlike on the Titanic, those running our ship have no honor or integrity. Our crew has no intention of being the last to escape or going down with the ship. Some of the boats were already launched with just a few people aboard and they're paddling away. The rest of us are all drowning in the water. Some have been in the cold sea longer and are more desperate than others. Everyone is scrambling into the few available lifeboats they can reach, but there are more people than the lifeboats can accommodate. So before the night is over, everyone that didn't pull far enough away from the desperate swimmers, or push them away with their oars, is going to drown with them when they sink from the mad scramble for one last seat in the lifeboat.

VM, you'll love this:
And look, the border is one thing. It's the political punching bag that the people really pulling the strings keep dumb politicians and the public focused on. It's a very hard problem to solve without militarization and massive (think war scale) spending of money we don't have. That's exactly how they want it. The people that are the political money base have caused it to go no where in the last 50 years as keeping that labor is in their financial interest. It runs their businesses and supports their wealth.

Wanna solve it? Lock up people and corporations that hire illegals. Instead, we ignore it. And honestly, we ALL profit from it, especially here in Texas. I know exactly where it's going on in my small community. We tolerate it, but if it was drug sales (just as illegal) - there'd be a massive no-knock raid. This industry benefits us too, it's why our homes are so cheap (relatively) and why our food costs what it does.

My solution - and yea, I'm not just pointing out the problem: Allow it and tax the heck out of it. $5k entry fee, 24 months, pay taxes that cover potential medical issues. No more anchor children. Allow return trips for free within 24 months. This is, realistically, what we have today, only it becomes a source of revenue and eases many of the financial concerns. You won't get blowback from the political donors that have a business interest in keeping it the way it is.

Course, we can't do that, because we didn't spin it that way. We can't revert to reality now and not be political fodder.

I have no particular disagreement with this except for the statement that we all profit from it. I don't profit from it and I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm paying taxes to support it and have absolutely no say in the matter. Yep, it can't and won't be changed because the very people who need to be held accountable are the ones who profit from it the most and own the system. Well, except it will change eventually, because the reset is inevitable and subject to forces beyond their control. But we probably won't like the results any better.

I have a lot of experience with the H1B deal. I went through the period of time where everyone was off shoring and we (people in technology) thought that we'd all lose our jobs to engineers would would work for 50% less.
Yea, that didn't work out so well for most companies. Most of the engineering efforts (development) imploded with quality problems. I ran teams of engineers (testers) domestically and in India. India cost less, but the result could never be trusted. That wasn't a one-off experience, it was several experiences. If you can document a process in ridiculous detail, spoon feed every result, then it worked well. By the time you did all that work, it was less expensive to do it in-house.

There are some very talented H1Bs. Because the H1B visa costs the employer money, those employees are disadvantaged. And the H1b employee is tied to the employer - an employment change resets the the application process, so the they don't have the same flexibility as the rest of us (average employee in tech stays about 3 years). I know of on employer that took advantage of this and really brought the hammer down on H1B employees - horrible hours, no raises, and due to a non-tech location, there was nothing that the H1b could do.

There may be jobs that are taken away from STEM graduates, but not that many. Doing new grad hiring, everyone I did hiring for had a significant preference for non-H1bs due to the expense and legal hassle. Some wouldn't even consider them.

Best thing any STEM grad can do is get a job (coop/internship) prior to graduation. And math majors will have a *much* harder time than a computer science or engineering major. And I wish your son continued luck - hopefully he'll get massive career acceleration in the TSA if he can think for himself like his dad.

That more or less duplicates my experience except I never saw it from the hiring side. My previous company did hire H1Bs but I don't think they were being exploited there....or at least my Lebanese friend who was quite candid in describing his experiences, along with those of his brother and friends in the program, never complained. However, recent studies have indicated that this program has depressed salaries for STEM grads.

My son is already escaping the gravity of the TSA. He's about to become a poultry inspector with the USDA. He is also a candidate for a position with CBP as an agricultural specialist. He applied for these and similar positions before entering the TSA and got absolutely nowhere. His qualifications for these positions didn't change, just his entry point.

OTOH, my youngest son did work paid and unpaid internships before entering law school and it hasn't helped him one iota. He's not a STEM graduate, but he speaks, reads, and writes Chinese and Japanese, got a perfect score on the LSAT, and got a full scholarship to the University of Chicago --the country's 4th ranked law school. He is nearing desperation because he's about to graduate and hasn't had a single job offer (he took a brief hiatus and is graduating after the rest of his class). Most of his classmates are unemployed or grossly under employed. One of his friends in the class was a dog walker for awhile and now drives a delivery truck. Another is a haberdasher.

On the positive side it, he was admitted to Harvard Law, and it was a gut wrenching decision for him to turn down admission in favor of the scholarship (Harvard offered zero financial assistance). Now he's very glad he did and doesn't have a crushing $250K student loan debt as many of his fellow law students do.

Edited to add:

BTW, for simplification, I will roughly divide my industry into private companies and the public entity that "regulates" us here in Texas. On the private side most of the STEM employees are US born citizens. On the public side, depending on the particular grouping, non-US born citizens are from 20-40% of STEM employees --mostly Asian (India, Pakistan, China) and some Middle Eastern. I don't know how they came to be in the US. All of them are smart. I've never met a dumb one (but then, when your supply is a pool of candidates from countries that total a good 4 or more times the population the US, you can be pretty selective). I have met dumb US STEM grads but their numbers are insignificant in comparison to the number of dumb non-STEM US college graduates I've encountered. My point is that when you start with an over supply there is no way you can employ upwards of 10% non-US citizens or more and have no impact on wages. Even if you started with an under supply the adding more potential employees to the labor pool is at least going to at least narrow any supply advantage. And once you supply exceeds demand you've shifted to a demand advantage.

And yes, my numbers are purely anecdotal and based on my impressions rather than a rigorous quantification. I haven't bothered to make a precise count because it really doesn't make any difference. I'm only pointing out that there are lots of non-US STEM grads in the country, however they got here. And the ones I'm talking about in my industry no doubt all entered legally. I'm not against legal immigration that benefits the country as a whole --as opposed to primarily the ruling class. I am against providing corporations with incentives that, intended or not, confer benefits for hiring non-US citizens.