Amitava Kumar Quotes
Does the entry of Indian H-1B worker augur a change in the relations of production in the world of cybertechnology? No, but the presence of such workers - their skills and their histories - introduce contradictions into the system that are not always easily absorbed or dissolved.
Kumar, Amitava. Bombay-London-New York. Routledge, 2002.
One hundred years later, many in America would come to this same conclusion and American manufacturing, to outcompete China and other Oriental cultures, have turned to highly complex, constantly innovative, and technically advanced processes.
The nation was divided over the issue of immigration. Many observed that the vast majority of the immigrants—especially the illegal immigrants performed jobs for which American workers could not be hired. Opponents like the congressman, claimed that if better wages were paid Americans would be doing the jobs, and as long as there were immigrants who would work for low wages, there was little reason for employers to pay more.
At the time, Australia would not allow Asians in the Country and the United States had severely curtailed Oriental immigration. Ironically, in the 21st century the United States and most of the “white” nations had opened their markets to Asian imports and China, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand all were dominating consumer manufacturing and were in free competition with white labor but there were still de facto restrictions on immigration and Asian guest workers in most white nations.
In the interview Bell was interviewed about the protection the Bush administration was giving to the steel industry.
Bonior and many others believe that NAFTA was the cause of the worker displacement. Others believe that the forces causing loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs—robotic replacement of human workers and offshoring—were already in existence and were reaching their high rates at shortly after NAFTA. Correlation in time does not necessarily imply causation.
Many free-traders disagree. While there is unemployment in the auto industry from imported cars, there is increased employment in the importing process, the marketing, selling, and maintenance of the imported cars as well as their financing. Further, when trade is open, we can then export products and services to Japan and this creates jobs. No one has ever been able to exactly measure the jobs created so it is an unsettled intellectual economic and political question. However, the people who lose jobs to imports are generally identifiable while the beneficiaries of many of the new jobs created by open trade are never specifically identified, so public opinion is more sympathetic to the former.
Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.
